That is, until Wednesday, when Greg told me I need to take today off. “But Friday is a babysitter day! We pay her so we can work. It’s burning money to pay her when I don’t work!”

That Greg, though. He’s wise. “You’re not getting any work done anyway. Duh. You need a break. Take it. You deserve it.”

So today my feet are warm and dry because I finally bought myself winter boots that fit. I had time to try on every boot in the store, and it was relaxing and I felt good.

I had my eyebrows threaded, because primping feels good.

I spent well over an hour in my favourite store, and I left with four items I absolutely love (even though I didn’t actually want to spend lots of money, but I love them enough I know it’s worth it). And one of those items is skinny jeans that don’t make my ass look bigger than it actually is (which is big), and so I’m downright excited.

I walked the dog.

I’m drinking tea.

And I feel good. I feel clear-headed. I feel indulged and energetic.

I needed this.

And I bet you need this too. So I’ll play the role of Greg now, and give you permission to take a day off. Even if it costs you money. Because you’re no good to yourself or to your business if you’re rundown and sluggish.

So tell me, what are you going to do with your day?

Being Nudged to Practice What I Preach is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

She recently spoke at TEDxVictoria about why calling our offline life “real life” diminishes the legitimacy of our online experiences, contributions and relationships. I wish I’d been there to hear her speak, but the beauty of TED and YouTube is that we can all see her talk right here:

I used to apologize for my online life, much in the same way I’d shrug my shoulders and look away while I mumbled that for work I ran a crochet website. I stopped doing that a long time ago, and here’s why:

Through my online life – the relationships I’ve formed, the writing I’ve done, the ideas I’ve fleshed out, the things I’ve learned, the inspiration I’ve found – I developed my creative identity.

That’s no small feat, people. Before I got in touch with my creative side, I was a wreck. I was confused, depressed, directionless, self-conscious and generally lost. Not until I felt comfortable sharing my ideas in public, not until I met other people who felt (or had at some time felt) as confused as I did, not until I knew I had the freedom to try and fail and try and fail again, was I able to get in touch with what I need and want.

I found my people online, and that enabled me to find my people offline.

My whole life improved because of this. My offline relationships changed as I gained comfort and confidence. My ability to speak about my ideas in person benefited from my having fleshed those ideas out online. Running an online business informed my approach to doing business offline.

It’s all the same.

And as Alexandra says so well in her talk, not only does it undermine our personal experience to apologize for our online lives, it undermines the collective good that can can come from embracing online life as real life.

(My favourite of her ten points is #5. Which is yours?)

Offline Life + Online Life = Life is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Watching this is worth more than eight minutes of your time.

[via @jianghomeshi]

Will piracy ever die? is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Love love love.

(And look for some Hoopla action. It’s a fabulous embroidery book.)

The Joy of Books is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

From the looks of this list you might think my crafting world revolves around babies now, but do not be deceived! Unrepresented here are the projects I have not yet finished. Like the Rock Island shawl with lace on both sides that I was nuts enough to start before Owen started sleeping through the night. I’ll pick that one back up in 2012, for sure. And the February Lady Sweater I’ve had on the go for a year and a half – I’ve been making some slow progress on the first sleeve! I will OWN that sweater!

I’ve also been working on my Citron shawl, though as you might imagine I get a little bored with it during the seven rows of doubled stitch count. Four hundred stitches in stockinette = long stretches between knitting bouts.

Here’s what I finished in 2011 (even if I started it in 2010):

• I only knitted the last 20 rows of this baby blanket in 2011, but I’m calling it my first finished project of the year.
  
• Owen needed booties for the party we had to welcome him to the family after the 30-day revocation period passed. So I made him some out of scraps, mostly while he slept on my lap.
  
• Finally made the kid some clothing in March. It’s the Hank Vest from Robyn Chachula‘s book Baby Blueprint Crochet, in Spud & Chloe Sweater (a stupendous yarn for crochet).
  
• One old t-shirt + one tutorial found on Pinterest = a quick crafty project
  
• My new go-to party contribution, clever idea stolen from a friend: Candy skewers
• 
• There was the quick ugly creature I made for CRAFT. That was big fun.
  
• Another sweater for Owen: A no-intarsia Willie Sweater he’s been wearing all season. Made in RYC Cashsoft Aran and some leftover Sirdar Denim.
  
• A newborn-size Hunter hat for our nephew-soon-to-be, in Louisa Harding Kashmir DK. There will be more of these hats in the future, for sure.
  
• Owen’s dinosaur Halloween costume!
  
• The Virtual Planetoid hat.
  
• A mildly slouchy hat for our beloved babysitter, Emily. It’s the Jane hat, by Jane Richmond, in Malabrigo Worsted. They’re faux cables, people. Fastest hat EVER.
  
• For kicks, I’m including the first cake I’ve ever made (I don’t like cake, so I’ve never felt compelled to make any). It was, naturally, for Owen’s first birthday. I ate some, and I didn’t like it. But I’m feeling downright determined to learn to make an amazing cake. I see a lot of baking coming in 2010.
  
• The Celia Circle Scarf
  
• A Puerperium cardigan for Nephew.
  
• And finally, a year and a half after I started it, I finished a mistake-rib scarf for my friend Scott the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. Phew!
  

My 2011, in Crafts is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

But I did have 400 yards of a delicious alpaca/wool yarn I bought in Colorado a few years ago when I did a book-tour stop at Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins in Boulder (that was the night I met Jill Wright and Marly Bird, which was a blast). With a 6mm hook, it was immediately apparent this scarf was meant to be. I’ve worn it pretty much every day since it dried after blocking, and I’m considering making another in some heavier yarn, too.

I named the scarf Celia because I was reading The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, the week I designed it. Celia is the protagonist of the book; she manages to grow into a confident, witty, passionate woman despite a harsh childhood. And she’s a magician. The kind with real magic. I feel like this scarf is magical – it transcends the simplest of stitches to be both casual and stylish, and damn practical.

The main stitch pattern is crumpled griddle stitch (hat tip to Jill for pointing me to the name) – alternating single crochets and double crochets to result in a texture a bit similar to knitted seed stitch. (But faster to make. Oh, so much faster.) There’s an off-centre panel of V-stitches to add both visual and crochet interest. And that’s it. The only for-whatever-reason-not-considered-basic technique I used is foundation double crochet for the first round, and I explain how to do that in the pattern.

It’s been very dark here since I finished the scarf, so I’ve had a tough time taking good photos of it (the yarn I used is actually grey!). But I couldn’t wait to release the pattern, for I love it very much. So my impatience is a bonus to you, because I’m compensating for inadequate photography by offering the pattern at half-price until I can take better photos. Tell your friends.

If you make one of these, let me know! I’m dying to see it in other colours.

Introducing the Celia Circle Scarf is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Updating...

You were born a year ago today. Your father and I didn’t know about you then. We were celebrating the holidays in Whistler, vaguely wondering what the new year would bring.

You were born at St. Paul’s hospital, where you lived for the first week of your life. The nurses adored you. Your birth mother wanted some wonderful things for you. She wanted you to join a family that would accept you any way you are. She wanted you to participate in social traditions and be close to your extended family.

Now we’re up at Whistler again, with Gramma Janet and Grandpa Ken. We took you out in your new sleigh in the snow yesterday morning, so bundled up you could barely move your arms.

You’re one of the happiest, most social babies I’ve ever known. Your smile lights up your face and the room you’re in, and you’ve used it to charm even the most hesitant of people. Happiest when you have an audience fawning over you, you manage not to be too demanding of constant attention.

My favourite thing in the world is when you take a break from playing to come and put your head on my shoulder or flop down into my lap for a couple minutes.

You started walking when you were just 10.5 months old. You were always precocious in your physical development. When you were still learning to be steady on your feet, you always preferred to hold just one hand, not both.

You understand so much, now. You know the names of your toys, and you duck down behind the arm of the sofa to hide, and then you pop up with a big grin.

You got the music in you. When a good tune comes on or especially when Daddy sings or beat-boxes to you, you dance. You wiggle left and right and shake your head and wave your arm and it’s utterly delightful. And pretty hilarious.

You vocalize all the time, which sometimes involves letting out a blood-curdling shriek. But you’ve never much made consonant sounds and we’ve recently discovered you’re quite literally tongue-tied. Next week you’ll undergo a procedure to remedy that, and whether it helps you make some new sounds or not, it’s possible you’ll need some speech therapy.

In your first year you’ve had some favourite toys, but none you’ve gotten particularly attached to. Your purple dinosaur, your gorilla, various balls and blocks. But by far your favourite things are books. We can recite The Gruffalo to you from memory now, and you cycle through preferences every few weeks. It takes a couple weeks for you to love a book after we first introduce you to it. Bookstores and libraries make you squeal in delight.

And lights! How you love lights. When you enter a room you point up at them. I’ve been telling you all the Christmas lights around town are for your birthday. Last week we went on the Stanley Park Bright Nights Christmas train, and the next day we went to the Van Dusen Gardens Festival of Lights. You were wide-eyed at each, reaching out for all the lights.

Daddy and I are celebrating Hanukkah for the first time in many years, and you love looking at the candle lights. We’re enjoying creating these family traditions, and we talk about what new kinds of traditions we’ll come up with over the next year, as you’re more and more able to understand and affect the world around you. At least one of them, for sure, will involve pancakes.

You were a purple dinosaur for Halloween.

You ended your first year with eight teeth, with a big old gap between the two top ones in front. Though you weren’t initially a fan of bananas or peas, we have yet to meet a food you don’t eventually devour with great enthusiasm. Despite your voracious appetite, you’re a relatively skinny little dude, hanging out at around the tenth percentile in weight for babies your age. On the other hand, you’re around the 90th percentile in height. And then there’s your tremendous head.

You’ve had two wonderful babysitters this year. Kaitlyn just had her baby, and I hope we find some time to meet him soon. And Emily. Oh, Emily. How you adore her. We all adore her. She takes you swimming every week, and on other grand adventures around town.

Your first year may end up being quite a momentous one in history, little man. There was the Arab Spring and the start of the Occupy movement. Major natural disasters that (hopefully) convinced more and more people that we’d better dig our heels in and do something to curb climate change. I spent many an hour reading about possible nuclear disaster in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami there, while you slept on my shoulder. Throughout all that turmoil, you did all the amazing things babies do. You rolled over, laughed, flirted, crawled, walked.

My little dude. I love you more than anyone, in ways that are different than I ever knew existed. Next week we’ll celebrate your coming to our family, and then we’ll properly look ahead to what we think the next year might hold. We know now not to take those musings too seriously, because who knows what unexpected magical things will happen. Best to go into it happy, with love, and with a keen eye for seizing the adventures that present themselves.

Happy birthday, Owen. May the next year bring you unexpected adventures of only the happy, wonderful, magical sort.

Love,
Mama

To Owen, on Your First Birthday is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Today I published my final blog post at CrochetMe.com, nearly eight years after I launched the site. I’m feeling awash in bittersweetness.

Farewell, Crochet Me is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Thankfully, we’re all sleeping these days and I’m back to my normal (not very fast) reading pace. Really, the thing that’s keeping my reading back is that I’ve been knitting and crocheting so much. Oh, the directions we’re pulled in.

Here’s what I read in 2011, with a bonus list of awesome kids’ books.

1. A Novel Bookstore, by Laurence Cossé. I asked for this last year, and began reading it as soon as the gift was given. It’s a lovely novel about passionate readers and the bookstore they open. If you love reading books your local indie bookseller recommends to you, read this book.
2. The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer, by Harvey Karp. The premise of this book is great. That it’s a book and not a pamphlet is a shocking waste of paper (or, in my case since I read the ebook, pixels). It’s cloyingly repetitive (even to my at-the-time fatigue-addled brain), and I hate the convention of having baby books filled with testimonials from parents. Oh god, I’m about to rant about baby books. Deep breath. This one doesn’t suck. If you have a newborn at home or expect to have one soon, this book gives great advice (over and over and over again). The gist: Some old wives’ tales are worth respecting – rock, shh, swing and swaddle your infant, and white noise is a godsend.
3. The Passage, by Justin Cronin. This book was all the rage in 2010, and for good reason. It’s a vampire book, like OMG. But a good one. And a very, very long one. Which means you’ll enjoy it for a good stretch. After I hated The Strain so much last year and put it down, I was wary to start The Passage. But my worries were unfounded. I’m eagerly awaiting the second book in the trilogy.
4. 13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson. Maybe you follow young-adult author Maureen Johnson on Twitter. She writes one of my favourite feeds. She’s hilarious and she’s passionate about a lot of things I, too, feel are very important. So I finally read one of her books, and it was lovely. It’s the tale of a timid teenager led by her quirky aunt on an adventure as dictated by thirteen notes in blue envelopes. I was a timid teenager, and I’d like to think that I, too, would have dived in like Ginny did.
5. Don’t Look Back, by Karin Fossum. After loving Smilla’s Sense of Snow last year, I had a conversation with my friend Elin who’d recommended it to me, and we thought it might be fun to go on a kick reading Scandinavian crime fiction. I’m not sure I can endure a proper kick, but I do think I’ll read more in the future (and you’ll see another title in this list).
6. Drums of Autumn, by Diana Gabaldon. The fourth in Gabaldon’s epic time-travel-Scottish-fantasy-romance series, I read this in part out of excitement that the books are now available as ebooks (sans piracy). Though I thoroughly enjoyed the first book, Outlander, I’m not a big fan of the series. Drums of Autumn was okay. Better than the third book by far, so maybe I’ll eventually read the fifth.
7. Embassytown, by China Miéville. June must be when I started functioning in society again, because this is the first more challenging book I read. It’s one of the most inventive, refreshingly original sci-fi books I’ve ever read. That the plot centres on a feature of alien linguistics made my reading that much more satisfying. The ending fell flat, but I’m eager to read more books by him.
8. Faceless Killers, by Henning Mankell. Mankell is lauded as the most popular crime-fiction writer in Sweden, and it took me a while to find the first in his very long series of Kurt Wallander novels. I’ll read more Mankell, for sure. I’m also curious to see the British television series, featuring Kenneth Branagh playing Wallander.
9. Jesus Land, by Julia Scheeres. I tweeted a lot as I read this memoir about a white teenager and her adopted black brother growing up in a brutally religious family in bigoted rural Indiana in the ’80s. It’s a heart-breaking, anger-inducing story. One that lead me to write to the author immediately after finishing it. I told her that as an adoptive parent, I smothered my child in kisses as I read her book, in which she describes her parents treating their adopted children differently than their biological ones. The story doesn’t focus on adoption, though. It focuses on the brutality people inflict upon one another, specifically in the name of God. It’s a must read.
10. The Baby’s Table, by Lauren Bramley. If you skip the prose section at the beginning (insert rant about baby books here), this book is an invaluable guide to feeding your kid once they start on pureed food, and well beyond their first birthday. My friend Krista gave us a copy at my baby shower, and at this point it’s dog-eared, stained and a little bloated from getting wet. Especially for someone like me who doesn’t really cook but insists on making my kid’s food, Bramley’s instructions for how to prepare the simplest of foods has been an education. Now that Owen’s eating more sophisticated foods, I feel like I can actually cook. And my kid eats like it’s his mission in life (which may or may not be related to the food being appropriate and good).
11. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. Hands down one of the best books I’ve read. Not Top 5, but possibly Top 10. In what seem to be six unrelated short stories, Mitchell tells a tale of religion, consumption, selfishness, generosity, humanity and society. It’s that big. And it’s enjoyable to read, even though I didn’t particularly like a couple of the short stories. Mitchell’s skill with language blew my mind. I usually don’t enjoy short stories, so if you, too, are not a fan, don’t let that keep you from this brilliant book.
12. World Made by Hand, by James Howard Kunstler. This is not a book about crafts. It’s a book about how people must live once runaway climate change and geopolitical disaster render people pretty much on their own, sans conveniences like electricity and gasoline and government. I’m passionate about staving off climate change and I love love love me a good apocalypse novel, but I hated this one. Kunstler writes with a hand so heavy it’s a wonder he was able to type. He’s preachy and annoying. Which is unfortunate, because his protagonist is interesting and there’s a lot he could have done with the unexpected bit of supernatural wahoo he tossed in at the end of the book. But he didn’t. Don’t waste your time with this one.
13. The Wise Man’s Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss. The much-anticipated second novel in the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy, this one was a delight to read. I loved The Name of the Wind, and bought The Wise Man’s Fear in hardcover – that’s how excited I was for it. I didn’t even buy the ebook, despite the challenge of reading a 900-page book in hardcover. Whether you’re a fan of fantasy novels or not (I’m not really), read this series. I have no idea when the conclusion is expected, but I’ll read it in hardcover, too, no doubt.
14. How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff. My mother-in-law and I have fairly incompatible taste in books, and we’ve learned not to recommend them to each other. But she gave me a copy of this one with great enthusiasm, and I read it in a couple of days. One of my favourite genres is young-adult dystopian fiction, and this is one of the best I’ve read. It’s about an American teenager with very real personal issues (though issues some might be inclined to label first world), who finds herself in rural war-torn England with cousins she’s only just met. In a surprisingly short novel, Rosoff paints a vivid picture of a teenager’s experience of a confusing, terrifying time. It’s a very moving story. If you enjoyed The Hunger Games or The Book Thief, I highly recommend How I Live Now.
15. How to Knit a Love Song, by Rachael Herron. I can’t remember what compelled me to read a knitting book, let alone a knitting romance novel. I’m not a big fan of either. Maybe it’s that I’ve read Rachael’s blog for eons. Regardless, I read it. And I loved it. It was a delightful escape. And, uh, hot.
16. How to Knit a Heart Back Home, by Rachael Herron. Uh, yeah. So I finished the first and immediately bought the second. Probably should have waited a week or two, on account of the romance-novel formula, but I enjoyed it. Now that a few weeks have passed, I’m ready for her third instalment. And how.
17. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. This is my current read, and I’m sure I’ll finish it in the next week or two. It’s about, you guessed it, a circus that only performs at night. But more than that, it’s about the people who created such a thing, and about the fantastical things that go into it. And it’s about a man and a woman raised from childhood to compete in magic in a game with few rules. I’m enjoying it immensely.

Look at that! Seventeen books. Goal = surpassed.

I also started and put down several books that just didn’t match my mood. None of them was terrible, so I anticipate finishing them eventually.

And now, baby books. A note to those inclined to give books as presents when a baby is born (I do this, too): Books with few words are useless to babies until they’re old enough to interact with them in a more linguistically advanced manner (i.e., when they’re learning to talk, or at least to understand lots of words). Books with a good story and lots of words are great for babies, because adults can actually read them aloud. We’ve been reading to Owen since he was a week old, and he’s delighted us by developing a great interest in books.

Here are some I think are great, that my kid also loves. (He loves lots of others I’m not going to list; these are the ones I think everyone should know about.) We’re limited to board books right now, so I’m leaving out the lovely paper ones we just can’t read until Owen can handle paper with care.

• The Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. We’ve been reading this to Owen since Day 1, and I can now recite it from memory. It’s delightful and clever.
• Indeed, anything by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. My other favourites are Room on the Broom and The Snail and the Whale, and The Smartest Giant in Town is also fabulous, and is Owen’s current favourite.
• Monkey and Me, by Emily Gravett. It’s a simple, beautifully illustrated book about a girl and her sock monkey and all the animals they went to see. You build up the suspense, then turn the page and it’s ELEPHANTS! they went to see. Owen giggles.
• The Odd Egg, also by Emily Gravett. “All the birds have laid an egg. All except for duck.” Duck finds an egg, and sits with it even as all the other birds’ eggs hatch. To tell you more would venture into spoilers.
• I Took the Moon for a Walk, by Carolyn Curtis and Allison Jay. The artwork in this book is absolutely beautiful, and the story is simple and sweet.
• The Paper Bag Princess, by Robert Munsch and Michael Marchenko. I loathe I’ll Love You Forever with the fire of a thousand suns, but Munsch is redeemed by this classic feminist tale of a prince and princess thwarted by a dragon.
• Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, by Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury. It’s diversity that’s not annoying, and Owen loves to look at all the babies.

The Books I Loved and Hated in 2011 is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

If you’re wholly unfamiliar with it, Evernote is a combination note-taker and filing system that syncs your saved notes across pretty much any platform. It’s the kind of app that’s so powerful in its simplicity that it can be very difficult to figure out what to do with it. It’s free to use, with paid upgrades. (I have not needed to pay for it yet. Though I’m inclined to, simply because I find it so darn useful.)

The foundational unit of Evernote is, as you might guess, the note. A note can be anything: text, an audio clip, a photograph, whatever. You can organize your notes into folders, and each note can be tagged for further organizational and retrieval purposes.

Perhaps examples of how I use it will be helpful in explaining how it works.

Evernote on my desktop, displaying a pattern I saved from Knitty (by the lovely and talented Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark).

As a crafter:

• First and foremost, Evernote has allowed me to stop printing simple patterns. (I still do print parts of more involved patterns, because I mark those up as I go.) When I find a pattern on someone’s blog, I use the very handy web clipper to save it in Evernote. When I buy a PDF pattern, I can drop the PDF into Evernote.
• This allows me to keep a library of patterns with me at all times, so I can easily remind myself what size needles or hook I need for a project, or how much yarn. And since Evernote syncs automatically, I don’t have to actually do anything to keep this information up to date, say, on my phone if I saved the pattern on my computer.
• When I start writing a pattern, I do it in Evernote so the draft is always with me. I rarely draft things using a word processor anymore. For simple text writing, Evernote is faster, cleaner and keeps all the relevant information I need available at a click, even if I switch the device I’m working on.
• Tutorials! When I started knitting my (still unfinished) February Lady Sweater, I saved a buttonhole tutorial into Evernote so I had it with me wherever I was, regardless of whether I had an internet connection. I do this with all sorts of helpful info.
• I also keep any published pattern errata in Evernote, so I have it at the start and don’t have to do a panicked search later.
• I have a note containing my measurements, and one for Greg’s and Owen’s, too.
• I’ve saved standard measurements, too.

Evernote on my iPhone, displaying the same pattern (zoomed in).

As a writer:

• When I write an article or guest post, I usually draft it in Evernote. This way I can work on it wherever I want, whether I’m working on my laptop or iPad, and sometimes in desperate moments on my iPhone.
• I capture ideas. Say I’m in line at the grocery store and an I think of something nifty. I jot it down in a new note and file it in my Ideas folder. Or I see something that sparks an idea: I’ll take a photo of it in Evernote.
• I organize research. Say I’m writing an article that requires the collection of background information. I’ll slurp relevant info into Evernote using the aforementioned web clipper. This is a bookmarklet you keep in the bookmark bar of your web browser. When you click the bookmarklet, you can then save all or some of a web page into Evernote, and Evernote automatically records the URL. You can file it into a folder and tag it, too. By the time I’m ready to write, I have all the background info in one place, complete with citation information.

How I Use Evernote as a Writer and Crafter is a post from Kim Werker's blog.