You're doing great

This is your permission slip to knit something for yourself, take an extra nap, and recharge in the way that feels most nourishing to you

A peek at my Christmas tree and some of my oldest ornaments. These are 45 years old, harkening back to the Christmas of 1977, when I was 10. They remind me of how hard and dark times can coexist with sparkle and beauty. Bitter and sweet. Grief and gratitude.

We’re approaching winter solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere, where it gets really dark (and will have just 9 hours and 32 minutes of light here in San Francisco on December 21st). I love how so many cultures have traditions around the winter solstice, some stolen, some co-opted, some unique.

My family’s traditions are a secular mishmash of Christmas, solstice celebrations, capitalist consumption, and old school German and Protestant rituals. Because I am the primary caregiver for our family, I am also the magic-maker, the one who strings twinkly lights and puts up our Christmas tree and lights scented candles and bakes cookies. I’m always looking for ways to add to our family’s ease and joy, while remembering to include myself in this equation.

I know that many of you reading my Sunday letter are also your family’s magic-makers, and I have a simple pep talk for you this Sunday:

You are doing great.

Whatever you can manage, whether that is big or small. Whether you are hating this time of year, or delightedly watching Christmas movies. Whether you feel full of the spirit of Noel, or feel grumpy and curmudgeonly …. You are doing great.

This is a complicated time. Whether you celebrate a secular Christmas like me, a religious Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah (which starts tonight!), winter solstice, nothing at all, or another variation … this is a complicated time.

Winter holidays can feel like they take up so much space.

And, I know very few people who are (or can be) neutral or detached about the steam train of a capitalist Christmas that bears down on all of us. Exhortations to buy, memories of having had plenty or having had not enough. Messages that family is what it’s all about, but when you may have complicated relationships with family. An air of busyness and hustle everywhere, when everything about your soft animal body is urging you to slow down and hibernate.

I am here to tell you that you’re doing great, with all of it. No matter how you feel about how you’re doing (not enough, imperfectly, nailing it, holding back tears), you are doing great.

I am also here to give you a kind of permission slip to take a moment, or a day, or a season, to remember yourself.

Knit something for you.
Take a nap.
Eat your favorite cookies. Eat all of your favorite cookies.
Snuggle an animal or a small child, if that feels comforting to you.
Rest.
Cry, if that feels comforting to you.
Remember. Or forget.

Be your unique, beautiful, there is only ever one of you, self, and know that I am rooting for you. You are doing great.

What are you knitting?

A very special thank you to the reader who sent me this book. It belonged to this reader’s mother, and I am utterly charmed and thrilled to add it to my library. I hope all of you feel the blessing that came with this book and that it fills your hearts, too. People really can be the best.

I am knitting Christmas socks (and a hat and a pair of cabley socks too) (the sweater is still on hold). Quite uncharacteristically, I am knitting on all of these small things and enjoying the progress that I see on each one of them. They are filling my heart with progress, momentum, soothing stitches, beautiful color, and a feeling of hibernation which is just what I need right now.

What are you making?

A throwback to when I had bangs! (Please remind me not to cut bangs again. Growing them out is so painful … if you have ever grown out bangs, I know you know what I mean.)

Pattern spotlight (plus a discount):
Christmastide cowl

This is one of my older patterns (written in 2018) and it was the first pattern I wrote that really embodied my ethos of caring for yourself, right along with everyone else. Not the self-care that capitalism tells you that you need (bath balms, fancy lotions, or expensive advent calendars) but the feeling of including yourself as someone important who matters to you.

I hope to update the pattern next year into a new format with new pictures, but for now, it’s perfect just as it is. And it’s a good reminder for both me and you that we’re doing great, just as we are.

Christmastide is a rock-solid pattern, with a chart for the chart-lovers and also fully written-out instructions for the non-chart lovers. It’s divided into 12 steps, one for each day of Christmastide, which start on Christmas Day and goes for 12 days through Epiphany on January 6.

This is my favorite time of my own winter holidays: when all the shopping is complete, gifts have been made (or abandoned), festive meals have been planned, and the outside world begins to slow its demands and attention. During Christmastide, we can turn inward — toward home, family, and self.

The cowl is fingering weight, gently shaped (so that it will stylishly drape just so, without any fussing), and it uses six 25g mini-skeins (or 600 yards of fingering weight yarn, ideally in 6 colors and ideally using leftovers).

With just an hour or two of knitting each evening, by the end of Twelfth Night, you’ll have a beautiful accessory for yourself and the deep satisfaction of knowing you slowed down and enjoyed the season.

If you’d like to knit Christmastide this season (or stash the pattern to knit in a future season), I am offering it for 25% off, or $3.75 rather than the usual $5, with the code SUBSCRIBER:

A well-wish

May this season of feelings, be they bitter or sweet or both, joy and grief, romance and heartbreak, be as soothing and easy as possible.

You are doing great.

In solidarity and with love,
Anne