A debut year
Another year of making and doing and making do.
In my last newsletter, I promised finished yarn, and here I have it.
Earlier this month, I finally finished a very large spinning project: my 2022 Tour de Fleece braids. The result is more than 1.5 kilometers of fingering weight yarn in this gorgeous gradient dyed by Fossil Fibers.
I am not sure what I am going to make with this yarn. To be entirely honest, my primary motivation in spinning this was to experience the simple pleasure of the color changes, watching shade cede to shade as the fiber fed through my fingertips, and then chain-plying it all in order to preserve those changes. Whatever I make with this yarn will be something that makes use of the lovely, lovely gradient.
The last part of it, the cream-to-peach skein on the left, is also the last skein that my beloved cat Roo helped me spin. (And by helped, I mean lay in my lap and demanded pets and generally derailed in the most perfect and wonderful way.) We lost Roo heartbreakingly and suddenly December 15, and I am bereft without my constant shadow, my head of editorial, my #5amwritersclub companion, the smartest and most curious cat we ever had. This loss has overwritten the landscape of the end of the year, a time I never know how to deal with anyway, but I wanted to attempt something, if only to make the turning of the page into the new year a little easier.
So.
Of course, there is The Book. Heading North arrived in November, and I am immensely proud of the book that it is. The run-up to its publication and then the events I was lucky enough to have following publication certainly dominated my mental and creative landscape. It gave me the opportunity to do a launch at Midtown Scholar, my favorite bookstore, to give readings in three states and one Canadian province, to be a guest on several podcasts1 with wonderfully gracious hosts, to be interviewed in several places2, to write for Writer’s Digest, and to connect with readers and writing friends of all kinds. My new year’s wish is for Heading North to keep finding its way into new readers’ hands.
Join me at Riverstone Books in Pittsburgh on 1/25 for a conversation with Clare Beams! And if you’re planning to attend AWP in Kansas City in February, I hope you’ll check out this panel on debuting that I have the privilege to be part of: First Time’s The Charm.
There has been the biking. I’ve cycled more than 4,000 kilometers this year, and I got to ride a bike in France, rode 600 kilometers in 6 days for the Friends for Life Bike Rally to raise money in support of people with HIV/AIDS, and completed the Seagull Century in drenching rain, but faster than I did it last year.
There has, recently, been the baking. On Christmas Eve, I made two loaves of bread, a meringue roulade, a gingerbread and apple roulade, and a two-layer genoise cake with passionfruit curd and Swiss meringue buttercream. That was after making four pounds of roast pork, three dozen bao, and six dozen gyoza in the two days before, as well as a batch of scallion pancakes for the freezer. While I do tend toward the excessive in terms of food at the holidays, this was mostly a product of keeping my hands busy in light of the grief, which is entirely a matter of making do.
And finally, on the state of the Substack: given the properly horrendous response Substack offered after many prominent Substack writers offered a very thoughtful post in protest of the platform’s penchant for giving Nazis a place to spew their abhorrent views while censoring other creators’ works, I am looking for a new home for Loomings. I want to be sure that the process is seamless for my readers and that I’m not jumping from platform to platform.
(If any of you have insight into other options, I’m all ears!)
The next edition of Loomings will come in the first week of the new year, to put us back on schedule, with new aims and new purpose. In the coming days, I wish you much rest and peace.
I'm so sorry for your loss, Holly <3