In a world of hares, let's be tortoises 🐢

Because even with knitting, it can sometimes feel like you're falling behind

What’s on my needles: A glowing yellow cardigan, set aside when the weather got warm this spring and picked back up a few weeks ago. If you’re curious about the pattern, please check out the comments where I’ve shared my somewhat torturous process to get a final pattern that works for my style preferences.

September feels like the start of a new year, and I know it’s not just me who feels things change once school starts and the autumn equinox is here.

Fall is my favorite season, and I want to rush out and embrace every single part of it: the apples and the pumpkins, the leaves changing color, the coziness of lighting candles, the crisp in the morning air, knitting cables out of wooly yarn … just everything. There’s something in me and definitely something in our cultural norms that say: go fast, grab every experience, it’s not going to last, do it all.

When I start feeling a pressure to speed up, I have to remember: I find the most pleasure, the most comfort, the most meaning, and the most depth from being a tortoise, not a hare.

I used to think I liked going fast. I liked to talk quickly and walk quickly and burn through my to-do list. I used to like the feeling of anxiety coursing through me and urging me to do more, try harder, find a way to power through.

But going fast wasn’t very helpful to my nervous system, and I’m trying to learn a different way of being myself in this fast world that’s only speeding up.

Even knitting can feel too fast, sometimes. The norm of what we see on Knitting Instagram, Knitting YouTube, or other social media shares, makes it feel like everyone else is knitting so quickly, finishing sweaters, joyfully skipping through piles of leaves, and embracing fall with full gusto. It’s so easy to feel left behind.

If you’re a tortoise, like me, let’s set some new norms for ourselves. Let’s really let this change of season sink in. Let’s feel how the weather slowly, slowly shifts from warmth and summer to cooler and cozier. Let’s take some time outside, even if that’s just in our own metaphorical back yard.

Let’s know that simply being is enough. We can knit slowly. We can rest. We can nap. We don’t need to have a giant pile of sweaters that say, look at everything I knit this season. We can love what we have, without needing more, and we can embrace that our hands can only hold one project at a time.

What will be on your needles, or in your hands, today? I’d love to know.

Getting ready for a new kit

This week, I’ve been deeply immersed in the small details and production of a new kit. It’s a new collaboration with Hunter Hammersen, and we’ll co-release on Tuesday: she’ll release the pattern and I’ll release a yarn & supplies kit for these amazing, whimsical, utterly useless knitted tentacles.

Hunter and I both believe deeply that knitting is a way to be creative, to explore, to soothe ourselves, and to reinforce that just being is a very fine way to live. Her business is named Tiny Nonsense for exactly that reason: in a world that mostly in upheaval, sometimes, knitting something tiny and useless that exists only to bring you joy is the most reasonable thing you can do.

When Hunter approached me earlier this year about the idea of knitted tentacles, timed for spooky season, and where I’d need to bulk order a bunch of needle-nose pliers, I thought, you had me at pliers!

Creating a kit for Gripping (the official name of the knitted tentacles) has been so much fun, and I’m eager to bring you into the story. I’ll be sending an extra newsletter on Tuesday to tell you all about it. For now, though, you can:

1. Preview the Gripping kit in my shop. (There will be two editions: a luxe kit at $115 and a simple one at $66.)

2. Make sure you’re set to receive “Shop Updates” editions of this newsletter. Go here, and make sure the toggle switch for Shop Updates is ON. It will look like this:

Because someone will ask: I plan to make the kits available for sale at 10:00a Pacific Time, Tuesday, September 26. I have no idea how popular, or not, these will be. But, I have a good number that are mostly ready to ship, and if they go quickly, I’ll open up some preorders that would ship out around Halloween. Between what will be available immediately and what I can make over the next month or so, I’m quite confident there’s enough for everyone.

A well-wish for your Sunday

I hope you are able to disrupt some norms today. I hope you can let yourself be, instead of checking off things on your to-do list. Take a nap, if you can. Sit outside, listen to the wind or the leaves or the birds. Spend some time offline. Do the things that nourish you. You are enough, just as you are.

With love,
Anne