knitting.

I like knitting, you like knitting, the world likes knitting.

knitting for good!

| Betsy

So, yes, I wrote a book that will be out in a mere 5 days! And yes, this book is called Knitting for Good!

But this is not the time to talk about what I’ve done, it’s the time to talk about just a few of the many knitters who inspire me each and every day.

Last week, the Saddleworth Salvation Army Thrift Shop in South Australia celebrated the collection of over 10,000 knitted items during the past 18 months. The photo above shows some of the knitters wearing some of the donations. The quote below was taken directly from the article which pretty much encompasses why I believe that knitting can (and should) be used for the greater good.

“At Bramwell House (supported accommodation for women) a woman and her four children who had left everything they owned behind, they received a very large knitted blanket among the goods they were given. It was made in lots of different colours a

Just a few of the other knitters recently in the news for their knitting and their giving:
*The CareWear project in New Castle County, Delaware
*A lovely group of knitters in New Bedford, Massachusetts
*Knitters in Truro who aim to cover Afghanistan like a blanket
*The Knit Wits of St. Edward’s Episcopal Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
*The Baby Blankies Makers of the Seabrook active-adult community in New Jersey

What are you doing with your two hands at this moment? (When you’re not online, that is.) Do you have any idle time? Could you be using that time to make someone’s day better? This someone doesn’t have to be a stranger, even. This someone just needs to be a someone who may just need a little extra love, attention, care, pat on the back or hug. This someone needs to be a someone who could use a little hope or joy or comfort.

If you know someone who fits the bill and have some idle time on your hands, you could be helping them the next time you’re waiting for an appointment, watching television, riding public transportation, or in line at the bank. We all think we have no idle time, but if we really look, it’s always there. Waiting to be filled by kindness. I’m not suggesting that you need to be spending all of your spare seconds altruistically, I’m just suggesting that maybe some of them could be more wisely spent.

Knitting for good (the construct) not necessarily the book, is about looking beyond ourselves and the little bubbles we’ve created with our lives. The knitters noted above are examples of that quiet kindness that always exists in us always. Quiet kindness is in the tiny actions like a smile to a stranger, letting cars in front of you in traffic, telling someone they have toilet paper on their shoe. Teeny tiny actions that are rooted in infinite kindness. It’s there, I promise, all you have to do is look.

rebel, rebel in the rain.

| Betsy


It’s raining and I’m sleepy and trying to enjoy the last few minutes of my Sunday night. I’m lucky enough to have a wide view from my room of the lightning show above me, and I’m thinking it’s the perfect way to end the day. Although I know that if we had thunderstorms every night, I would soon take them for granted and resent them, cursing the sound of the rain instead of allowing it to lull me to sleep.

I’m wearing paint-stained jeans, my grandfather’s belt, a thrifted Kern River t-shirt from 1986 and a shrug to keep the chill off which seems damn near inexplicable in North Carolina in late July. I know that changing into my pajamas signals the official end of the weekend, so I’m protesting.

It’s been one of those hot, sticky, summer weekends perfect in its simplicity and sweetness, with lovely late nights, good friends, homegrown tomatoes, getting lost in tiny towns, lengthy shavasanas, strong cups of coffee and long talks with the cicadas battling to drown out our voices.

Also this weekend, The Guardian had a knitting supplement today! I was happy to be one of the 13 knitters chosen to knit a pattern created by Mazz (Marisa Turmaine) who was profiled. Mazz made the news a few months ago after the BBC told her she couldn’t offer her knitted Dr. Who patterns on her website thus making the theme for the supplement “rebel knitting.” The photographs and blurbs of those of us asked to knit one of Mazz’s patterns for the supplement, are here.

Lately:
*Making sheets into skirts
*Dreaming of abstract knitting
*Happy to see people I know learn new things
*Listening to Lykke Li and The Gossip entirely too loud
*For the Love of Light: A Tribute to the Art of the Polaroid
*Finding time to watch Randy Pausch’s last lecture. (Thanks for the reminder, Garth!)
*Getting ready to cheer on the Olympics in just a few short weeks! Yay! (Especially excited to root for a good friend’s little sis, Margaret Hoelzer!)
*Fabric of Resistance, an amazing herstory project by the people who brought you Radicalcrossstitch.com! Awesome!

And now, to fall asleep to the sound of rain.

a book is a book is a book. or is it?

| Betsy



Ever since I can remember, books have always been my frequent companions. As a kid, books would tuck me in bed late at night and I would devour their pages until I couldn’t hold my eyes open…many times I would wake up in the middle of the night with a book on my chest having fallen asleep while trying to finish a chapter. As a matter of fact, this is one ritual I’ve never ceased, even when camping and I have to share the light with any and every moth in a three-mile radius.

Even now, I always have a book on hand in case I have a few spare minutes and my hands are tired from needlework. Some people escape in books and forget about the rest of the beat of the world, but I always have seen books as a way to obtain closer intimacy with others. By understanding the words of someone else you’re subtly asked to think as someone else, and it forever allows for new points of understanding and questioning and deepens our compassion for when we close the book and come back to the so-called “real world.”

When I was little I figured I would either work with animals or write, falling in love early with the life of James Herriot. As I got older and the sciences turned out to be my academic nemesis, I wondered what I was to do.

Decades later, I’m still not entirely sure…having at one time or another called myself a sign painter, barista, consultant, secretary, knitter for hire, feeder of sheep, housesitter, bookseller, cake deliverer….and that’s just the highly abridged list. I guess I never really stopped asking questions once I picked my nose out of a book after all.

As I look at turning 33 in two months, I wonder what’s to become of us seekers and searchers and travelers in this world of taxes and health insurance and mortgages. Maybe we’re a dying breed, maybe we just need to unionize, maybe we’re meant to ask and seek and create each day anew looking for others who see the world the same. I’m sure you know the type, or maybe you even are the type….if you are, do
let me know what you think the best course of action for us searchers is…

Above is the cover of my first book, Knitting for Good!, to be out later on this year. Many thanks to the good people at Shambhala, who helped edit and tease out the words when I was too close to them. Using knitting as both an example and as a metaphor, the book was written to help people engage with their creativity in different and new ways by using their creative interests to better themselves, their community and this world.

It is my greatest hope that some night, maybe some night soon, someone reads my own words and uses them to help better figure out how to navigate their days or rethink their own sense of compassion or just read them and understand. Whether at bedtime, or by flashlight in the wilderness, or for a few minutes on the bus, or sitting with a cup of tea, it is my greatest hope that you, too, will find wisdom in books… and then use them as a guide instead of escape.


Currently on my bedside table (there is always a massive stack which I pull from depending…):

Kiss and Tell
Creating a Life Worth Living
Regarding the Pain of Others
Mindfulness in Plain English
The Corporate Rebel’s Productivity Guide
Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper- Case Closed

Here’s to happy reading, and hoping my cat doesn’t decide to knock my tower of books over on me as I sleep.

connecting you, yarn and the urban.

| Betsy

Thanks to my new friends over at Massive Knit, I was recently informed of an upcoming event in NYC, as well as a new blog dedicated to the memory of the inspiring Jane Jacobs. Not only will this event help connect individuals, but it will also unite people with the park and their urban spaces.


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This is a brilliant idea, as it works with knitting at different levels- because more than just a method of creating, knitting (and crafting) is a way of connecting more than yarn, it grounds us to a moment, to others, to places. And I realize that I could be saying the same things about quilting, embroidery, needlepoint, crochet, or any of the other myriad crafts that allow the process to be as satisfying as the product.

It is this dual joy that allows the handmade to not only thrive, but to nourish as well.

In case you’re wondering what happened to the comments, evil spambots were having their evil ways and screwing things up, so they are currently disabled. If you have any comments or anything else to say, you can find my contact information here.

here comes the rain again.

| Betsy

This summer marks the 14 year anniversary of my first independent music purchase, Yoyo Recordings comp, Throw:

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The fact that I am actually reminiscing about the passage of time makes me break out into a cold sweat. Suddenly, my mind conjures images of my dad’s friends cornering me during holiday parties telling me about how they weren’t quite sure how they ended up an accountant or stockbroker instead of a ship captain or national Scrabble champion.

Then I turn on the television and am bombarded with diet ads and Bob Greene telling me it’s “never too late!” What if you wanted to circumvent the party from the beginning? Not because you wanted to be unruly or angsty, but because you had a better party to attend? Everytime I hear that it is “never too late,” my brain reassembles it to scream, “why did you give up in the first place?”

I feel like we have come full-circle from 15 years ago when I was loving my green Chuck Taylors and swathed in flannel and rabbiting on about new releases on this great new label called Kill Rock Stars. I hadn’t start to care about politics yet (outside of every 7th graders devotion to Greenpeace), but was loving the repercussions of a Republican-era, the rebellion of art and music.

When Dubya was ‘elected’ in 2000, there was talk of taking solace in the fact that whenever our country is under a conservative regime, creativity flourishes. There were some spits and starts, but nothing really like what I saw taking place in the early 90s. In a fit of summertime remembrance and nostalgia brought on by boredom, I have pulled out my old Nirvana and Bikini Kill and Hole albums and have begun to remember that sense of hope that I had when I was 15.

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I have tacked old skate photos on my home office wall and shutout all the bad memories of jaded people wearing ill-suited clothes babbling about ill-suited careers. (The above photo of Sam Cunningham (who is still skating!) is from the August 1988 issue of Transworld. Even though I was horrible at skating myself, skating has never ceased to inspire me.) Because as I scream out lyrics from my teenage years in the solitude of my home, I’m not trying to relive high school. I’m trying to revive some semblance of faith that there is a creative bounty on the horizon.