For about eleven years a handful of neighbours have come round to my back porch on Tuesday afternoons with a bag of yarn and whatever they were stuck on. We call it the hook circle, though it is really just chairs, a glider, a jug of iced tea and a lot of counting out loud. Somebody always has a round that will not come out square. Somebody always has a new square to show. Nobody is ever in a hurry.
This site is that porch, for people who cannot get to it. Every pattern here has been through a Tuesday: worked on the glider, counted aloud, argued over if it needed arguing over, and written down the way I would tell it to the person in the next chair.
The four things the porch keeps to
Slow. One pattern a week, and some weeks none. A square that takes me three evenings is written up as three evenings, and it goes up when it is ready, not when a calendar says so. The porch is not a feed, and I do not want it to feel like one.
Neighbourly. A pattern is written the way a neighbour teaches: sitting beside you, one round at a time, with the stitch count said out loud at the end of each one so you know you are still together. The abbreviations are spelled out on the same page. Nothing is “as established”. If I would not say it to you on the glider, it does not go in the pattern.
Seasonal. The porch changes with the weather. Spring is flowers and small bright things, summer is suns and fruit and sea creatures for the children, autumn is leaves and mushrooms and owls, and winter is the blanket months, when the circle works in wool and nobody wants anything fiddly. The patterns follow the year the same way.
Honest. Every pattern says how long it actually took me — me, with my hands and my tension and my interruptions, not a tidy estimate. Where a round was awkward, the pattern says so before you reach it. Where the sample came out a little off-square, the pattern tells you that too.
How a pattern gets onto the porch
- It is worked in full on the glider, in the yarn and hook the materials list names.
- Every round is counted out loud, and the count is written in brackets at the end of the round. If the count and the photograph disagree, the pattern waits.
- The time it took is written down honestly, evenings and all.
- On Sunday evening it is written up in US terms, and goes up with its photograph.
When a reader writes in to say a round does not add up, I sit down with it the same week. A correction is not a failure; it is a Tuesday.
What the porch is not
- It is not a shop. Nothing is for sale, and there is no paid tier.
- It is not a sign-up wall. You can read every pattern without giving anyone an email address. The porch letter is there if you want it.
- It does not do holidays. Seasons, yes; holiday themes, no — that is a house rule, and it keeps the porch comfortable for everybody who sits on it.
- It does not host videos or downloadable files. The pattern is the page.
Money, briefly
The porch costs me hosting and yarn and a good deal of time, and none of that is charged to you. In time there may be a few affiliate links to yarn and hooks I actually use, and possibly some quiet advertising. If and when that happens, the affiliate disclosure will say so before anything else does, and it will never change what a pattern says.
Come and say hello
I am Marlene. Write to me about a round that will not come out, a square you finished, or a pattern you wish existed. I answer every letter, slowly.