I am so excited! My latest labor of love is headed your way and I can’t be more proud of our little bundle of joy! What (else) Would Madame Defarge Knit?—the second book in the WWMDfK? series—will be coming out Today, Friday, 3pm EDT in digital format (print version to follow). In the book you will find 28 patterns written by designers you may be familiar with (some returning from the first Defarge book) and new designers I’m...

The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs: Techniques for Creating 80 Yarns  is the book I wish I’d had when I started spinning. Let me say right up front it’s not specifically a beginners book, per se, but it IS inspirational—and I think that’s awfully important when you first start out. If you paired this with a true “how to” book I think any new spinner would have plenty to work with. Sarah Anderson did an...

Cooperative Press (the home of my Defargy Books) has released the latest Knit Edge magazine, curated by Shannon Okey and compiled and edited by the incomparable Elizabeth Green Musselman. I’ll be chatting this up more on the next CraftLit, but OH MY GOODNESS is there a lot of really nifty niftiness in this next issue! Allow me to preempt a bit: Guernsey mitts boys podcasts socks and more More MORE! If you haven’t taken a gander,...

My younger son has found himself enamored of Shakespeare (Midsummer is a fave, followed closely by Branaugh’s Henry V). A high point of his ninth birthday was meeting Ehren Ziegler of ChopBard podcast during the Birthday Weekend Trip To NYC Blowout. But last week he woke up, looked out the window at the fresh (surprise!) snow and said, “It makes me feel all Shakespeare-y.” Well what else is a former English teacher to do? I...

Disclaimers first: I loved Les Mis when I saw it in London in 1987. I have owned the soundtrack since then. Yes, I do think Colm Wilkinson is the yardstick by which every Jean Valjean should be measured. I’ve only just started reading the book (I’m up to where Valjean is running to get young Cosette–that would be about 70,000 pages in). I majored in theatre. I love theatre. I love theatre tricks. I love theatricality. I even...

Well, we’ve turned the corner on the decade marking September 11, 2001. Eleven years out, now, but who’s counting? Over the years I’ve written many different 9/11 posts starting with our experience long before there were blogs. I also wrote about it irregularly here, on or around 9/11 anniversaries. on the ten year anniversary on the nine year anniversary on the six year anniversary and last year, after being interviewed by...