Focus like it's 1998.

Or, where did my attention span go?, and how I'm trying to get it back.

This was the photo for my very first ever kit: a sock kit inspired by the picture book, Extra Yarn. Those are my boy’s feet in 2013 when he was 6.

I am going to share a secret with you: I don’t read books very often. And I miss it.

I have always thought of myself as a reader and a book lover. It’s a deep part of my self-identity, and some of my earliest memories are of books. Reading and collecting Nancy Drew mysteries. Everything ever written by Judy Blume (< New York Times gift link to the best profile ever). Novels upon novels upon novels.

My decline in reading coincided with the ubiquity of social media and high resolution screens that started to chop up my attention span into smaller and smaller nuggets. A few minutes here, or there. Moving from one thing to another. Perusing Ravelry rather than knitting. Reading a blog rather than a book. Reading on my iPad before bed, rather than reading a book, because well, I’m so tired that I’ll fall asleep when reading and won’t remember anything anyways.

I didn’t notice how my attention span was crumbling until most of it was already gone.

One of the reasons I started my book club with my friend, Kathy, was as a forcing function: to make myself read at least one book every month, knowing that it’s somehow easier to show up for others than it is to show up for myself.

I think is why I love dyeing yarn (and, frankly, this newsletter): work that takes deep focus gives my brain a slow, nourishing, quiet, restorative stretch of time to work. It keeps me from consuming information in tiny click-bait bites, and it helps me dig in. To think, imagine, and do the things that brains like to do. Deep work.

Reading a novel used to be like this for me, but it’s been hard, the last decade or so, to resist the siren call of the Instagram scroll or the news headlines or the feed of new patterns that I could make. But I want to resist.

(There’s been so much written about the addictive nature of social media, the dopamine hits that we end up craving, and helpful ways to regain your focus that it feels like I’m being Captain Obvious to say that focusing is hard. But it is.)

How about you? Do still read as much as you used to? Do you still focus deeply? Or, are you like me, and feel your attention span divided and cut and spliced into tinier and tinier pieces?

And, a question (and idea) I’m mulling: Would you like to do something about it together?

Welcome to California Street ✨🌈🐏🎧

First: thank you so much for the warm and enthusiastic reception to Tyne’s and my California shawl kit & collection. We launched the collection on Friday morning and by Friday evening, it was all sold out except for the pattern (which is digital, so it can’t sell out!).

We would love for you to feel part of the project, even though I no longer have yarn available.

I’m not a fan of buying things I don’t need or encouraging you to buy things you don’t need, but I don’t consider a robust pattern library to be unneeded. I don’t stash the latest “big” designer patterns (those I buy when/if I want to knit it), but I find that stashing small designers’ patterns makes me really happy, and when I’m ready to cast on a new shawl or sweater, going back to my stashed patterns, choosing just the right one, well, that makes me happy all over again.

As an encouragement, we are offering a special version of the pattern that includes our California Street annotated playlist (with a ready-to-listen link to Spotify) through the end of today only. (It's a launch weekend offer, so if you want to stash the pattern, please do so now!)

A well-wish for our collective well-being

This Sunday, I’m working on getting my attention back, or, living like it’s 1998. I’ll check my email and texts for friendship connections, but then put the phone away and spend some time outdoors. I’m going to knit a little bit on my current sweater project, do some old-fashioned sketching in the back yard and then come inside and bake something yummy.

My well-wish for you is that your day is also filled with old-school, quiet focus, slow attention activities. Nothing fast, nothing quick. Just nourishing things.

PS: I’d like to start a bit of a back-and-forth with my Sunday letters. If you could ask me anything, what would you ask? (< this link will take you to a nifty anonymous form, where you can ask me anything!)