About

This blog is mainly about crochet, specifically the processes through which my projects and I travel. However, as John Donne pointed out, no man is an island (even though I often try to be), nothing exists in isolation (no matter how far away from the city you live or even if you live in the woods), things are interconnected even when we don’t design them thus. Indeed, crochet is just a complex web of interlocked loops. My point: I don’t think I can talk about crochet without talking about some other passions in my life. In a sense working with yarn is a way in which I subconsciously work out connections and meanings with other elements that take up my mind space.

My name: I am somewhat of a hermit and guard my anonymity rather fiercely. My screen names have almost always been tributes to animal friends in my life. Casey was a wiley kitty who graced me with his presence when I was in my twenties. He was a tiny cat but half feral and a force to be reckoned with. He regularly pranced amongst my mother’s fine china (which she refused to put behind glass) and not once did he break a thing. He was a fine friend. My namesake, I am sure, couldn’t care less about crochet, except, perhaps as something to fight with or to sleep upon, but his elegant ferocity inspires me nonetheless.

I am a schoolteacher in Massachusetts and I think a lot about the state of public education today. I love dogs, especially my three (or two and a half, depending on your perspective). All non-humans seem to function as an anchor for me in a way that few humans ever have. I think this is less misanthropy and more of a particular brand of introversion. Learning how to grow plants takes considerable thinking time. Figuring out how to keep a cabin, however small, intact and warm in Northeast winters on a very small budget is another preoccupation. Reading and searching for worthwhile television are some more.

photo by Nancy Bray

Originally I am Canadian (officially I still am), but sometime in adolescence I developed what people justly call wanderlust. Something of a nomad I became. I have lived in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central America, and now the United States. I’ve travelled to many other places. People who share my compulsion understand the well, compulsive, and all-encompassing nature of wanderlust. As far as I know it’s not in the DSM IV, but it may as well as be. People born without this oddity think I must be in the military or business or, more often than not, that I’m just odd.

Some images that represent my past life:

The airport in Kuwait. As a foreigner in Kuwait, a tiny nation, one spends a good deal of time flying in and out.

This is the campus where I lived and worked in Costa Rica for two years.

Chodov, Czech Republic

Charles Bridge, Prague, Czech Republic

Cahuita, Costa Rica

Something happened in my late thirties— some might say I grew up, I’m not really sure what to call it. I sort of settled down. I have never understood that concept. Anything with the mildest wiff of commitment spawned a monstrous fear in my soul. Moving is what I understood. Moving on. Adventure. The unknown. Etc. Then a few dogs and another person with whom I actually wanted to share space said they wanted to live me, and they were far more irresistible than the next airplane ride. That strange desire for something akin to stability brought me to buy a little 500 ft cabin in the woods in the Berkshire hills.

Daisy – Australian cattledog

My cabin in the woods

Berkshire hills, MA

Kluzie and Cody – Giant cocker spaniel and Australian cattledog

I started to knit in 1996 when I lived in Prague. I was a young woman from Vancouver, and at that time, at least in my circles, yarn work was considered sorta granny. Not so in Eastern Europe. Women knit with pride and I discovered I loved it. Of course, the first scarf — green acrylic — was not exactly the fashion statement I was striving toward in my new creative venture, but it was, well, something. I pushed on. Several years later after the internet was out and about, I taught myself to crochet. I found that I preferred crochet. Two of the reasons are terribly practical: it is easy to re-do things in crochet, and at least for me, almost impossible in knitting; the hooks take less physical space than knitting needles and thus crochet is easier to do in multiple venues. Anyway, I’ve more or less switched. Of course I won’t commit. I may return to knitting one day, but for now I’m hooked.

I work virtually exclusively with natural fibres. Whenever possible I buy yarn that provides information about the well-being of the sheep who give their wool and the humans who work it. Synthetic fibres just kind of bore me. Some of my favourite yarns are Malabrigo, Madeline Tosh, Valley Yarns.

This is a merino sheep, the animal that grows one of the most amazing of wools.

Here is a link to in depth information about merino wool: http://www.woolpower.se/en/material/merino-wool/

I experiment a lot with small and large projects, simple designs and complex. As I mention elsewhere I find crochet strangely like writing, the mix of the unrestrained creativity and the order of convention to make creations meaningful. I also sometimes find an aesthetic connection with my natural world. Colours and colour combinations that live in my head usually start in my forest outside my door.

Some of my indispensible tools are: