Close Knit

You’re listening to Episode 52 of the Close Knit Podcast and this week I spoke to Gina Stovall of Two Days Off Clothing.

The final guest in my series of people who are working in production, for this year at least, is Gina Stovall - an intentional minimalist living in LA, working in Climate Research and designing clothing made sustainably in LA.

From my time following Gina's clothing brand and her personal instagram, I got the sense that Gina and I might have a bit in common - but talking to her took that to a whole new level. From slightly sillier details, like our mutual love of data, and the way we get a deep satisfaction of packing clothes for traveling, to more profound things - like our shared wondering about how slow fashion can exist, and how to exist in an influencer culture.

Gina was just so easy to talk to - and we covered so much ground in this chat - running a business alongside a dayjob, how it is that she keeps enough time for herself for rest, and her work in climate research.

Gina is very generously offering Close Knit Podcast listeners a 15% off discount! Enter the code CLOSEKNIT at checkout on twodaysoff.com.

This will be the last episode of what I am very informally calling Season 1 of the Close Knit Podcast (although it has technically spanned about 3 years). Something you might notice me doing in this episode (and I have noticed myself doing it a lot of late), is asking questions about the role of the influencer/social media in general on slow fashion and the making community. I have some half-baked ideas around it all, and am finding that something like a break sounds right for me for now. Something else I've been thinking a lot about, especially a few weeks ago when I was sick in bed for about a week - is the necessity of rest.

I really do love making the podcast, so it's scary to think about stopping doing that - even if I know it's temporary, but in the interest of listening to my body while it's still a whisper and less of a scream, I'm taking a pause on making the podcast to rest more. If you're supporting the podcast through patreon, your pledge will pause until we're up and running again!

We'll return in the spring of 2020 with more podcast goodness, and until then, you can find me via my newsletter, on closeknit.com.au, and sometimes teaching at various spots in the bay.

I'll miss making the podcast, but I'm so excited to give my body a chance to really deeply rest, and come back with even more vigor and excitement to produce more episodes with all the wonderful, thoughtful folks working in fiber in our world.

You’re listening to Episode 51 of the Close Knit Podcast and this week I spoke to Sarah Danu of Danu Organic. You’ve probably noticed this year that I’ve focused a lot on clothing production and slow fashion in my interviews. I was thinking about this recently and I don’t know exactly why that is - it’s just been a curiosity that I’ve had, and I’ve followed it. It’s led me to so many interesting conversations with people producing clothing - from designers to makers, and I’ve learned so much about the way that people produce clothing locally - and all the steps involved in this!

So that all led me to Sarah - who runs Danu Organic, a clothing line made from organic color grown cottons. Sarah tells me about her memories from childhood of sewing buttons onto a scrap of fabric, as she learned to sew, and a beautiful quilt project she and her mom undertook as she prepared for her first year of college.

Sarah made a bunch of bold career decisions that led her to WOOFing and an interest in the slow food movement, which ultimately led her to seeking out solutions in slow fashion to treat our bodies, the bodies of workers, and the planet with care and respect - which led her to seeking out Fibershed in the Bay Area, and ultimately connecting to scientist and farmer, Sally Fox.

Sarah walks me through her journey with production so far, how she’s had to let go of some of the traditional advice around timelines and launching products, she tells me about her vision for her line - offering clothing for masculine folks and children (!! which is exciting, if you’ve been around in the slow fashion scene for a minute!), and some upcoming natural dyeing on her garments.

And Sarah is generously offering a discount code just for Close Knit Podcast listeners! Head to Danuorganic.com and use the code closeknit (all lowercase, one word) at checkout for 20% off!

The Close Knit Podcast is supported by the following people (& more!) through Patreon. If you'd like to support the podcast please check out patreon!

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Find Sarah : Instagram | Website

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Until next time!

xx

ani

(listen via the audio played or read the transcription below)

*a quick note about diction: I use “knitting” here because it is the medium I am most familiar with, but please, substitute crochet or your preferred making medium. How & what you make with is valid.

We Knit to Care For: Ourselves
If you’ve been knitting for some time, you’ve probably had well-intended friends and family members post links on your Facebook wall about the “health benefits of knitting”. This NYT piece, written in 2016, has appeared at least 4 times on my own personal wall & a handful of other times in my direct messages. And it’s true, countless studies - particularly in recent years - have shown the neurological benefits of knitting. From stress and addiction management to chronic pain, knitting is cited as a key player in recovery and healing. You only need to browse the comments section of any of these articles and it’s clear that the notion of knitting as healing is widespread.

I love that my friends and family members want to help me prove that my, ostensibly sometimes obsessive, interest in knitting is valid - healthy, even! To be honest, in the case of how knitting makes me feel and whether it’s valid that I spend many hours working on it weekly, I didn’t really need scientific studies or NYT articles to back it up, though I appreciate the scientific validation. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you are - at least in some small way - a maker, and you might have a sense for what I’m talking about here.

It’s the feeling that you get when you cast on a new project - the sense that perhaps anything actually is possible - and I don’t mean that in a grand sort of way, just in this simultaneously humbling and inspiring way. You possess these appendages on your body that can turn what is essentially a piece of string into a functional, wearable object. And the cast on is, I think, the most potent time for this realization of possibility. As you progress and this object starts to take shape, you have visible, tangible proof that you are, indeed, very capable. There’s something to that, especially for millennials, and especially in this remarkably digital age. The ability to physically manifest cloth that is practical, warm, and beautiful feels particularly relevant when most of us work on computers, maybe even remotely, on projects that will never have a physical presence in the world. When we exist so much on the internet, these points of contact with the “real” world take on more weight.

Of course, with the incredible diversity of the making community, there comes a wonderful diversity of personal experience and reasons for making, but I’d argue that this diversity is united in commonalities - the way in which we’re all navigating the human condition. We find ourselves drawn to knitting not just because it’s rad to wear something you’ve made (although it definitely is, and somehow even 10+ years into knitting, this novelty has not worn off for me), but because it’s something inherently human. We’re all making sense of our world, processing internal and external events & knitting helps us do this.

In the rest of this series, I invite you to consider your relationship to knitting/making. In essay 2, I’ll look at the ways we use knitting to show our love for our friends and family, and consider the ways that we honor our familial and historical traditions through our craft.

Essay 2:  We Knit to Care for: Our Dearest

Have you ever heard the phrase “knitting is my love language”? I assume (correct me if I’m wrong) that this is a riff off the Five Love Languages, a book about how humans express love, written by Gary Chapman in 1995. The love languages, according to Chapman, are: “receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch”. I’ve thought a lot about this (hello, hi, I’m a huge nerd about knitting and feelings, in case you can’t already tell), and while I think that the act of knitting falls into the camps of gift-giving and acts of service, I think it also deserves its own recognition, because once you’ve made something - particularly knit or crocheted something - by hand, you’ll have an appreciation for what exactly went into that.

Knitting is our love language - it’s an enormous investment of resources, both materials and time. To earn a place in the heart of a knitter, to become a recipient of a knitted object, is a pretty big deal. For most of us, this looks like prioritizing knitting for our dearest - our family members, partners and chosen family. Some of us have beautiful traditions of honoring our family members and family histories with knitting & making. Once such maker is James Davis - a spinner, dyer and weaver from Colorado, who has spoken and written about his introduction to fiber art and his reason for making. James engages with fiber primarily to honor his mother’s memory and build on his family’s woven language. He openly shares his use of fiber to process the grief of his mother’s death and to continue on her legacy.

Knitting objects, whether for yourself or someone you care about, is an act of devotion and dedication. As anyone who’s ever knitted anything knows, it’s often cheaper, and definitely faster, to buy something ready-made. But as makers, we know that this is not the point - there’s something much deeper to be gained by both the maker and the wearer (sometimes the same person) when we slowly and intentionally make by hand.

In the next essay of this series, I’ll discuss the ways we use fiber to care for and connect with our communities and to find our place in our physical and online communities.

Essay 3: We Knit to Care For: Our Communities

In an age when we are increasingly isolated & disconnected from each other, knitting provides a welcome social engagement - both online and off. My firsthand experience of this came when I moved from the USA to Australia. I knew only one person - my former partner - and I am a classically extroverted introvert (you know, capable of extroversion, but generally exhausted by it). Instagram became a critical tool for me to find other knitters and make my place in this new-to-me country. These connections turned to IRL friendships and led me to the fiber arts guilds that exist in Australia. I found suddenly that I had friends spanning generations - which was the opposite of my everyday/work life, where I mingled almost exclusively with other 20-30 somethings. The guild became a deeply important part of a move I made to Tasmania, where for 2 years I attended weekly meetings of the Handweavers, Spinners and Dyers’ Guild, and made some of the closest friends I have - most of whom are 30+ years my senior. It was there that I learned to spin wool for the first time, and caused a lot of scandal with my wool knit knickers during one particular show-and-tell.

In addition to the ways we find our communities in-person and online, knitting plays an important role in creating dialogue amongst communities regarding socio-political and environmental issues. These projects are commonly known as “craftivism” - a term coined by Betsy Greer, and they range in size/scale and craft medium, but in general work to bring awareness within communities of important or ongoing issues. Perhaps the most recognized of these is “yarn bombing” - a method of graffiti art employing yarn in place of chalk or spray paint. Yarn bombers have created pieces with all sorts of motivations - from raising awareness of human-induced climate change (ie WARM, an installation piece created by SEAM Inc. (Sustainable Environment Arts Movement) & largely facilitated by Georgie Nicholson of Tikki Knits) to simply aiming to put a smile on your face. Jane aka Queen Babs, is a prominent yarn bomber based in Redfern, NSW. I first met Jane when she “love-bombed” me, handing me a heart she crocheted, with the message “You are loved” tied to it, offering me a hug. The more familiar I became with Jane’s work, the more I appreciated it - the way she engages her community, both her craft community and her physical neighborhood. Her dedication to encouraging warmth and acceptance in Redfern is palpable.

We engage with our communities through our craft, whether we mean to (yarn bombing) or not (knitting in public). Every time we knit in public, we invite our wider communities to consider what this act means, to consider their assumptions about who knits and why. We engage with our communities in so many ways when we craft.

In the next (and final) essay of this series, I’ll explore our engagement with our physical environment through knitting - in other words, the intersection of environmental sustainability & craft.

Essay 4: We Knit to Care for: Our Planet

Perhaps the nexus within making I find most interesting and complex is that of sustainability and craft. This piece will just scratch the surface of this topic. To date, we’ve talked about the ways we care for: ourselves, our families, and our communities through our craft, and my hope is that we’ve begun to go deeper into the “why” behind our making.

My intention with this series is to invite makers to consider their relationship to making through a broadening lens, beginning with the self & ending with the biggest possible lens (at least I think, unless interstellar making is a thing and I’m just not aware of it yet?), our planet, and the impact our craft has on it. Today, I’m going to focus primarily on sustainability from an environmental perspective, though I think it is equally, if not more, pressing to consider the social/human sustainability perspective - but that’s a whole other series in itself.

Every time we choose to make something with our hands, we are subverting the cultural norm of convenience and instant gratification. This, in itself, is an act of defiance of an environmentally-unsustainable model that is commonplace presently. I see this as such a beautiful vehicle for change - the joy that compels us to make has, perhaps even unintended, positive consequences of giving the maker time to consider their relationship to the environment and the object, among others.

It’s almost inevitable, too, that the deeper you go with making, the more you begin to understand and become curious about the whole process - how your base materials made their way to you and how you might begin to make those materials yourself. For example, it is common for knitters to become interested in spinning (the production of yarn) This brings the maker even closer to the beginning of the supply chain. The closer we are to the beginning, the more control we have over the process and the more awareness and intentionality we can bring to sourcing materials and producing our own garments.

Making our own clothing is a way of engaging with Slow Fashion. While buying Ready-to-Wear items is a reality for almost everyone, makers are positioned uniquely to bring fashion closer to home - whether that means knitting up a sweater for the upcoming winter, or learning to spin wool so that eventually you can knit a garment for you or a loved one. We have this opportunity to get curious with our craft: to really dig deeper and ask questions. Where did this yarn come from? What is the fiber content? Does it contain harmful chemicals or plastics? (somewhat shockingly, a lot of yarns do - but again, that’s another conversation for another time ;))

When we place a lens of curiosity on our craft, we get a chance to go deeper and really ask the questions that mean something to us. And we get to decide how we want our values to shape our work - and that, I think, is a special and powerful place to be.

Written Oct 2018

You’re listening to Episode 50 of the Close Knit Podcast and this week I spoke to Mandy Kordal of Kordal Studio.

Mandy is someone I have admired for so long - every singe collection she’s designed has just made me swoon, and it was such a treat to bring her onto the podcast this month.

She walks me all the way back to her earliest memory of working with textiles - influenced by her grandmother and her mother, who are both talented designers and sewists.

As has been my line of inquiry lately - this year, actually, I wanted to understand how Mandy went from altering and painting on her clothes as a kid to running a knitwear and now woven-ware clothing line. How her interest was piqued by a neighbor, leading her to study fashion design and taking a class in machine knitting - which informs her garment design and making presently.

We discuss the subtleties of machine knitwear design, fiber sourcing, and how being a values-driven brand, as a concept, is an evolution.

Mandy talks me through their partnerships with weavers and mills in Peru and Guatemala and how these relationships have evolved over the course of Kordal’s existence.
Listen on for our whole chat! Thanks for tuning in!

I wanted to pause for a moment to acknowledge that this is the 50th episode of the Close Knit Podcast.

50 whole episodes! That just feels like a real milestone to me.

And I just wanted to say thanks. Thank you for listening, and for supporting the podcast. If you’re already pledging on patreon, I so appreciate you. And if you’ve enjoyed the podcast thus far, you can support the podcast to continue to exist by pledging through patreon.

Over the course of this last year, your support has helped me pay my bills, hire an editor, and offset website maintenance costs. It’s been an enormous help and it really does enable me to work on this project long term, in a sustainable way.

You can find my patreon from my website, via my instagram, or by searching Close Knit on Patreon.

50 freaking episodes - what a humbling joy it has been to produce this work with and for you.

Your support means the world to me.

In episode 49 of the Close Knit podcast, I spoke to Charlotte X C Sullivan, one of two folks who run May West: a textile innovation collaboration between Charlotte and Alayna Rasile-Digrindakis. Charlotte walks me through how May West formed, through connection and feeling, and how this has continued to inform their work with milkweed. We discuss the way that clothing, and fashion, can serve as armor, a way to cloak and protect yourself through circumstances in life. She explains to me how her collaboration with Alayna began, and how their expression of feeling has impacted their process, and how they intend to imbue their clothing with purpose and meaning through each stage of production.

Charlotte tells me about the evolution of May west’s design studio, from drop spinning of milkweed fibers, to its current iteration: jackets using milkweed batting as insulation, how this iterative process has unfolded over time, through prototypes and experiments. We discuss the importance of local manufacturing and how they’ve managed this production process thus far.

What I think is most special about this chat is the way that it unfolded from a place of curiosity- something I am realizing is such an important part of my own practice and this podcast, and it was interesting to see that mirrored in the way that Charlotte tends to work. I knew very little of milkweed & its practical uses, and I found it incredibly intriguing to hear Charlotte and Alayna’s collaborative approach towards May West. I feel I need to disclose that the circumstances of this podcast making were a first for me- I recorded it in a friend’s house in Hobart & had little control over the external auditory circumstances, so please bear with me if the audio quality is a little less than you’ve come to expect.

This was an experiment in dedication for me- seeing if it’s possible to continue creating content as usual, without my safe set up. So thank you for giving me space to try that

Listen on for my whole chat with Charlotte, thank you so much for tuning in

The Close Knit Podcast is supported by the following people (& more!) through Patreon. If you'd like to support the podcast and get access to sneak peeks + additional content for patrons-only, please check out patreon!

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In episode 48 of the Close Knit Podcast, I spoke to Erin M. Riley. Erin is someone whose work I’ve followed and admired for literal years, and if I’m being completely honest, I was so psyched when they agreed to come on the podcast. Erin’s work has always deeply intrigued me, and their internet presence was always focused on their work, so I was especially excited to get to talk to them and hear more about how they make their incredible, gigantic tapestries, and how their life experiences have informed their work.

Erin takes me all the way back to middle school, when they were a restless teen sewing seed beads onto clothing and winning sewing machine threading competitions at school. We talk about how their family dynamics, and how their family’s journey with addiction has impacted them and the type of work they’ve created. We discuss the early internet and how it’s changed, how their work engages with various forms of pleasure, and themes that are not often talked about publicly. And we discuss the ways that people have engaged with their work online and off and the importance of making work that can be engaged with in person.

Erin was so deeply candid with me in this episode, and I so deeply appreciated their perspective on their own art and its interaction with the world.

Listen on for our whole chat- thanks so much for tuning in!

The Close Knit Podcast is supported by the following people (& more!) through Patreon. If you'd like to support the podcast and get access to sneak peeks + additional content for patrons-only, please check out patreon!

Aleksandra Alex Alicia Alison C Alison S Amanda Bee Belle Brittany Caitlin Carolina Carolyn Casey Cath Catherine Chantale Chase Elizabeth Ellen Emily B Emily P Emily T Hanna Lisa Heather James Justice Laura Lauren Lawral leah Lindsay Lyle Marta Morgan Natalie Natasha Niki Ocean Rachel Sandy Sarah B Sarah H Shelby Shelly shivani - THANK YOU SO MUCH!

You’re listening to Episode 47 of the Close Knit Podcast, and this week I spoke to Jewell Christine of North Knits

Jewell is a knitter, designer, and founder of Our Maker Life. We talk about Jewell’s family history - her grandmother’s amazing crochet legacy and how that’s informed her own work.

She’s super ambitious and strong-willed- she always has been, and has always had a lot of clarity around what she wants in life. Studying journalism, Jewell found the strong voice she has today, and uses that skill set to inform her work through her social media and maker meet ups with Our Maker Life.

We talk about the place that spirituality and faith have in her knitting, and how she’s used knitting to quiet her mind and ease her through periods of difficulty and sometimes depression.

Jewell speaks so candidly and openly about her own journey and her experiences and that was part of what really drew me to her, I love the way she sees the world - through this lens of goodness - and it really shows in her work.

Listen on for our whole chat- thanks so much for tuning in!

The Close Knit Podcast is supported by the following people (& more!) through Patreon. If you'd like to support the podcast and get access to sneak peeks + additional content for patrons-only, please check out patreon!

Aleksandra Alex Alicia Alison C Alison S Amanda Bee Belle Brittany Caitlin Carolina Carolyn Casey Cath Catherine Chantale Chase Elizabeth Ellen Emily B Emily P Emily T Hanna Lisa Heather James Justice Laura Lauren Lawral leah Lindsay Lyle Marta Morgan Natalie Natasha Niki Ocean Rachel Sandy Sarah B Sarah H Shelby Shelly shivani - THANK YOU SO MUCH!

In Episode 46 of the Close Knit Podcast, I spoke to Sara Trail of the Social Justice Sewing Academy. Sara is incredible - a complete powerhouse of passion and ambition, she’s been sewing since age 4, making quilts under her grandmother’s direction, and teaching quilt making from the age of 12 - just let that sink in for a moment. Teaching sewing classes, she started to notice how monochromatic her students were, and how there were many issues of access and affordability existed and perpetuated this student make up.

She started SJSA as a response to this - a way to teach quilting and social justice topics through textiles for free to youth. Sara talks me through the nuts and bolts of how the organization operates, and how its grown over the last few years. We discuss the incredible things that happen both in the classroom with the students she works with and in Quilt exhibits like QuiltCon, which she recently attended in Nashville.

I just constantly found myself remarking at how deeply inspired I am by Sara and her commitment to this work - on a personal and professional level. Running this not for profit on the weekends in addition to working with incarcerated adults to earn their high school diplomas. Sara schooled me in this episode, and it was awesome.

I’m really excited for you all to listen to Sara and the SJSA’s incredible story.

And don’t forget to check out her instagram, because seeing these quilts, seeing this work is what really makes it all hit home, I think.

The Close Knit Podcast is supported by the following people (& more!) through Patreon. If you'd like to support the podcast and get access to sneak peeks + additional content for patrons-only, please check out patreon!

Aleksandra Alex Alicia Alison C Alison S Amanda Bee Belle Brittany Caitlin Carolina Carolyn Casey Cath Catherine Chantale Chase Elizabeth Ellen Emily B Emily P Emily T Hanna Lisa Heather James Justice Laura Lauren Lawral leah Lindsay Lyle Marta Morgan Natalie Natasha Niki Ocean Rachel Sandy Sarah B Sarah H Shelby Shelly shivani - THANK YOU SO MUCH!

In Episode 45, I spoke to Adrienne Antonson of State the Label. Following on my interest in production and where that’s led me in terms of guest lately, I wanted to speak to Adrienne about how she began and continues to run her clothing label, State.
So part of this curiosity for me is how a person gets interested in and finds themselves working in fiber and clothing production. Adrienne talks me through her entire journey of working with fiber and clothing-making - beginning as a middle schooler sewing simple clothing, to working on an alpaca farm and sewing garments and felting by night, to putting into place some of the bones of State as we know it today.
Adrienne shares the process of growing and scaling the business, from figuring out how to work with a factory to hiring a small team to support production, locally. Her approach is and has always been scrappy, and many parts of her process are not scalable. She revels in the small details and talks me through what it’s like to design and produce a collection of surface-designed goods (spoiler: it’s a lot more logistically complex than you might imagine)
Adrienne reveals an exciting upcoming launch for state, which I imagine a LOT of listeners will be very excited about. I love the arc of Adrienne’s story - how really genuine and approachable it all feels - how the pieces of State have come together over time and with a lot of effort, but also with a lot of just sticking to your gut.

The Close Knit Podcast is supported by the following people (& more!) through Patreon. If you'd like to support the podcast and get access to sneak peeks + additional content for patrons-only, please check out patreon!

Aleksandra Alex Alicia Alison C Alison S Amanda Bee Belle Brittany Caitlin Carolina Carolyn Casey Cath Catherine Chantale Chase Elizabeth Ellen Emily B Emily P Emily T Hanna Lisa Heather James Justice Laura Lauren Lawral leah Lyle Marta Morgan Natalie Natasha Niki Ocean Rachel Sandy Sarah B Sarah H Shelby Shelly shivani - THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I wanted to take a minute to revisit the close knit podcast mission. The close knit podcast aims to hold space for conversation to be had about the ways we use fiber to process life and world events.What I meant when I wrote that was that this podcast is the vessel, and the guest brings the story - the connecting thread between all guests is fiber in some form. Intentionally broad, this enabled me to speak to all kinds of people about all manner of things.In practical terms, it has looked like a majority white, majority women-identified line up. When it was entirely this - early on, I paused, readjusted, and tried to publicly challenge myself to do better. I shared this process publicly because I believe in transparency of process, whenever possible. Owning mistakes, instead of letting them own you, and moving forward. Over the course of the life of this podcast, I hope to speak to as many people from as many backgrounds as possible - whose stories may be connected only insofar as their interest in fiber, and I hope that each listener finds themselves represented here, in some way. Whether that is a person whose ethnic identity resembles your own, or gender identity, or approach to making, or ethics on living their lives. I hope that you find someone who feels like ‘home’ to you here. I know that I can always do better - and though I spend more time than your average person researching people in the fiber community to interview, those interviews don’t always pull through, or they don’t happen in the way I imagine they will. I am constantly learning the process of letting go of the outcome as a podcast maker - I can only ask the guest in, and hold as safe a space as I am able - I cannot falsely create stories or force a conversation in a direction it’s not able to go. More so, I cannot expect a certain type of conversation to happen simply because of a common narrative around assumptions I’m no doubt making about my guest.I want to keep at this. I want to make this podcast for a long ass time - maybe even for the entire time I’m on this planet. so it’s gonna take time, and the guest list will evolve. and I hope, as the knitting and wider fiber community begins to take more seriously issues of representation - we may more easily be able to find a diverse body of people to speak to and hear from.This being said, know that I am always scouring the internet for new stories, following along on instagram and trying to track down the voices of people who don’t look like me. Sometimes, I do okay it, and other times, not as much. I don’t expect anyone to do that work for me, but I am open to suggestions - I am open to feedback. If there’s someone that you love or YOU are that someone - who is doing interesting work with fiber, who maybe doesn’t have the type of stage that makes it easy to find them, by all means - please let me know.

I’m here to listen, to keep working on creating a really safe space for people to share.

I’m processing - in my own private life, sometimes quietly - through hours of conversation with people that I know, and hours of knitting. I’m working on a sock right now - which of course, what else would I be working on, and I don’t know if I’m doing it ‘right’ this whole thing, but I know that I’m giving it what I’ve got. & at the very least, I feel hopeful that we have this vessel - our making, our place for quiet internal reflection, and our connection of fiber. Our place to find each other - our thing to connect over. I’m glad that there is this soft vessel to perhaps help us find each other.