by Kat | 3 days ago | General, In This Moment
It has certainly been A Week has it not? I am not a person who worries about things beyond my control… but 15 days into a New Year and I am worrying about all the things. People… so many people. Places… so many places. And things… as in what new things will pop up over night that will increase my worry level?!
So I am seeking escape… I know, I am well aware of the insane amount of undeserved privilege I have to do that… because all that worry… well, it does not change anything. (Nor apparently are any of the calls I am making to my elected representatives… that whole representative democracy thing? Yeah, it’s not working so well right now.) But I digress… back to The Privilege of Escape… I am doing that, full on.
“Trust remains the coin of the realm in politics. A President who is trusted, by the people, by the congress, by the press, by foreign countries, is a President who can get a lot of good things done.” — David Gergen, West Wing, Season 3, Episode 18
To aid me in my escape from reality, I have been watching The West Wing for the first time, yes you read that correctly…I never watched it originally. Steve says this was my Era of Not Knowing Anything… i.e. having 3 kids all very close in age meant that much of the world twirled by very oblivious me for a considerable period of time! Anyways, I am well into season 3 and episode 18 kind of stopped me in my tracks. (In fact, I immediately rewatched it!) It is a “reality infused” episode with a bunch of actual White House people (including President’s Carter and Ford) inserting some timely quips. I don’t know how timely they would have been when this episode first aired, but let me tell you… the quotes were timeless as their relevance today is shocking. (This quote particularly struck me as I realized that most all of my worries focused on the lack of trust in our current government that is being experienced by a lot of people all over the world!)
Anyways… I thought perhaps you also might not have watched West Wing. Perhaps you were in the same time warp I was in back when this was on television… or perhaps you did watch it then however maybe you need to rewatch it now!! And, as luck would have it, all seasons are available currently on Netflix. It is very good TV… the writing… the acting… it is just so good! (and it will give you something to do while you wait for the next episode of The Pitt! Ha!)
Be gentle with yourselves and spread some kindness as you go about your weekend…oh, and if you are queuing up The West Wing, let me know!
See you all back here next week!
Header Photo by Zulfugar Karimov
by Kat | 4 days ago | General, Poetry
Greetings friends and I am so happy it is the first Poetry Gathering of 2026!
(although, I am here to tell you that grief brain and aware of time brain are two very different brains…sigh)
So this morning as I scrambled to get my ducks in order and find a poem to share… an eerily fortunate tag drew my attention and upon flipping open to the tagged page… I found the absolutely perfect poem for today. (or at least it was for me… )
It is a poem by Charles Bukowski and is tucked away inside Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson’s first Poetry of Presence anthology.
a song with no end
by Charles Bukowski
when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric”
I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:
to be completely alive at every moment
in spite of the inevitable.
we can’t cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us
it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.
“a song with no end” from The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 2001
It seems fitting with how much Renée Good has been on my mind this week. I read in several places that she was a poet as well and thanks to Pádraig Ó Tuama, I have a poem of her’s to share with you all… I first read it on Sunday and have been contemplating it all week and have reread it multiple times since then… here it is for your consideration.
A huge thanks to Bonny for providing a place for us all to gather today.
by Kat | 5 days ago | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dear Unraveler’s! Another Wednesday has arrived… and so we gather to share our weekly updates!
I am going to begin with the questions many of you had last week about my newly finished Year of Stitching project.
It seems your inquiring minds all want to know the size of my stitching and I woefully neglected to tell you any of those details. Each month’s template is roughly 8″ x11″… and so the size is quite generous. Its dimensions are roughly 32″ x 33″ before finishing. I will be sewing a backing fabric on it to help protect all the couched ends, which I simply knotted on the backside, as you can see below. I am going to simply back it with a bit of old cotton sheeting, which I think will work nicely to preserve the integrity of the stitches.
This sea of knots is soon to be tucked safely away.
No one asked, but I stitched last year on my last piece of Joann’s Linen from my stash. I tried to get more before Joann’s closed but was not successful. I like stitching on linen as it holds the stitches well. Most days I stitch with Perle cotton (size 8 or 12) and occasionally I will stitch with 2 or 3 strands of embroidery floss but Perle cotton is my favorite. Last year I used some linen to couch around each day’s square… it is linen that is for weaving, but it worked really well.
Perfectly imperfect… and exactly what my new stitch project needed!
One of you asked if I actually stitch every day… and the answer is yes, most days. The perfect day for me begins with a cup of coffee and my “tin” of threads. A bit of meditative stitching to start my day is absolutely the best thing ever. Now, does that happen every day? No, it does not… but if I look back at the year of stitching I can say that most days did. I don’t like “catching up” stitching days… For me doing that looses some of what daily stitching is supposed to be, at least for me, a brief moment to dip into my own creativity and stitch for a few minutes with no pattern just an empty “square” waiting for some stitches. I have been doing this now for a number of years and it is my favorite thing I do.
Now, all that being said, here we are on January 14th and as you can see above there are not 14 days stitched but I am close to catching up. I was not feeling at all excited about this years stitching but then I found a skein of very early handspun yarn I had made… yarn that though the colors are insanely perfect, the spinning was not so much that at all. It has bits that are very overspun and bits that are very underspun and then there is the uneven plying (apparently, I did not utilize the counting trick… at all, lol.) However, today I am praising my former self for this perfectly imperfect yarn! As I began stitching it down my love for this very different canvas began to grow! I am all kinds of excited about this project suddenly and I will continue each day to “stitch down” remaining lines… but January is all ready for me! (As are February, March and April!)
That “couching interlude” put my sock on pause and because couching is such a meditative thing to do, it allowed my mind to think on that sock yarn + the pattern I had begun… and yep, if you guessed that those two things were not harmonious, you’d be right. Sigh. So I have frogged that beginning and have cast on again… this time with just my good old standby “plain sock” recipe. This harmony is making me much happier.
Squiggly yarn being slowly consumed… stitch by stitch.
Reading did not fare as well this week as I had no finishes because that means I actually got some sleep this week! Whew! (and there has not been much “daytime listening” because Steve was home all last week and this week sick. Sigh. I am happy to report that my RSV vaccine is working perfectly though…)
What about you all? What is on your needles this week? And are you reading anything good?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Jan 7, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings Gentle Unraveler’s and Happy New Year to all of you! Welcome to the first Wednesday of the New Year… let’s begin as we mean to go on, shall we?
I can’t believe that I have a pair of socks completed, but you can see the proof above! This pair, in Hermoine’s Everyday Sock pattern, is by far my favorite to knit. There are purl bumps for knitting interest, it fits well, and those purl bumps… well they also make it very simple to knit the second sock the same as the first (For the inquiring mind: 15 rows of ribbing, 17 pattern repeats, heel flap, 15 pattern repeats, toe…is the “recipe” for this pair.) The yarn is the October color from Six and Seven Fiber… it is their “Clover” sock yarn which is really lovely. It is a bit thicker and toothier yarn. I knit it on US 1.5 needles and it is a lovely, cushy fabric that I hope wears very well!
Soon to be another pair of socks!
I will be casting on another pair of socks pronto… I just have to wind the yarn. I have picked this pattern, which seems so appropriate as Joji will be the Snippets guest later this month. The yarn is from The Farmers Daughter Fibers in the January color, Deep Winter.
366 days of stitching!
I wanted to share the freshly washed and pressed 2025 stitching… I still have a bit of finish work to do, I am adding a fabric backing and will be making something for it to “live in” once it is all done. Originally, I thought this would make a delightful Happy Hour addition, but I don’t think I could bear it if anything spilled on it. And so, it will be tucked away safely.
December, up close!
The reading this week has me tucked away inside Katherine May’s Wintering. I am savoring this book and reading a bit every morning with my coffee. It is the perfect book for where I am right now. I am in no rush to finish it, and that is very okay too.
However, for those times when I can’t just sit and read, I finished listening to another in the Chief Bruno series, A Château Under Siege, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
At night, despite my horrendous insomnia, I am trying not to read after “lights out” but have been making my way through George Saunders new book to be published later this month, Vigil. It is brilliant and I am almost done. If you loved Lincoln on the Bardo or A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, I think you will really enjoy Vigil. It has a cast of characters that only Saunders can dream up!
And there you have it from me this week! What about you? What is tickling your fancy in this first week of the New Year?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Jan 5, 2026 | General, Welcome
And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been. — Rainer Maria Rilke
I really am feeling like I need to set a few intentions for this month and year because I fear if I don’t the Great Wallowing in Aimless Days will consume me. I am really struggling to find a focus each day, I am not sleeping well… which might be contributing. But neither waking hours nor sleep seem to be good companions of late… so what’s a person to do in all this but to set some intentions with the hopes of redirecting myself a bit.
In 2025 I did not spend any time at all spinning and as I began to review the year in the last weeks of December, I thought about “what was missing” in my 2025 days… and spinning jumped right out at me. I have been thinking about spinning quite a bit since Full On Sweater Weather arrived… I have had a “sweater spin” that has been knocking about in my head, and it became a bit louder since I have been wearing this sweater. The spinning of the yarn for that sweater did not happen overnight and it certainly won’t happen at all for a new sweater if I don’t make a plan to do some spinning. So yes, spinning will be A Thing in 2026. I think the added bonus will be the very meditative quality that spinning provides will be a boon to my mental health.
I finished my 2025 Year of Stitching on NYE, but I have yet to sit down and begin my 2026 stitching project. I had intentions of getting it all prepped in December but that did not happen. I have added it to my list this week… perhaps the thrill of “checking it off” will be just the inspiration I need. As for last year’s stitching… it needs a bit of a wash and some gentle pressing before I can completely finish it. But I am excited to get it finished although my idea for how to use it has changed dramatically, I want to get it finished and tucked safely away.
Over the course of December roughly a half a dozen pairs of socks sprung holes with several more wearing very thin… so I am declaring 2026 Operation Sock Drawer Replenishment. I began a pair in late December and am moving down the leg of sock two. My plan for the year is to just keep going on socks… at least until the Sock Drawer reaches the correct volume of socks.
I had spent a good bit of last year thinking that 2026 would be the last year I focus on a “Word of the Year” and I thought it would be a good finish to circle back to the word I began this journey with – joy. I really did not understand or know what spending a year contemplating a word could mean and, as the year began and unfolded, I felt like joy and I could spend a good bit of time together… but then in August a new Emergence volume appeared and, while I ordered the new volume and companion book, I did not veer from my plans for A Year of Joy. But then as November brought life to a crashing halt… I realized that I could not stomach spending a year finding joy at all. So this year, it feels exactly right to contemplate Seasons as my word. I feel like this will be the exact journey I need to begin in this moment.
Finally, this whole blogging thing has really been a struggle for me recently because most days I do not feel very cheerful or upbeat right now. I have started a few blog posts that never went beyond the starting points. Forced cheerfulness is not an easy place to write from. The only posts I feel up to writing currently are the Unraveled Wednesday posts. Those will continue in the exact format they are currently… there will be a post every Wednesday with a link up for all those who want to participate. The community of making and reading bloggers is one I am so grateful for… I cannot promise that every Wednesday I will be cheerful and upbeat… but there will be socks, and stitching, and some spinning, and of course… reading. That being said, I don’t know if I will be posting anything at all beyond the Wednesday posts, although my thoughts are that I will share an update of how Seasons and I are getting along sometime near the end of January.
Whew, for not thinking I had anything to say… this sure got wordy and fast! If you are still here… thank you. I wish you all the Happiest of New Year’s and a healthy January.
I will see you all back here on Wednesday!
Header photo by Pixabay
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