Hey, guys! I hope that you’re doing okay. I don’t think anyone is doing well, but I hope you are okay. I’m hanging in there. Some days it’s more like I’m hanging on by a thread, but I take it as a win.

Most of you don’t know this about me, but my original career was Mental Health Counseling. I did a Masters in Counseling before switching gears to a graduate program in Medicine. To be honest, being a professional blogger/yarn/knitting person is not terribly off from being a Therapist in some ways. In both careers, I try to make a positive impact in people’s lives by providing practical coping mechanisms, whether those are coming in the form of constructive hobbies like knitting or through behavioral exercises. And in both cases I try to provide a platform where you can feel safe exploring what’s going on in your head. Here on the blog I aim to offer content that supports people, and makes them feel safe and welcomed. I’ve worked as a Therapist, and I’ve certainly had my fair share of therapy, but the relevant take-away here is that no one gets better by bottling it up.

So many people, myself included, are faced with a level of isolation and existential dread that we’ve never experienced before. This situation is totally outside of many of our frames of reference. So, I’m going to take a beat each week to spend some time oversharing with you building a rapport, and then we’ll talk books and I’ll thank you for hanging out with me by sharing the next piece of a free KAL. This limited edition pandemic series of Lattes & Llamas is brought to you by the message that you are not alone. You are not less-than or weak for feeling afraid. I’m planning to publish these pieces on Wednesdays. Admittedly, I’m crummy at publishing things when I say I will, so don’t read into it if a post goes up late. 

Usually, I try to keep this space upbeat. We are a yarn and knitting blog after all, and I want you to know that I thought long and hard about this series before deciding to roll it out. You probably didn’t click over to this space today expecting a long article about my personal struggles or to hear about COVID-19 for the 897th time this week. There’s yarn stuff at the bottom of this post. If you don’t have the mental space to read this, I won’t think any less of you for scrolling down to the big yarn header. The stuff below it is just about knitting and a revival of the L&L Book Club. While I hope that in writing this series I can help others feel less alone and to validate feelings you might be having about the crisis, it’s also okay if you just can’t handle this right now. 

Ready? Here we go.

My depression has been well controlled the last few years, but over the past month it’s moved back in and is making up for lost time. I’m going to be okay; I’ve got a lot of support. I’m not typing this as a cry for help, it’s just that I think we could all benefit from some unfiltered honesty. I think a lot of people, hell… Maybe most people, are struggling with their mental demons.

We are all in one of two situations: 

1. At home in a fishbowl with family or, if you live alone, totally isolated. 
2. Essential workers literally risking their lives every time they show up to work or spending days at home, barely treading water in a pool of your own thoughts. 

It’s easy for me to get in the mindset of feeling like I don’t have the right to feel the way I do in times of crisis. After all, so many others have it much worse. Even under the best of conditions, I tend to feel a lot of class guilt. The roots of that can absolutely be traced to events in my childhood, or maybe it’s just the way I’m wired or the way that society socializes women. Either way, I’m not coping well. I have an autoimmune disorder that I take Humira (an immunosuppressant) for. Have you seen the commercial talking about who’s at greatest risk of contracting/having major complications from the Novel Corona Virus? Yeah. That’s me they’re talking about. 

And maybe I could deal with it better if I could get drunk with my best friend, gush out my feelings, and knit, but I haven’t seen Jac in person in weeks. It feels like I’ve had a limb amputated. But we’re doing the right thing and practicing social distancing. I hate it. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me from going outside when she’s dropping off groceries is that her husband is exposed to the public all day long. I can’t take the risk of being near her when she has been exposed to his exposure.

Then, there is the fact that Kevin is an essential employee. For the first few weeks of the New Jersey/Pennsylvania shut down, he still had to go into work each day. Every night we wondered if he had brought home a death sentence for me. We didn’t talk about it, because there was nothing we could do about it. We had to hold it together for Mabel. She was already struggling over the loss of going to daycare, dance class, the playground, Target, and basically all of the things she loves to do. Kevin’s finally been granted Emergency Family Leave, and we can breathe a little easier. But it took him being exposed at work to someone who tested positive for COVID-19 to get that leave. He had a test at a drive through center, and thank the old gods and the new that it came back negative. 

Right now, I feel like this will never end. I find myself wondering if it will ever actually be safe for me to leave my house. I see our President go on TV every day and act like an even bigger idiot than I thought possible, and my bar for him was really low. I see people on Facebook talk about how it’ll be fine, only the elderly and immunocompromised people will die. That’s factually false, and I also didn’t know everyone was so very into eugenics. I realize most of them don’t know I have Psoriatic Arthritis and a thyroid disorder; when there isn’t a global epidemic, I don’t talk about it much. So maybe they wouldn’t say shit like that if they knew. Still, is that really what they think? 

The phrase “a new normal” has been thrown around a lot lately. I don’t know about you but at this point my skin crawls when I hear it.

This. Shit. Isn’t. Normal.

So don’t fracking normalize it. And most importantly, don’t feel bad if you’re not on board for it, planning Zoom cocktail parties, renovating your house, or making perfectly color-coded homeschooling charts. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to reject the notion of a new normal.

I don’t want you to misunderstand me here. It’s awesome if you want to throw virtual parties or are super into homeschooling or are using this time to do a bunch of DIY projects because they are bringing you joy or catharsis. I’m not in any way advocating that you should sit and stew and not retain support and contact through virtual platforms. You should. It’s important. What I’m saying is that I’ve seen message after message making it out like that’s the right or normal thing to do. And I want you to know it’s okay if you hate it. I hate it too. I do it, but I hate it and it took me a few weeks to get there. However, owning that hatred has been a real turning point in my mental state. I don’t have to enjoy this. I don’t have to post inspirational messages about how I have SO MUCH TIME TO KNIT. The “this is what knitters have been training for” meme is funny, but it’s not accurate. 

I’ve heard from several people that they are struggling to find the will to knit. Knitting is introspective for me and Jac, and probably for a lot of you too, which can be a not-so-great thing right now. I’m about to tell you about a free knit-along I’m starting, but I want to preface that by saying there’s no judgement for not feeling like picking up your needles. I’m designing it to be something that is just there if you feel like it, when you feel like it. And I promise not to make you get on Zoom. 

BOOK CLUB

all the cool kids are doing it

I’m bringing back book club for a limited run because I’m sick of Netflix. There’s a new Dresden Files book coming out in July, and the book after that is being released in September! And for reasons that I will muse on in the next post, I tend to turn to Harry Dresden re-reads when I feel depressed. I’m going to unapologetically include Dresden Files spoilers in these posts, so if that will make you unhappy and you want to read along, wait to read each post until you’ve finished the book it’s about.

I’m starting things off next Wednesday (April 29th) with the first book in the series: Storm Front. I realize you can’t just run out to the library and pick it up, but as of writing this, which is obviously subject to change since I have no control over these things, you can download the Kindle version for around $5. Also, most libraries have online ebook and audiobook downloads. I like to listen to the audiobooks on Audible, which is a little pricier, but they are very well narrated. If you would like to purchase a physical copy though, I highly recommend buying it through Bookshop. Jac is obsessed with them right now. They are an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores.

Anyway, the Dresden Files books are short, around eight hours each for the audiobooks. Although, if I were reading them in real-book-format, it would probably take six hours since I read faster than the narrator narrates.

YARN STUFF

I’ve got WIPs for days.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this really long post, I’m also going to host a free Knit-A-Long. I’m starting out with some handwarmers, and then I’ll do some socks, and after that we’ll see where my muse takes me. I’m planning to include the pattern in the posts. At some point, I’ll likely put them on Ravelry as full paid patterns, but I will be publishing them here as we go along and you won’t need to pay anything for that. I am very intentionally releasing them in small increments. My feeling is that if someone wants to do the KAL, but is overwhelmed with responsibilities at home because you have kids or parents that you’re taking care of, or if you are an essential worker, or your mental health makes it difficult to get things done right now, or any of the other 1,000 reasons that could keep someone from keeping up with the usual KAL pace, then this is for you. Each week I’ll release what will amount to 2-4 hours of knitting for the average-speed knitter, and the patterns are super simple. 

The posts will be structured to make it easy for you to consume the parts of them that are useful to you right now. The top of the post will be address Pandemic topics. There will be a clear visual marker to allow you to scroll right past that if you don’t want it. For some, that brings validation or catharsis while others might find it stressful or overwhelming. The middle of the post will be about that week’s book with another clear marker in case you want to skip spoilers, but want to get at the pattern. The bottom of the post will contain the next piece of a pattern. For the handwarmers, I’m starting next week using a Mini Vacation Yarn Set in ‘Swashbuckler’. The first one will be released in the style of an MKAL (Mystery Knit-A-Long), because I think that’s fun and the handwarmer design lends itself well to it.

The handwarmers are one-size-fits most as they incorporate a lot of ribbing. I used around 7 grams of each of the 5 colors (so about 50 yards of each color) to complete the pair. You don’t need a mini-set. This is a good project for stash busting if you’ve got some random balls of leftover fingering weight yarn. I worked them on US1 needles. I also used beads, but those are optional. That said, I think when in doubt, put a bead on it. 

If you want to gather your materials in advance to cast on with me next week you will need:

• US 1 Needles (or size needed to reach gauge) in long circulars to work in magic loop, or DPNs.
• Five colors of fingering weight yarn, with at least 50-60 yards per color. You’ll want some contrast in these as follows: Colors will be labeled A, B, C, D, E. They will be used in that order. You will want a strong contrast between any two colors that touch. So A should contrast with B. B should contrast with A and C (but doesn’t need to contrast with D and E). C should contrast with B and D, but doesn’t need to contrast with A and E. And so on. When you line them up in the order you want to use them any two colors that touch should have noticeable contrast.
• I used 16 beads total, 8 on each glove. You can omit them altogether, or use fewer. Live your best bead life.
• The pattern is worked using slipped stitches. There will be NO stranded colorwork, and on any given round you are only using one color.
• Gauge isn’t critical for this project, it’s a super forgiving fit, but if you know you are a particularly tight or loose knitter, check your gauge and size up or down your needles appropriately. Gauge should be about 24 sts = 2″ on K1P1 ribbing in the round. Note that you should check your gauge on a relaxed (unstretched) piece of ribbing. You should be able to stretch the ribbing to nearly twice it’s unstretched size.

~Megan-Anne

I promise that most of these posts won’t be this long.