Hello! It’s me. It’s been a loooonnnnng, looooooooooooooong time, huh? 🙂

Due to some truly garbage malware – and I’ve got some WORDS for that entire industry, let me tell you – everything I’d ever written in this space (which, to be fair, in recent years has been precisely bupkis) is now all gone, deleted from the ether into which I once yawped.

In the beginning phase of trying to repair the issue (which also affected the other sites I manage, including my family site, and our editing business site over at Cadoredit.com) , I got really sad and depressed over having everything I’d ever done over such a long period of time just disappear. As I’ve moved through the process, however, I am trying to take a different tack, and embrace the thought of new beginnings.

I am, for the first time in longer than I care to consider, knitting again (see above): The Humulus sweater by Isabell Kraemer, in Brooklyn Tweed’s Shelter yarn, Almanac & Hayloft colourways.

I’ve picked up and put down so many projects in the years since blogging fell by the wayside for most of the internet, and have finished hardly any of them – and it’s not just my knitting that suffered. All my creative pursuits – sewing, quilting, home stitchery, needlework of all kinds. I’ve just had no mojo at all.

Before I blew away all my files, however, I was able to go back and save a few of the oldest images in my archives. This is one of the first finished objects I ever knit, the infamous Clapotis from Knitty:

It also seems fitting to be starting anew – to be feeling, indeed, the URGE to begin anew – as we near the end (please god) of the undying epoch that has been the current presidency. As I type the draft of this post, we’re only three days past the actual election, but it truly feels as though it’s been closer to a month or more. Our family went through a whole lot prior to the 2016 election that had damaged my ability to feel and act creatively, but the election of That Guy, and the horror of living under a presidency and government of complete incompetence and cruelty, absolutely slayed it.

All of which is to say, it feels really good to feel the desire to knit something. It feels really good to have needles clicking in my hands again, and to want to sew costuming for a hopeful return to the Renaissance Festival next year, to want to cook and to create and generally to feel as though perhaps I can take a moment now to stop and just breathe.

It feels really good to feel good.

It’s good to be back.

So: talk to me, y’all. How are you feeling, what are you into, what’s on your needles? I’ve missed you!