Kim Werker Nothing is too precious to try at least once.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of talking with Sister Diane of Craftypod and Brenda Dayne of Cast On for their amazing—and wonderfully different—podcasts.

If this is your first visit to my blog, please take a look around and write a comment to say hello. Subscribe to the blog (link in the top-right) to follow the peaks and valleys of my creative adventure, and follow me on Twitter for teenier, more frequent updates and thoughts. I’d love to hear what you think about the things we discussed in the interview(s).

If you’re reading this but didn’t know I had an epic month of talking to amazing podcasters in December, here’s the skinny:

Brenda and I talked for a long time about creativity and creative life, and I loved hearing how she edited our hour-long conversation into a much more concise story. I learned about myself just listening to it, and I thank her so much for that insight. Her focus on the Joss Whedon interview really brings home to me how important that experience really was, and more generally reminds me why his work resonates with me so strongly. I also very much relate to what Brenda discusses at the end of the show, about creating for myself first and foremost. Go make some tea and have a listen.

Diane scheduled our interview several weeks in advance, and she wanted to talk about crafting a creative career. Only thing was, I couldn’t tell her yet that I was in the process of leaving Interweave Crochet. I was finally able to make my public announcement three days before the interview, and I was fairly confident Diane was going to shoot spitballs at me from all the way in Portland. Of course she didn’t, being the kind soul that she is, and instead we just went on with the show. We talked about crafty business life, and about one of my favourite topics: innovation.

These two shows are proving to be a great starting point for me as I begin the new year. Having spoken with these two women whom I respect immensely about things we find so important, it’s as if I’ve laid the foundation for my next adventure. Now to start on the frame…

Happy New Year! Thank you all so much for participating on my blog, for chatting with me on Twitter, for being such talented and interesting people to work and play with. I wish you all the very best in 2009, and I look forward to sharing in many adventures with you.

Unlike last year, when I was eager to put the previous terrible year behind me, this year I’m simply eager for the year in front of me. Still, I enjoy the exercise of looking back and summing up, of tying up some mental loose ends and tidying things before moving on. I’ve taken last year’s meme and altered it to my liking.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
   At the beginning of the year I went on a knit and crochet project-finishing rampage. I don’t know if I’ll ever do that again, but it was gratifying while it lasted. I worked on a television show for the first time, not counting being a guest. I wrote fiction for the first time since I was forced to in high school. I haven’t touched my NaNoWriMo story (nor the other project I’ve been working on with a couple of friends but haven’t mentioned here before) in a long time, but I will get back to it (and the other) soon. I sold a website, and though it didn’t make me a gazillionnaire it was not only the right thing to do but also makes me feel very much a part of the ‘00 internet generation. I did my first recorded interview (see the #22 below).
2. Did anyone close to you give birth?
   In addition to cousins, our good friends had a baby in October. We’re definitely at that stage in life when babies are becoming ubiquitous.
3. What countries did you visit?
   The U.S. and England.
4. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
   Sustainable creativity.
5. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
   November 4th, 2008: The election of Barack Obama. In the early days of the Democratic primaries, I was very torn between Clinton and Obama. After reading up and talking it out, I came to believe that Obama was the best choice. If you’re not prepared to vote for hope and change, how can you maintain any hope for change? Beyond that, though, I think Obama’s intelligence and temperament will bring good leadership to the U.S. for the first time in years and years. Given the bleak present and outlook into the new year and beyond, only time will tell if he’ll be able to be a popular President, but I have no doubt he’ll be a good one.
6. What accomplishments from 2008 are you proudest of?
   The online crafts community coming together and my resulting interview with Joss Whedon (i.e., the collective accomplishment). The Fall 2008 issue of Interweave Crochet, which is the one I think first fully embodied what I wanted the magazine to be, both in style and in content. What I wrote about Twilight. Getting our book club back up and running. And, certainly my decision to move on in my career.
7. What was the best gift you received?
   My iPhone. Two days after my birthday.
8. Where did most of your money go?
   To the bank. Which thankfully didn’t collapse.
9. What did you get really, really excited about?
   I was totally jacked up about that interview (see #6). It was so much fun to talk to so many excited crafty people about it, and to make new online friends as a result. And I talked with the one person whose work I most admire. And I discovered I really love interviewing people and am in fact hoping to do much more of it in the coming year. I’ve never had so much fun online.
10. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    a) happier or sadder? Happier.
    b) thinner or fatter? A little bit fatter.
    c) richer or poorer? Richer.
11. What do you wish you’d done more of?
    Spent time with my friends, crocheted, crafted in general.
12. What do you wish you’d done less of?
    Worry. I did a bunch of worrying, especially over the summer when I was battling my feelings about work.
13. How did you spend Christmas?
    By not celebrating Christmas in not-snowy-enough-to-enjoy-skiing Whistler. (Until, of course, it got snowy. And then the dog got scared and ran away. But then we found her, and all was happy and good.)
14. What was your favorite TV program?
    Mad Men. Even in the same year we watched the first two seasons of The Wire, which we’d been assured we would think is the best television show ever. No. Mad Men. Better even than the first half of the last season of Battlestar Galactica. (Oh man, I can’t wait for the second half of the last BSG season!)
15. What was the best book you read?
    Nonfiction: Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, by George Monbiot
    Fiction: Blindness, by Jose Saramago, or The Road, by Cormac McCarthy - it’s hard to pick
    In Between: What is the What, by Dave Eggers
16. What was your greatest musical discovery?
    The Wave Pictures
17. What was your favorite film of this year?
    I really didn’t see that many. I’m surprised to realize that, actually. I certainly thought the most after seeing Synecdoche, New York.
18. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
    We had a barbecue then went to see our friend’s band and danced the night away; I turned 32.
19. What kept you sane?
    Greg. Friends. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
20. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
    Again with the Joss Whedon. The entire existence of Dr. Horrible rocked my world. Also, of course, Barack Obama.
21. What political issue stirred you the most?
    The passage of California’s Proposition 8 (an abomination), the election of Barack Obama.
22. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008?
    If you don’t try, you’ll never know. When you try something new, go big or go home!

Thanks, internets! Have you seen Cleo?

UPDATE (8:20PM): We’re back from the vet, who cleared Cleo of any major injury. Phew! She’s a bit banged up, but given her day that’s hardly surprising. Around 3:30 this afternoon, my husband and brother-in-law tracked her to a location around 2 km north of where she ran off. She was about 200 metres above the highway, stuck fifteen feet up on a narrow ledge in the middle of a cliff. She whined when they called her, and they followed the sound. She’s clean and fed and has some anti-inflammatory medication in her, and she’s asleep on the rug with us, in front of the fire.

I cannot thank you all enough for your help spreading the word about Cleo today. Your blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, and most of all your kind and hopeful words truly kept me sane when otherwise my overactive imagination would have put me into fits. Celebrating with you when she was found was even better.

Here’s the path my husband is pretty sure Cleo took today; given that he followed her trail most of the way, I figure it’s pretty accurate. The poor dog was gone for seven hours.

UPDATE (3:35PM): Cleo is found! My husband and brother-in-law found her, and they’re on their way home. Thank you all so much for your support and help! It has truly kept me sane all day, and I am at the ready to pay it back (or forward) whenever you need it.

—

Please help us find our dog. This morning at around 8:30, our friendly mutt Cleo got spooked by the sound of avalanche blasting at Whistler-Blackcomb and ran off into the woods of Emerald Estates in Whistler, BC. My husband was able to follow her tracks (to his best guess, at least) to Highway 99, heading north away from the blasting. There are few homes or businesses on that stretch of road, and I’m trying to reach as many people in the Whistler area as possible with hope that someone will recognize her if she turns up. Would you please help spread the word by posting a link to this blog post on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other account you have? I know very well how wonderful it can be to be a part of something absurdly fun online; I’m hoping you might help be a part of something more serious. It’s supposed to snow again tonight, and we very much want our dog to be safe and warm.

Cleo is a 6-year-old shepherd or husky-ish mix; she’s smart and sweet, is wearing a red collar with several tags, and is timid around strangers. She’s a Vancouver dog, but has spent a lot of time at Whistler and should know her way back to Emerald if she hasn’t run too far off to lose her orientation. She cut her front-right paw a couple of days ago but was getting around fine (as evidenced by her ambitious flight). If you see her, please let me know - kim AT kimwerker DOT com. Thank you!

If you’ve clicked over here from the Yarn Market News e-newsletter, welcome. (Welcome, also, if you’ve come from somewhere else!)

Here is the post I wrote about my decision to leave Interweave Crochet, here is the interview I did with Joss Whedon (and the transcript), and here is more about the sale of CrochetMe.com.

In the coming year I’ll be approaching my creative life a bit more broadly as I rediscover crochet, get back to spinning and knitting, and explore writing and online media full time.

I hope to see you at TNNA next month (I’ll be taking a 42-hour train ride to get there!). To keep up with me and the work I’ll be doing, please subscribe to my blog (in the upper-right sidebar).

Nothing like going into a new year with a heaping pile of books to read. After considering high-school reads I want to revisit, I stumbled upon the 9 Books for 2009 challenge to work through books in your TBR (to be read) stack. Actually, it was very useful to even gather together a comprehensive stack, collecting books from shelves and piles around the house. Here’s what I’ll be ticking off my list in ‘09, by category and with notes:

• Long: Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon (this is the most recent addition to my TBR pile, and topping 800 pages, it’s longer than most books I read. I was tempted to put Infinite Jest into this slot, but I need to read that one without a challenge hanging over my head)
• Free: On the Road, by Jack Kerouac (I got this at a free-book thing when I was in university; I should have read it then)
• Dusty: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou (I don’t remember when I picked up this obviously used book, but I’ve had it on my shelf for many years)
• Used: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (this book came up in our high-school discussion; I read half of it the summer I turned twenty-one. Time to read it all the way through)
• Letter: Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury (the “k” for Kim and wicked)
• Str (strange genre for me): Knit with Courage, Live with Hope, by Annie Modesitt (I don’t usually read memoirs, but I very much want to read Annie’s. This book seems to be incorrectly attributed on GoodReads, so I linked to the author’s page)
• Cover: Gentlemen of the Road, by Michael Chabon (it’s a pretty cover, and I love reading Chabon)
• AN (alive or not; award-nominated): Maus I, by Art Spiegelman (I can’t believe I haven’t read this yet)
• Distance: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (takes place in Greece, which is around 8,000 km from Vancouver)

While going through books I haven’t read, I discovered I have a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, which is on my revisit-from-high-school list, so I’ll put that on the pile for 2009, too. The Grapes of Wrath is also on that list, so yay double whammy. Also, there will be the book-club books.

It’s possible I’m being unrealistically ambitious by leaving such little room for impulsive reads. We’ll see.

What’s on your reading list for 2009?

PS Here’s the list of high-school books I want to revisit; I’m not committing to read them in 2009, though at least I’ll start with the two I’ve already mentioned:

• Lord of the Flies
• Catch-22
• A Separate Peace
• Animal Farm
• The Scarlet Letter
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Middlemarch
• The Handmaid’s Tale
• The Great Gatsby
• Little Women
• Flowers for Algernon
• The Grapes of Wrath

When I was twenty-five and working at a job that was grueling and thankless and rendered me suffering from stress-induced stomach aches, I eventually decided I’d had enough and I quit. I was engaged at the time, and living with my fiancé. We were to be legally married three months later.

When I told my mother I’d quit my job, the first words out of her mouth were, “What about health insurance?” I might have replied that I’d quit for my health, but I can’t remember. I’m sure I told her that my fiance’s company, in their overwhelming generosity, had offered to pay my COBRA fees for the three months until his insurance would cover me as his spouse. Since I spent the next several months working as a substitute teacher, the $300/month would have been a massive burden. I was very, very lucky. (On the flip side, how unlucky was I that I lived in a place that didn’t recognize common-law partnerships?)

Six months after we got married we moved to Canada, where my husband grew up. And that is why I am able to live the life I want to live, to make the living I want to make.

Because my health insurance is no longer tied to my job.

Oh, and it’s affordable.

And good.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you might have an idea about how much I’ve required significant healthcare in the last couple of years. Enough that I now have a sufficient medical history that should I ever get pregnant again I likely wouldn’t cross the border at all, in deference to my pre-existing conditions and the pesky travel insurance that might not hold up in the face of complications.

Annie Modesitt has urged me to write about how having guaranteed health insurance has affected my work life, and all I can say about it, really, is that it has made my work possible. End of story. If I need or want to move on in my career, I can do so in my own time, at my own pace, in my own way. If I get pregnant, I’ll be a high-risk case from conception but I won’t have a financial concern about it. Which seems pretty right to me; my concern should be about my health.

In April, if I’ve had a good year, the Canadian government will take more of my money than the U.S. government would if I were living there, and I pay every dime of it with gratitude.

Yes, I’m a lefty and I believe very strongly that people have certain fundamental rights, but my personal experience has nothing to do with my politics. It has everything to do with my own quality of life. Not having to worry about health insurance allows me to be happy in my work in ways I couldn’t be otherwise—not with how variable a freelancer’s living is. It allows me to see a doctor when I need to, without a co-pay, and without concern about paying for tests she wants to run. It allows me to pursue any professional interest I have without going through the gatekeeper of traditional employment. It makes my health concerns my personal concerns, not something I have to argue about with pencil-pushers over the phone. Ever.

So maybe I will make this a little bit political. For the first time in many years, an administration that is open to providing universal health coverage will be in power in the U.S. Regardless of your political leanings, think hard about what you would personally gain from such a thing.

(P.S. It’s a fallacy when opponents to universal health care say the result would be that everyone would get the lowest-denominator, shittiest care. In most of the rest of the industrialized world, people enjoy government-supported health care. Yes, everyone has gripes; no system is perfect. But I’ll take this imperfect system over the pain- and stress-inducing American system any day.)

Over at Lateral Action (a new-to-me blog I’ve now subscribed to), Mark McGuinness posted this video of choreographer Twyla Tharp talking about motivation and failure in creative pursuits.

I’m most taken with what she says about doing what you love and having the money follow. However counterintuitive it might seem, this is one of the most profound things I’ve experienced in my own career. CrochetMe.com was a labour of love that never made a dime of profit, but it presented me with outstanding professional opportunities. Even on a smaller scale, when I write from my passion, far more people respond than when I force myself to sit down and write about things I think people are interested in.

When I keep in mind the core principles that animate me—and I use the term quite literally: when I’m excited, I wave my arms about—everything else, including the money, comes more easily. When I force it, I get nowhere.

What do you think? Does anything she says resonate with you?

Surfing blogs the other day, I came across a reference to The Scarlet Letter that thrust me back to my Grade 10 English class. I never, ever liked having to read novels for school, but looking back now I wonder what I’d think of them as an adult—both because I’ve reached my full cognitive development and because I wouldn’t have to discuss them in a room filled with other people who didn’t feel like reading these books. A great Twitter discussion resulted, and I added to my list from people’s replies about books they read as an adolescent and have re-read since or would like to revisit.

• We read Animal Farm in Grade 7. The people who wrote that curriculum should be fired. Seriously? Twelve-year-olds? This one is at the top of my list to read with adult neural pathways established.
• Next is The Scarlet Letter. I enjoyed it in Grade 10, and I’m curious about what I’ll think of it having had some life experience.
• Then there’s To Kill a Mockinbird, which I loved as an adolescent. I think I’ll love it as much, if in new ways, now.
• In Grade 7 I read Black Boy. The book made a big impact on me then, and writing a paper about it became my first real lesson in revision. A lot of revision. That’s my most salient memory of this book, and it deserves better. This one’s on the list, for sure.
• Finally, A Separate Peace. I don’t remember anything of it except that I enjoyed reading it. And so I’d like to read it again.

Two books lots of people read in high school that I didn’t but that I’d like to: Lord of the Flies and Catch-22.

Our next book-club book is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I understand is a popular high-school read; I’ve just started it and already know I’ll love it.

Are there books you read in school that you’d like to revisit now? Books you didn’t read that you’d like to have read?

I’ve recently started to get to know Linda Permann, who’s delightfully crafty, and is full-tilt raising funds to help her brother-in-law as he battles kidney cancer and can’t work.

I’ve donated a copy each of Get Hooked Again and Crochet Me to the cause; all proceeds will go to Jasenn and his family. I’ll sign each one however you’d like, and I’ll include a ball of yarn and appropriate hook to make it more holiday gift givable.

So, go shop!

[ETA (a couple of hours after I posted this): It occurred to me this morning that in working so hard to get the interview itself posted, I failed to ask you about your reactions. This post is my long-winded way of trying to remedy that. Now I'll smile sheepishly and head off to bed.]

So, that interview with Joss Whedon, eh? Yeah, that was a major rush. As I’ve said before, I am not a fangirl. I’ve never been a fangirl—of anything. In fact, my default is usually to distance myself from anything other people are compelled to shriek or swoon over. No boy bands in my youth; no Corey or Corey heart attacks.

But again, as I’ve said before, I am a fan of Joss Whedon (still, if I were to bump into him, I would neither shriek nor faint). There are few people whose work I respect more; I respect him both as an artist and as a businessperson. He has a vision—of the grand sort—and he doesn’t compromise it. He’s a creative genius who manages to play nicely with others, and the results are pieces of pop-culture that are fun to watch and still pack a punch. And when he’s done, he speaks honestly about his work and his experiences. He’s infinitely quotable, but not because he tries to be, and not only because of his trademark hilarious sarcasm; people are quotable when they speak their own truth.

Much of my admiration for him, really, stems from my own desire to do the same. So you might imagine how incredible it was to speak to him, and to have him say things that, were I not concentrating so hard on doing a proper interview and on not using inappropriate language, would have led me to nod myself into a concussion and to exclaim that I’ve said some of those very same things myself, and possibly to muse aloud about how I might love to work with him someday on something.

During the interview, I was most taken with his simple description of what he sees as the difference between art and craft: that art involves a loss of control. This strikes me as profound in its simplicity, and its simplicity speaks volumes to me. What do you think of it? He talked more about it in the interview. Do you agree with him? Do you see other contributing factors?

I was also tremendously satisfied to talk with him about online independent media. You may have noticed that I ended up working in a lot of questions that crafters sent to me before the interview, but the questions about online media were from me. Even before it was released and proceeded to become immensely successful, I was blown away by what he and his collaborators were attempting to do with Dr. Horrible, both because I am a very big fan of trying things that have never been done before—and trying them in a smart way that’s also creatively satisfying—and because he collaborated with people he clearly has a great time with, and made something that fully transferred that good time to an audience.

I didn’t plan to conduct the interview just as I was getting ready to announce all the crazy things I’m getting into, but it sure ended up happening at a time when I’m extremely focused on making very deliberate choices about what I want to do with my time and how I want to help support my family as I do it. Joss said a lot of things that will fuel me in my quest, and that will keep me remembering to stay in touch with my own vision and principles as I explore my art and craft.

Did anything he said resonate with you?