Alrighty, just to resolve any lingering questions about how the blocks thing works...⁠ Yes, I have filled my houses with blocks (cough, both these tiny knitted houses and my real actual house because blocks are kinda fun to have around).⁠ Yes, I think you should do the same if you can, because they make the houses Oh So Tidy and give them nice straight lines, nice sharp corners, and nice solid heft to them if you pick them up, all of which please me greatly.⁠ No, you don't have to use exactly the blocks I used (though you can check [...]

Yes. Yes it looks like a tampon.  Go ahead, I know at least some of you are thinking it.  It's fine. But while it might look a little absurd, this is actually the best way to trim the ends of a tassel.  Wrap them in a little strip of paper (if you're making a lot, you can tape the paper in place and use it over and over).  Slide the paper down until it's just level with the bottom of the shortest strands.  Trim everything flush with the paper. Then slide the paper off and revel in your very tidy [...]

I am selective about my traditions.  I don't put up a christmas tree. I don't do birthday presents. I don't do a thanksgiving turkey.  But you can be damn sure I do a thanksgiving pizza.  And when the sun starts setting so early that my brain gets fuzzy, I make paper stars.  And when we've had a few frosts and it's properly chilly in the evenings, I do herb salt. It feels like a lovely way to put the garden to bed and to get ready to hunker down for the winter.  And I've been doing it long enough that [...]

Look, I have bought some weird stuff for work over the years. I have a shelf of body parts (fine, I have a shelf of head forms and hand forms and foot forms for blocking and photographs, but saying I have a shelf of body parts sounds so much cooler). I have vintage dress forms. I have condiment cups and cupcake stands (those were for Dollop). I have curtain weights and straws and magnets (those were for Foraged). I have peg dolls (those were for Nestled). I have yogurt jars and electric tea lights (those were for Catchall). I have [...]

Look, things feel awful.  I get it.  I do.  And I'm doing what I can to fix that.  I voted for Biden and for Sarah Gideon (because I'm lucky enough to live in a state where we will probably flip our senator from republican to democrat, and holy crap that matters so much) and for all the down ballot races too.  I'm staying home to avoid plague.  I've given money to the organizations in my community that are trying to feed hungry folks and to the organizations in my country that are trying to work against the incompetent white supremacist [...]

I didn't forget.  No really, I didn't.  I didn't forget about the houses, I just got distracted by the acorns and haven't shown you much of them.  But the houses have been clicking along just fine. And well, at this point I'm starting to have a small village. The pattern is off with testers, the photo shoot is scheduled for next week, and the pattern should come out later this month.  If you know already that you simply must make these, I want to show you what's inside mine, so you can prepare. You want to get blocks.  Or rather, [...]

If you're my neighbor, you're probably eventually going to come upon me, sprawled out full length on the ground, pointing a whole lot of camera at a very small bit of knitting and carefully nudging a clump of moss or a wisp of leaf into just the right spot.  Which is fine!  Assuming I'm not in someone else's yard or dangerously close to the road, I maintain that this is harmless. But it does give rise to a bit of chatter.  So I try to allow for a reasonable length of time between incidents so as not to stir up [...]

Just about two years ago, I brought out Hoard.  It used real acorn caps on top of knit acorns, which was adorable, and gave a person an excuse to go crawl around under trees and hunt for treasures.  But there is another way to top your acorns.  You can totally do knit caps instead.  So today, I sent out an update to the pattern with instructions for knitted tops! And they're rather endearing if I do say so myself.  Cute on their own, with bonus cuteness points if you make acorn twins! Of course the best option might well be [...]

As far as coping mechanisms go, this seems fairly harmless. I mean it's not quite as productive as the stress cleaning and stress baking I usually do. But I think I got all that out of my system in the first few months of the current crisis. But it seems the crisis is outlasting my messy corners and my need for baked goods, so now we move on to other techniques. And well, these are soft and soothing and satisfying and somehow there's always room for just one more. The pattern is Hoard (rav, payhip). Right this second it has [...]