About Me

My name is Hunter Hammersen, and I knit tiny nonsense. I live in coastal Maine, where I can often be found poking at seaweed with a bit of driftwood or visiting my favorite mossy tree stump. There is almost certainly a rock in my pocket right this minute. If you ask nicely, I might just show it to you.

I’m fat, I swear a lot, and I have ridiculous hair. And I am unapologetically shouty about political stuff. No really, I’m the scary, dangerous feminist your angry uncle rants about on facebook. Here, check this out…abortions are good and everyone should have access to them, trans people are good and should get the support they need, unions are good and more people should be in them, police are bad and should be defunded, fascists are bad and we should stop electing them, racists are bad and we should stop humoring them, and this pandemic is very much not over.

If you buy my work, I will absolutely use your money to support the causes I believe in.

If any of that stuff up there bugs you, I’m not the person for you. And that’s ok! But if that all sounds good? If I sound like your kind of person? Well, then I think we can have some fun!

Why Tiny Nonsense

So look, I really can’t manage to be sensible and reasonable and practical and normal all the time. I’ve tried! No really, I’ve tried hard. I’ve tried so hard I hurt myself. It doesn’t work. I can’t do it. Not all the time. But here’s the thing…

If I stop trying so damn hard to be normal all the time, I have way more fun. And if I’m having more fun, just sort of in general, I’m ever so more able to pretend to be a proper grown up when I absolutely need to. So, in a delightfully roundabout sort of way these absurd little bits of tiny nonsense, which are a tremendous amount of fun and which make me so very happy, leave me much better able to deal with the world.

And judging by what I hear, more than a few of you feel the same.

So if today is not the day to be sensible and reasonable and practical, maybe it’s the day to do something fun. And maybe, if you spend a bit of time doing something fun, you’ll be better able to do all that other stuff tomorrow!

A Bit of History

Once upon a time, a long long time about (’round about 2009), a misguided history grad student found herself spending a lot of time distracting herself from what she was supposed to doing by tying pretty string into fancy knots with pointy sticks.

She’d always been bad at following instructions, so it wasn’t a surprise when she insisted on making up her own patterns instead of following the patterns other, much more qualified, people had already written. And she’d always been the bossy type, so it wasn’t a surprise when she started writing those patterns down and inflicting them on other people. It was a bit of a surprise when she kept doing it (she’s always been a bit fickle). It was even more of a surprise when, some time around 2012, she started turning out actual books.

Slowly, quietly, and only while absolutely no one was looking, she managed write enough books and patterns that, by 2015, she’d abandoned the glamorous life of a grad student and turned this sticks and string thing into a full time job.

More books and patterns followed. Quite a lot more. Which was lovely! Because knitting nifty things and telling other folks how to do the same turned out to be exactly the right mix of structure and chaos for her slightly off kilter little brain. Things were good.

But, over time, managing all the patterns started to become unwieldy (managing several hundred of anything will do that). And the logistics of printing physical books became daunting (turns out getting a couple tons of books printed, delivered to your house, and shipped off to new homes is hard). And the world went and changed in some kind of disconcerting ways.

It all began to feel a bit overwhelming. So overwhelming that she thought about finding something else to do.

But it turns out, she didn’t actually want to do something else. She wanted to do this! Just in a more manageable way. So, in 2022, she took down all of her books and patterns. Yes all of them. And yes, it was scary. But something had to change.

And then, after a frankly distasteful couple of months spent poking at websites and fiddling with pattern layouts and doing a bunch of deeply unpleasant official business stuff, she was ready to share the next stage of this strange and meandering adventure.

She brought back a handful of her very favorite patterns, got some new patterns on the needles, and came up with a way to share a few other delights. She’s looking forward to what comes next!

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