A few days ago, I finished crocheting my first ever blanket! I started teaching myself to crochet in late 2025 through YouTube tutorials, and I've fallen in love with it. In my review about a documentary called Yarn, I wrote this:
I've only just started to crochet in the last few months, and I can't tell you how much it has expanded my world and changed my life. I'm discovering a part of myself that I'd never made contact with until now—the craftswoman, the maker.
Crochet is magical to me. What do you mean all I do is take a hook and a skein of yarn and I can create all kinds of things? My projects so far: several scarves, a sleeve for my e-reader, a bag for one of my tarot decks, a blanket that will honor my mother.
In my grief, I often grab the hook and yarn and I start crocheting. Each stitch is mine alone. No machine can adequately mimic the look of crochet. Everything I make can only come from my hands—the same hands that cared for my mother in her final days, the same hands that are trying to make a life now without my parents. There is no map, no guide, no protection.
I have to believe I am capable of creating myself and my life anew. Crochet shows me what I can do. It also shows me what it means to transform. The yarn shape-shifts into infinite forms. And the best part is that, if you make a mistake, you just "frog" it (a cute word for unraveling the project). You don't have to cut anything. Just undo the stitches. The yarn remains whole. Nothing is lost. You start again as many times as you need until you find the right stitch, the right rhythm, the right form.
This blanket was created in honor of my mother. I took up crochet after her death. This is what I would have made for her if she were alive. She loved the color pink. I named it the Susie Q blanket because that's a nickname that her mom gave her as a little girl. Every time I wrap this blanket around me, I will think of my beautiful mother.
Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed.
— Jorie Graham, from "Prayer"
Bless the notebook that I always carry in
my pocket.
And the pen.
Bless the words with which I try to say
what I see, think, or feel.
With gratitude for the grace of the earth.
The expected and the exception, both.
For all the hours I have been given to
be in this world.
— Mary Oliver, from "Good Morning"
I speak
because I am shattered.
— Louise Glück, from "The Red Poppy"
"Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that. But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope."
— Charlie Kaufman, from a 2011 BAFTA lecture
"I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won’t be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.
It is the thing from which your art, your painting, your dance, your composition, your philosophical treatise, your screenplay is born."
— Charlie Kaufman, from a 2011 BAFTA lecture