Coming Clean
It's true that I don't put much of myself on this blog beyond the stuff on my needles. That's just a personal choice - my life is pretty boring, and I don't feel I could write about it in any way that would be as entertaining or amusing or compelling as what's out there already. But then, there's a lot to be said for the cameraderie of the knit blog universe, and I don't want to be That One Girl Who Never Shares But Only Listens And Smiles A Lot. So, here are the Cliff Notes:
- I moved out at sixteen. I was a model student, a dutiful daughter, a good kid, and then a switch flipped all of a sudden and I turned into hell on wheels. I was stuck in a super high-pressure IB school, and it suddenly became as confining as a coffin - no reason, just because. I took an extra English credit over the summer, took all my AP tests, and got my HS and IB diplomas in the mail that August. There was a lot of adolescent self-righteousness then, the typical You Don't Understand Me and I'm Suffocating Here and Your Values Are Not My Values, and my parents finally let me go with fear in their hearts and grave expressions on their faces. Our relationship improved immediately.
- I've worked in PR, in marketing, and as a technical writer since then. I've worked for tiny companies and contracted for huge ones, for startups and giant conglomerates. I lied about my age to get in the door for the first one, but it was never a problem after that.
- I've had five apartments in seven years, all in the same 3-block radius around Dupont Circle in DC (except currently). I miss living in the city, desperately sometimes.
- I've been freelancing for a couple years now. I wanted to write about food at first - the only thing I like more than knitting - but wasn't successful beyond a couple magazine pieces. It was the first real personal failure of my adult life, the first time I was told "No, that's not good enough", and hearing it over and over taught me more and was better for me than anything else that led up to it. Being broke was a new experience for me, too - not expecting a paycheck every week schooled me on a lot of things right quick.
- I've found a little more success in writing about knitting. I've got some cool, increasingly steady magazine work - you'll see what I'm talking about in the next few months - and I've got two book projects in the works.
There, I said it - it's about time, huh? The first is a stitch dictionary with some interesting twists, out next fall from Quirk, and the second is a book of patterns and technique coming out in fall '08 from Interweave. It won't fit into that niche of blog-to-book - rather, it's a broader book of really exciting patterns, front-loaded with all the technique and history I love researching and writing about, a book that just happens to be written by a blogger. I'm delighted, absolutely thrilled, to be in business with them - they love Good Knitting as much as I do, and they'll produce exactly the kind of book I love, the sort of big, glossy, beautifully-designed and content-packed book I'd buy myself.
Thank you for reading this little corner of the Interweb, for all the support and encouragement every day. I never thought I would end up writing about knitting - I started this last summer only because I was going crazy with idleness - but this blog has become something comfortable, crowded with the thoughts and suggestions of inspiring and exciting and like-minded people, and that's precisely what encouraged me to go out and see what's what, the thing that spurred all this. It's been, and continues to be, a stretching exercise, forcing me to think and write and teach and learn every day - I hope you guys are enjoying the ride as much as I am.
