The first word I drew from the words suggested on Patreon this month is Vulture, suggested by Enting, a Patreon supporter. Despite their bad reputation, vultures are pretty interesting and important as part of the ecosystem, helping to clean up carrion. I’ve known that for a long time. But this year I’ve gotten a closer look at how fascinating they can be, thanks to Foxfeather Zenkova, a wildlife educator who has been raising a yellow-headed vulture this year. You can see her vulture tweets here.

Each month, my Patreon backers have the chance to suggest words for me to encode as knitting stitches. I make three of these into knitting stitches each month: the second and third (posted on the first day of the next month) are drawn from the collection of new words; the first is drawn from the collection of unused words. A random number generator helps me choose these, and then I get to work, first turning the letters into numbers, then charting the numbers onto grids in various ways. Finally, when I make the chart into lace, I turn the marked squares into yarnovers and work out where to place the corresponding decreases. (I usually make lace; occasionally I make cables instead.) I also make a chart for any craft that uses a square grid for designing; this goes in a separate post.

The stitch patterns are not meant in any way to look like the original words; the words are the seeds of my creativity.