Hiya, comrades!
I have missed you!
I did not mean to disappear for over two months!

The truth is, there’s been rather a lot going on… A festival… Podcasting… Knitting…

Mainly, I have been having a Big Long Think about What Comes Next (this involves The Knitting).

I find myself at a crossroads. My job at Oxford Brookes is ending on 1st May. The year has flown and there is no cash around to renew my post. This is scary but it is also exciting. The scary part is How Will I Eat and the exciting part is asking What Shall I Do Next? The research post has been wonderful; I have been prolific and busy, researching my socks off, and not having to worry constantly about money! The stability provided by the post has given me an opportunity to get a broad overview of my work, and I feel supremely glad to have had a little time to think.

Mostly I have been thinking about knitting + wool + sounds. [Warning: this idea comes with LOLcat.]

Before I held this academic position, I was in a kind of fear-based craziness of doing far too many projects all at once, many of which were somewhat underpaid – or at least which took more time than the available donuts covered. I am grateful for every opportunity I’ve ever had, but with my head above water, I’ve realised all I want to do forever and ever until I die is KNITSONIK. KNITSONIK is my own take on the world; it’s a vision that celebrates the everyday world through listening and knitting and thinking. It’s about appreciating ordinary things in knitting + wool + sounds, and it is completely unique.

KNITSONIK started with my knitting some speakers and playing the sounds of making my dinner through them.

I then knitted teabags (between making radio about the perfect cup of tea) and spuds (meanwhile recording the peeling of potatoes).

KNITSONIK was always mixing The Knitting with The Sounds.

However as KNITSONIK has evolved, it’s grown into something about WOOL, too, and celebrating the origins of this glorious substance in distinctive regions and places – In Cumbria, Estonia, Shetland. KNITSONIK now combines knitting + wool + sounds to celebrate why Cumbrian wool, Estonian wool, Shetland wool – are different from each other. Distinctive, special, specific.

The KNITSONIK mobile on Pam Hall’s farm in Cumbria, recording Herdwicks!

The Estonian native sheep on Jaani Talu, the fine wool farm of Joel and Julika Roos!

Fishing for sounds off St. Ninian’s Isle, Shetland, in my allover, knitted by Alice Simpson of Whalsay!

KNITSONIK now also has a podcast. I am especially honoured that the forum on Ravelry where this is most discussed is the Goat Devoted forum. Best of all, I am assured that some of my listeners are actual goats: you can’t argue with that.

Here I am proffering a baa-ing, 100% Shetland-wool clad speaker to an audience at “Playground on Fire” in Oxford. I am explaining that the pillow is made of Shetland wool, and that there is a special map where one can hear this wool growing in the landscape and being loaded onto a lorry to be spun into the very yarns they are holding. I’m in my Tall Yarns ‘n Tales spinning pinnie, with knitting + wool + sounds in my hands. The photo was taken by Pier Corona and I reckon it’s the most me I’ve ever looked.

It is sad that my contract is ending at Brookes, but it is also exciting that a possibility may exist for me to move forward devoting myself 100% to The KNITSONIK Mission. I have been Scheming on How It Could Be So. With my Scheming, the fear of an Uncertain Future is turning into a lovely feeling of The KNITSONIK Dream Unfolding. Even though I’ve not been here writing, I have been here, thinking about the things that I always think about.

This blog has always been like a veg patch where I grow my ideas, and a burgeoning need to reap a good harvest has been steadily gathering force in me since Shetland Wool Week 2013. There is a book in my mind – seeded here amidst all the chatter and the HUGE PHOTOS – and I really feel I must write it. There will be knitting + wool + sounds.

There are new enterprises in the wings, one of which you will soon be able to read about here, and another of which shall soon arrive in the form of a glorious Kickstarter Campaign. So whilst having A Big Think, I have also been asking everyone I know for help, support, skillz, input and feedback. I’ve been whipping my mission into shape, and writing to all my comrades in KNITWERLD to ask “is this bonkers or do you love it?” The responses here have been very warm, very encouraging, and extremely humbling.

I am blown away by your kindness and support, and I feel a little bashful. Thank you everyone; you know who you are.

There is a super-duper blog tour planned, with some turbo awesome stops on the way, and a grand unveiling on Saturday 29th March. I do not wish to spill all the beanz just yet, but I will leave you one last tiny teaser…

They say “go hard or go home”, so here I am, standing at a crossroads, absolutely positively definitely not going home… it’s going to be very exciting around here in a minute.