Ghost in the Orchard. Four inches from done. I’d stare at the cable chart and the tiny squares would dance. Close my eyes. Open them. Over and over. The hands that made those cables could not remember how cables worked.

Endel Tulving‘s encoding specificity principle. Godden and Baddeley’s divers learning words underwater. Jonathan Spence‘s memory palace. And 60% of the total surface of our brains committed to our hands.

My second sweater - bricky red, carnelian buttons, the physical therapist who inadvertently retired it - became the Gaia Jacket from Jean Moss’s Sculptured Knits. Which became the red cabled vest I’m knitting now. Thirty years of memory in the same wool.

Serotonin stripped the filters. Melatonin locked the repair. Dopamine lit the paths. Norepinephrine broke the bridge. Memory is where it all comes home.

Music: Rore, Arrival; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental)

If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter.

Tears in the kitchen. Three bananas on the counter and a recipe I know by heart but cannot, for the life of me, turn into a sequence of actions.

Seven ingredients. Too many decisions. My brain could not do seven. So I broke it down. Dry ingredients in one bowl. Wet in the other. Three and four. Manageable. The bread was good. I ate it in bed and felt unreasonably proud of myself.

The locus coeruleus is the brain’s attention control room. When norepinephrine depletes, everything arrives at equal volume. A dog barking becomes as important as the eggs.

An old friend helps out in the kitchen. And the moment when I realised the invisible labour I’d been doing for decades had only become visible because I could no longer do it.

Music: Jude Cosmo, Queen of Angeles; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental)

An Eye for an Eye - would the animals we eat, eat us? Impossible Hats. Box Hill Picnic, from Jane Austen’s Emma. Dangerous Questions, where the danger is yours, not your opponent’s. This is what insomniacs get up to at 3am while you are sleeping.

Kent Berridge coined the term incentive salience. When dopamine runs hot, everything arrives pre-lit with significance. The creativity wasn’t a symptom - it was genuine creative product on the “this matters” signal.

A desire path is a trail worn into the landscape by human feet. Not planned. Just walked so many times it becomes permanent. Some of mine are still here.

Also: the duck question has a better answer than you think. And the horses are not going to like it.

Music: Tony Anderson, One Perfect Sunset; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental)

If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Nighthawk n. a recurring thought that only strikes you late at night. Mine struck every night for eight weeks.

Zopiclone is a sledgehammer. Daridorexant is a key. One imposes sleep. The other removes the obstacle to it. There’s a big difference, and finding it changed everything.

Also: Jasper as Big Spoon. An AI health czar who suggested I should just pour ethanol directly on my brain to save time. And the thing I found at 3am that stayed.

Music: Christopher Wohrle, Dust; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental)

If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter.

Trimethoprim for a UTI. Seven days. By day three, everything was hysterically funny. By day five, I could hear things that weren’t there. By week two, I couldn’t track yarn overs in garter stitch. Garter stitch.

The projects on my needles when my brain broke Bradford Road, Dark Days, Ghost in the Orchard were beyond me for the next four months. The only thing that still worked was drop spindling. Hands remembered what the brain forgot. So I made yarn.

The weird pantry. Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia from folate antagonism - undocumented, as far as I can tell. There might be a paper in it. Hit me up if you want to write it. I documented everything.

This is the first episode of Your Brain on Knitting - five short episodes, designed to be listened to back to back. One broken brain. Four neurotransmitters. And the knitting woven through it all.

Music: Hannah Parrott, The Feeling; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental)

If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter.

Zabava Shorties disasters. The signs were there. Sometimes, you need to break up with a sock pattern. “It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t like you anymore.” Meanwhile, the Peppermint Pocket Skirt delivers enormous pockets perfect for sock projects, and Ruth Collins’ Top Down Centre Out method might revolutionize trouser fitting.

The Bradford Road wrap progresses through garter rectangles. Big Love Cardigan waits for cooler weather. But sewing succeeded where knitting failed—the Peppermint Pocket Skirt (free collaboration between Peppermint Magazine and Paper Theory) paired beautifully with the Block Tee, with right angle sewing tutorial making construction straightforward.

The revelation: Ruth Collins’ Top Down Centre Out trouser fitting method. Begin with fitted waistband, construct single-leg toile, achieve proper fit without body-shaming adjustments. Demonstrated through Stacey Taylor’s free YouTube series at The Crooked Hem.

Beyond practical successes and failures: Robert Pirsig’s concept of Quality from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Through memories of 4-H sewing club and Claire Schaeffer’s couture techniques, we consider how sustained attention gets woven into handmade items’ structure. What happens when we show up fully present—whether adjusting carburetors or setting sleeves.

Music: Jim Fidler, Merrigan’s Reel; The Wilder Road, The Light the Heat; The National Parks, Who Knows

It's been a week of finishes and new beginnings. Off the needles, I've completed a Malabrigo hat and love the color pooling. You don’t hear me say that very often.

I've finally finished my Amande socks—though I must say I rather hated working both the nupps and wrapped stitches techniques. Sometimes you have to try things to understand what you decidedly do not enjoy.

My new obsession is Big Love by ANKESTRIK, a top-down cardigan with fascinating construction that I'm knitting in gorgeous Gilliat yarn. The pattern begins with a provisional cast-on at the shawl collar, and I minimised the inevitable ribbing alignment issues by using a Turkish cast-on and knitting across the first row rather than working the ribbing pattern.

For the shoulders, I chose Chinese Waitress cast-on, which creates a lovely firm yet stretchy edge perfect for shoulder seams. The Ravelry community provided essential modifications—working the fronts two inches longer than the back prevents the sleeves from rotating forward due to the unusual construction.

Many knitters went up a size or two for the sleeves, so I did my own spot-checking for sleeve pickup. Remember: Your measurement x gauge (stitches per inch) = Number of stitches you need for your desired size.

This sweater connects to larger work I'm doing on a capsule collection based on my Changing Clothes manifesto. I've been thinking more intentionally about getting dressed—not for others' gazes but for my own comfort in what I call "Secret Pyjamas." The goal is creating sustainable, perfectly fitting garments made by hand, including finally tackling my Everest of well-fitted trousers.

Behind the scenes, I've moved podcast hosting to Substack after twenty years with Libsyn. Yes indeed, I’ve been podcasting since 2005. Where has the time gone?

Music: "Who Knows" by The National Parks

If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter.

Finishing socks, saving the yarn, new projects from old, planning the perfect colourwork sweater, plus a bit of theoretical physics to prove what knitters already know: knitting is magic.

Links and references:

* Admiral Hanf yarn by Schoppel Wolle

* Lang Jawoll sock yarn

* Chessmaster, by Christian Mattausch

* Amande, by Josephine and the Seeds

* Sophie Shawl by PetiteKnit

* Bradford Road Wrap, by Kristen Kapur

* Fox Paws, by Xandy Peters

* Soft Spot sweater by Elina Maaria

* ke21’s Soft Spot on Ravelry is one of the good ones

* Knitogami: Mechanics of knitted fabric as a curved surface (PNAS, April 2024)

* Dynamic Folding Knits: An exploration into self-folding and self-forming textiles, by Victoria Salmon

* Characterizing and predicting the self-folding behavior of weft-knit fabrics

* Handmade Lampshades, by Natalia Price-Cabrera

Music in this episode:

* Merrigan’s Reel – Jim Fidler

* That Thing That You Do – Cody Fry

If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter.

We travel from Iron Age fire-pits to mid-century homemaking manuals, consider the joys of stash organisation, and muse on the performative aspects of home decorating. There’s a deep dive into the ancient tradition of human-centred design through textiles, from spindle whorls to soft furnishings, a detour through the joys of vacuum bags and organza, a nod to Swedish Death Cleaning, and a look inside the Granny Cranny.

Books & Patterns

* Bojagi: Design and Techniques in Korean Textile Art by Sara CookA richly illustrated exploration of Korean wrapping cloths (bojagi), covering both traditional and contemporary piecing techniques used to create these beautifully translucent textiles.

* Knitting Fabric Rugs by Karen TiedeA practical guide to turning old clothing and fabric into sturdy, beautiful knitted rugs.

* Döstädning: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta MagnussonA wise and witty guide to decluttering, legacy, and letting go.

* Sophie Shawl by PetitKnitA minimalist garter stitch wrap that’s elegant, meditative, and endlessly wearable.

* Bradford Road Wrap by Louise TilbrookA cozy rectangular colour block shawl.

* Homerun Hat by Jonathon SuttonA clever design knit from the reclaimed yarn of a single baseball.

Check out Suzygirl’s Homerun Hat Huge thanks to her for allowing me to use her images.

Elsewhere

* Flash your stash in the comments, or tag me on BlueSky

* Granny Cranny Thread on Reddit

Replenishing the sock drawer with Priory Socks (project page).

My Secret Circles, below.

Porthos (project page), below.

I moved my decreases to the back of the heel, and the result is similar to Basic Biarritz and the Kite Heel, yet is uniquely mine and oh, is it ever sexy. The joy of a well-fitting heel cannot be overstated.

The short row method used in Zabava Shorties is still, hands down, the best method I have found for toes. You'll find the method for Jeny's Square Peg Heel here.

Cat Bordhi's gusset lessons may be found in her book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters.

You can read my notes on Kiba Light on my project page.

Knit to The Dress Diary of Miss Ann Sykes, by Kate Strasdin (Bsky)

Music in this podcast:

* Merrigan's Reel, Jim Fidler

* Coming Home, Dalton Day