Welcome to the Cafe.

Almost three years ago, I started a knitting blog called Affiknitty. At the time, I was a married, stay-at-home mom with a five-year-old autistic son and a two-year-old (mostly) typically developing son. I rarely got out of the house. My relationships with other adults were largely limited to my parents and my older son’s therapists. My marriage was not working, I was isolated and lonely, and I needed a creative outlet. Knitting was one such outlet, but I missed writing. After finding other knitting blogs, I thought Hey, I could do that.

I never thought that anyone other than me would actually read it. But people did read it. At one point, I had lots of visitors every day (thank you, Eunny). People commented. They came back. I began reading very many blogs. I found many kindred souls and made many friends. And, if there was one thing I needed at that point, it was friends.

Since the summer of 2005, I have been through the lowest times of my life. But during this time, I also found the courage to change the things about my life that weren’t working. Today, I’m working again, as an investment banker, and I’m a single mom now. It’s a cliche at this point, but in my case it is true. Knitting taught me something important about life. Sometimes you just have to frog and start something new. It’s hard to take apart what you’ve made, but if you don’t, you’re just going to end up with a mess.

Since I started working, I’ve rarely posted at Affiknitty. Of course, part of the problem is that I have much less time. I’m not finishing knitting projects at the rate that I used to. But also, I sort of feel that Affiknitty represents a very different time in my life and that it’s time for something new. I’d like to keep blogging, but I don’t know that I can still maintain a blog that’s (almost) exclusively comprised of detailed posts on crafting. I was, until recently, pretty careful not to write about personal things on Affiknitty, but I think I might like to do that here. Sometimes, I’d like to write about Cleveland, music, autism, beer, investment banking, movies, food, or any of a number of other things that I currently find fascinating or frustrating or fun. But there will always be coffee, with wool.