occasionally i come across the advice “do it scared” and “what’s the worst that could happen?” and “anxiety can’t kill you”. many times from strangers or people who did not care to know me

it was a real eye-opener the first time someone said it in a way that wasn’t condescending. they were genuinely interested in my struggles and offered it as advice that worked for them and something meaningful they wanted to share with me

i think the implication is that you’ll do the thing you’re scared of and you’ll find that everything turned out okay. you’ll learn that things can be scary but you can get through them and you’ll gain confidence, and it’ll get easier to do every time

i think about the stories that people have shared with me about the time that they were scared to go to a social event but ended up having a great time. or being nervous before a presentation at work but afterwards a colleague told them they did a great job

i’ve started doing things i’m scared of and it’s going wrong a lot. but in a strange way i’m still glad to have tried. it’s nice to collapse the myriad abstract ways something can wrong into one concrete reality. i can work with that. it’s helpful because there’s a lot i don’t know about myself

observing myself planning and doing and recovering from an event i can learn:

• the different ways anxiety can manifest in my body and mind
• what specific parts i feel anxious about (or if i’ve even...

the left pair

the left pair was made first. it’s the rye worsted by tin can knits. i chose this pattern mostly because they had a nice diagram for the construction, simple set sizes^[1], and used thicker yarn^[2]. i decided to make the cuff and heel and toes a different colour because i felt like it. that ended up being a kinda interesting decision because the heel looks weirdly tall and narrow when the socks are flat, but when they’re on a foot it looks just fine. 3D objects are wild

the right pair

for the second pair i read a bunch of different toe-up patterns and attempted to cobble together something myself:

• it uses fingering/sock weight yarn
• the big toe and toes are separate (not visible in the pic)
  • connected via three needle bind off (i saw a pattern which grafted them instead)
  • doing such a small circumference with DPNs was not comfortable
• the foot is 3×1 ribbing
  • picked this ribbing because ribbing in general gives more leeway in terms of fit (contracts more than...

realising that one of the reasons it’s hard for me to post is that i have a lot of half thoughts. somehow i have more drafts than posts on here. i get an idea, and then the idea prompts some questions like what do i do with this idea? or is there a solution?, but finding a response to those questions is sometimes hard and somehow there’s always a next question

the next question here is what do i do with these half thoughts? and at least in this case it’s pretty clear to me that i’d like to post them anyway.

then more questions come to me like do i flag that these thoughts are incomplete? do i make a tag, or figure out how to convey that in the post itself? how would i do this if i weren’t on my own personal website? …and i think i just gotta call all of that out of scope

i’m proud of myself :)

not necessarily for the physical end products (although like hell yeah! i’ve got some cosy socks!) but because i had to do a bunch of emotional work on the way. like,

• getting comfortable spending money on myself for fun things (turns out i have to relearn this lesson every time my financial situation changes)
• learning how i like to learn (focusing on a part until i understand it, doing the same thing multiple times, giving myself space and time to be comfortable with something before moving on)
• figuring out what i want to do and what i want to prioritise (if i decide that i want a hobby to fill my time with creative joy, then, if someone says a particular technique is a “tedious waste of time”, i don’t have to take that as a drawback. maybe that’s the scenic route that gives me more time with my hobby? or maybe i find it is tedious and it’s my choice if i want to learn it through experience so i can fully appreciate the time that the alternatives are saving me)
• being present with what i’m feeling at each step (not just barrelling through discomfort)
• being kind to myself (i used to think this was just about not being mean to myself and saying nice things instead. and that’s still an important part. but i’m learning that this also involves taking my concerns seriously, both in understanding them and working to address them)

it’s been a rough few months. i think things are getting...