Preserves
Look, I cannot explain the appeal. Either you look at these, struggle to contain a tiny gasp of delight, and run to your scraps bin to find the perfect strawberry colors. Or you...don't. And I get it! They will not be everyone's cup of tea!
But if you have my kind of brain, the kind of brain that often finds itself going "hmm, I wonder what would happen if..." and then you give it a try and then a few hours later you're holding a tiny little treasure in your hands and marveling at what you made, then I think you might absolutely adore these. I know I do!
Plus they'll never, ever, ever go furry in the back of your refrigerator (admittedly, more likely to happen to spinach than to strawberries, but somehow I still mess that up sometimes). Maybe if I make enough of them, I'll earn amnesty for whatever horror show is happening in my produce drawer right now. Or maybe, just maybe, they'll inspire me to make something delicious the next time the berries look good at the market.
Lather
There are folks out there who make their money by teaching you to hate your body then selling you something to fix or hide what they say is wrong with you. And oh, oh they’re good at their jobs. They’re so good at it that you probably don’t even notice how often they subtly suggest that you you’re too fat or have too much cellulite or too many stretch marks, or that you’re too old or have too many wrinkles or too many gray hairs, or that your pores are too big or your eyebrows too sparse or your teeth too crooked.
But once you start to notice, you’ll see those messages everywhere. Which is infuriating! But it’s also the first step to making yourself less susceptible to that garbage. Because once you notice, you can ask why you’re being made to feel bad, who benefits from those bad feelings. And once you start to do that, a lot of those bad feelings just go away. And then? Well then you can start to experiment with what it’s like to have nice feelings about your body. To be kind to it. To treat it gently.
That process will look different for everyone, but for me, a big part of being kind to my body is taking delightfully extravagant showers. The kind where you tidy up the bathroom and light your favorite candle and put on some good music and deep condition your hair and use the yummy smelling soap and the very fancy washcloth and whatever else makes the process feel good.
And I swear it helps. It helps so much. Because it’s hard to hate something you treat kindly and gently. And it’s so much nicer to live in a body you’ve come to care for rather than one you’ve been taught to hate.
Clasped
I have reached a certain age. An age where I both remember being fascinated by the magical change purse my grandmother carried in her handbag...and finally understand why she had at least three different little pouches on hand at all times. Because if you live long enough, you’ll eventually find you need a certain amount of stuff with you to get through the day, and it’s easier if it’s organized.
So when I stumbled across the spiffy little clasps that made those long-remembered pouches so magical, I knew I needed to make a knitted version. Make that several knitted versions. Because really, if you’re in the ‘lots of little containers for all your stuff’ stage of life, it’s going to be easier if you can tell them apart at a glance. I went with a plain one (that I made stripey with some nifty helix stripes because I couldn’t just have it be plain), a zig zag one, and one that has that deeply satisfying offset shape that is technically a tetrahedron, but which I always think of as the sour cream packet shape.
I suspect you’ll end up making all three. Actually, I suspect you’ll end up making all three many times. Because every time a non-knitter sees one of these, they are absolutely gobsmacked at the cleverness. But the pouches are actually shockingly simple to knit, and they make great use of yarn scraps. So you can make a whole pile of them with yarn from your scraps bin, give them away with abandon, and look like an absolute magician. Which is something I’m pretty sure both your grandmother and mine would heartily approve of!
Oddities
I’ve knit a lot of hats. No really, a lot. And there comes a point, on about half my hats, where part of my brain says ‘ooooooh that crown looks like a sea urchin.’ And normally I say ‘yes indeed’ and move quietly on with my day. But, not too long ago, something in my head snapped, and instead I said ‘ok, you keep seeing sea urchins everywhere, how about I just knit you a little pile of sea urchins and see if that helps.’
To be honest, I don’t know if it will cure me of my tendency to see echoes of sea creatures in my other knits. I suspect that it may not. That may just be a thing my brain tends to do. But it was an absolutely delightful diversion and resulted in one of the loveliest little piles of peculiarities I ever did see.
And while I would never presume that everyone shares my particular fondness for our spiny, briny little friends, I have a sneaking suspicion that at least a few of you do. If you’re the sort to come home from a beach stroll with a pocket full of pebbles and shells and bits of driftwood, then perhaps these are for you!
Shaped
This pattern exists because the folks on Patreon give me the time I need to experiment with all sorts of things. So it seems fair to give it to the folks who support me there! This pattern is only available through Patreon through the end of 2024. Anyone with an Utter Nonsense ($6/month) or Rampant Nonsense ($12/month) membership gets the pattern. (Yes, you can keep it forever. Yes, you can put it in your ravelry library. Yes, it's fine to join and then change or cancel your membership later.)
So I was knitting some slippers. No really, stay with me here, this is how these came to be. I was knitting some slippers, and they started at the back of your heel then swooped forward and opened out to make room for your foot. And there was always a moment, right after that, where my brain said ‘ok, now close it back up right away, you’ll get a cool shape.’ So one day, I did. And yeah, it did make a cool shape. And then that same part of my brain said ‘ok, now do that again, but work in the round this time.’ And I, having learned to mostly just listen to my brain when it gets like this, once again did what I was told. And yeah, yeah that shape, once subjected to one little fold and vigorous block, was indeed even cooler. Cooler, and ever so delightfully adjustable. And so now we find ourselves here. With a piece of fabric that started as the heel of a slipper, then flipped and mirrored itself until it turned into a little ball, and which you can fold and primp into a delightful little vessel. The pattern proper includes four versions, a flat version and one with curved edges, each in two sizes (those are the solid blue ones in the pictures). But it also runs you through several options for modifying and adorning these, like changing the size and the shape and the depth, putting something inside them to give them a bit of structure, and even embroidering on them if you’re so inclined (the gray one includes several mods all in one piece). Because really, once you’ve made one and seen how they magic themselves into shape at the end, I suspect you’re going to want to make more. Lots and lots more. And I want you to have options!
Fangs
Do you need these? No. No, you absolutely do not.
Do you want them? I suspect some of you do. Now of course some of you are far more sensible and reasonable and restrained and mature than I am. If that’s you, then of course you won’t want them. But some of you share both my unspeakable fondness for bats and my complete inability to ignore anything that passes a certain cuteness threshold. And if that’s you, well, here you go!
They’re astonishingly quick (each one took me less than two hours to knit), they’re perfect for scrap yarn (sock scraps are especially good for these), and I highly recommend you knit a whole colony of them (because you’re going to want to play with all the different wing shapes).
Peached
These? These actually came into being in the fall of 2019 when the (cough, first, cough) impeachment of everyone’s least favorite felon was underway, and I felt the need for something soft that I could squeeze. Or throw against a wall. Or stab full of pins. The intervening years have brought no end of things to be mad about, and the current round of elections has brought even more.
And sometimes that rage turns into stitches. And calls to your representatives. And donations to abortion funds. And reminders to your friends and family to check on their voter registration. And attendance at your local school board meetings. And all those other things that feel tiny and insignificant on their own, but that add up when you do them over and over and over again. Rather like stitches.
And yes, yes of course, you can absolutely make these just because they’re cute and you want a perfect little peach (or apple) for some completely non-ragey reason. And I could write something here that extols their virtues and makes you want to knit them. Maybe that’s even what I should do.
But what I’m going to do is remind you that good things can happen when you turn your rage into action. Because right now, I think we all need that more than we need someone waxing poetic about a knitted peach. So figure out what you’re mad about, and find one tiny thing to do about it. You’ll feel better after. Because you’re a knitter, and knitters know that tiny things, done over and over, add up to something big.
Peculiarities
Practical? I think not. Useful? Nope, not that either.
Amusing? That’s rather subjective, but I think so. An excuse to get a truly ridiculous drink, with a mountain of whipped cream on the way home from the plant store? Yup. Which is not something you can say for many knitting patterns.
But for some reason, I was recently beset with the urge to make some little knitted jellyfish. And when such an urge comes upon you, it’s best to just give in gracefully and get on with it. Because you won’t know any peace until you do. So while I can’t, in good conscience, suggest that you should knit these, I can totally sympathize if you find yourself suddenly unable to resist!
Drifts
Did I wake up one day, smack dab in the middle of a wide variety of crises, both deeply personal and more general in nature, and find myself absolutely possessed with the inescapable urge to knit a pile of snowballs? Why yes, yes I did.
Did I take myself directly to the store, bright and early that very morning, to purchase a variety of spheres and set to work satiating this urge? Also yes. With absolutely record speed.
Was I surprised when it turned out that quite a few of you also felt the need make a selection of your own projectiles to mitigate whatever personal horrors are plaguing you at the moment? I mean honestly, at this point, no.
For you see, at this point I trust that a fair number of you are either feeling the same rage I am or dealing with the same heartbreaks or just needing the same distractions. I knew many of you would love them, and some of you would find comfort and beauty in them, and maybe just maybe a few of you would throw them just as hard as you could against the nearest wall when you needed to vent a little steam. Or you could just hang them on your christmas tree. That’s totally ok too!
Whatever you decide to do with them, I hope they bring your hands and your heart and your head a little moment of calm and remind you that you can make beautiful things, even when the world feels like it’s on fire.
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