Now We Are Three

Three years ago, I sat up way too late throwing together a quick website.  The goal of the site was to provide a convenient place to host a little free pattern for a pair of socks I’d whipped up.  I liked the socks, and I thought a few other folks might like them too.  I had enjoyed writing the pattern, and I thought I might want a space to share any other patterns that happened to occur to me.  I didn’t think I’d do it often.

Two years ago, I had just signed a book contract and was up to my eyeballs in the prep work for Silk Road Socks.  I was beginning to have an inkling that this pattern writing thing might actually have become something more than I first expected.

One year ago, Silk Road Socks was out.  Somewhere in the middle of creating it I had decided that not only did I want to write more books, I wanted to publish them myself.  By this point, it was pretty clear that pattern writing had moved from an occasional lark to a hobby to a minor obsession and was quickly becoming my actual job.

Today, three years to the day after I put out my first pattern, the electronic version of my second book, The Knitter’s Curiosity Cabinet, goes live (the paper version is at the printer, getting ink on dead trees takes time).  I’m working busily away on book three.  When people ask me what I do, I say ‘I write knitting books.’ It’s actually starting to feel like a perfectly reasonable answer to that question, not like something I made up just to watch how they will respond (though that part is still entertaining–reactions vary widely).

That’s a rather dramatic transition to make in three years.  But it seems to be working out ok so far.  Care to stick around and see what I’m up to in three more years?