We’ve been fundraising for the BeLoved Village since the Gnomes for Homes and Flying Pigs days back on Wall Street. At the holidays our customers have helped us raise tens of thousands of dollars for BeLoved over the years. Heck, we even named a Local Hero yarn for Amy Cantrell! So it was exciting to get invited to the ribbon cutting for the completed village.

Brass Your Heart was there, and we all sung along “We Got Them Houses, We Got Them Houses!” still running through my head the next day.

There was an indigenous blessing of all 12 homes. They are all for formerly unhoused folks.

This is not just creating new housing, it’s building a community who can support each other and thrive together.

These are beautiful furnished homes, “tiny” by American standards, but full one and two bedroom houses, with a washer and dryer in each and all the amenities.

It’s amazing to see a dream come true after so.much hard work, and they aren’t stopping! They’ve already started a second village in Swannanoa.

Not to mention getting 165 families back in their homes by making repairs after Helene. It’s really inspiring to see what community can build.

Our Purl’s family is proud to be associated with BeLoved even in a small way. The community we are working to build is going to do great things, too. Not the same things. But we can look to our siblings and see how much is possible when we dream big!

Sorry, y’all, we got pulled out to another event tonight. Soon, we’ll never have this problem. Once the Craft Underground opens, the community can take on responsibility for opening and monitoring the new space without us! Plans are in the works, both physical-space-wise (electricians, HVAC, carpenter to build the stairs, etc.) and community-organizing-wise. As we get further along, we’ll reveal more here, but if you want to be involved, show up at one of our stitch groups, or shoot us an email at [email protected]

I drew a logo!

This is a fun website, lots of inspiring material. I like art that is fun!

Look, I know bullshit. As a white man in our society, and as an English major in college, I have a TON of training on how to create truth-shaped objects regardless of factual content. I have had to work hard to train myself not to reflexively answer questions and admit, “I don’t know.”

And now we have mechanized the process. Elizabeth already posted about Kate Davies’s great article in our business. (I have to admit I find even human generated knitting podcasts dull, I can’t imagine how bad the slop must be.)

But of course the biggest bullshit generator is in the White House. We have war and runaway inflation because of his bullshit. We are losing our civil rights in its service. And the people who should be pushing back against that bullshit on the local level, our elected city council (all nominally Democrats), struck a huge blow in favor of bullshit last night.

Local hero Kim Roney (vote for her for mayor come fall) was the only holdout against an insane no-contract police surveillance system with “guardrails” that on closer inspection are made of bullshit. The community came armed with facts, details, legal expertise. Patrick Conant (another local hero whose superpower is data visualization) and Sunshine Labs spearheaded the effort, but a broad swath of the community stepped up to say no. And Esther Manheimer (who delayed and dithered so long trying to get people to tire and leave that public comment didn’t begin for SIX HOURS) cut off comments by the public after an hour, even though she let the police spew propaganda for almost that long for one speaker.

You have to understand that our city government only cares about money. They have no core beliefs, no will to do what’s best for our community. They spew slop about affordable housing and public engagement, but they take their marching orders from CIBO and the developers. And now Chuck Edwards. Every single one of our council members EXCEPT Kim Roney voted to shut down debate, to stifle factual information, to kill the democratic process, to trample Constitutional rights. Why? It’s unclear. To appear “tough on crime”? To give the cops the new toys they demand? To flex their power? Because they’re getting secret kickbacks? We may never know, but we do know they don’t respect us. Their only constituents are the hotel industry, we just live here.

We’ve been so busy with Yarn Crawl that we missed the big scandal with Stephen West going on the Blocked channel (a magazine/YouTube/Podcast hosted by a guy who calls himself “Knitler” and bullies queer, BIPOC, and fat folx). And I don’t buy that he just “didn’t do his homework.”

I like some of West’s designs, but I have never understood the cult following. It seems like it’s so much easier for cis white men to become knitting celebrities than anyone else, and that really sucks. Fame seems like a very toxic bargain and I am always happy to never be TOO popular.

Let’s all just ignore Stephen for a while. Discover some new designers, and maybe not just the ones who are pushing on social media. Ravelry makes it easy to find designs that are interesting and unique, whether they have hype or not. Maybe I’ll use this space for a while to highlight some designers I like who are not hollow rich jerks.

Well, the cape is finally complete! I finished the last step, which was embroidering the constellation lines with shiny silver thread. I have to do some revisions and cleaning up of the charts (and create charts for the embroidery), but I will have patterns and kits available soon! The kits will include everything except the needles, and will be $350. The pattern will be exclusive to my ebook, but if you have already bought it, you’ll get the update for free.

It’s been quite a journey since I started creating the first charts and swatches last summer, and it’s a project I’ve had on my mind for more than ten years. It really is incredible how many stars there are in the sky, even if you only count the brightest ones.

I know at least a few of you are crazy enough to follow me down this rabbit hole, and I expect it will keep you plenty busy for at least six months, even if you have a lot of free time.

Hey fiber community!As we are traveling about enjoying the WNC Yarn Crawl, I want to encourage folks to find some space and time to talk about the impact of AI on our crafting community. Knitwear designer and fiber business owner Kate Davies just wrote a strong piece on this issue.

Kay Gardiner of Modern Daily Knitting came out with a thoughtful response.

What do you think? Personally I think we all need to get more proactive about what we consume and support with our money, our time, our eyeballs. As a creative community, we should not pretend AI involvement is inevitable or welcome. Though we all use all kinds of different tools and fibers to make things, we do it with our hands; ours is an inevitably slow, tactile, intimate, and community-centered human craft. Can we keep it that way? Image of some emotional support chickens from the store to give you some comfort as you consider this topic.

Most of our yarn bowls are fun and snarky, but for Yarn Crawl, we wanted to get some pretty Spring Fling designs. Come see us this week for all kinds of special things in store.

Every year we create a limited run of mini-skein kits as a special holiday treat. We deliver them before the end of November, and you can open the 24 little packets individually, day by day (or all at once, you do you!).

This year’s box includes daily clues to solve the murder, themed project bag and stitch markers, magnifying glass, and more! We just opened orders today and seven of the 24 boxes are already spoken for. We’d make more, but there’s a massive amount of labor involved in the planning, dyeing, and especially packing. So it’s a bit of an exclusive club (but we try not to make it too expensive to join). The price goes up in June, so don’t wait.

Oh, just one more thing–this year’s box comes with a pattern to knit or crochet your own Murder Board scarf, wrap, or throw. Inspired by the classic detective bulletin board covered with clues connected by red yarn, this project might be the key that helps you unlock the solution to the mystery! Suggestions for other mini-skein projects will be included if that’s not your cup of poisoned tea.

We have prizes! We have goodies! We have products you will love! We can’t wait to see you, starting tomorrow and running to Sunday. Whether you visit one shop or all thirteen, you are sure to have a good time. Spring Fling is almost here!