BUSY MONTH! Patches, zines, new knitting patterns, seitan, and more!

I can’t believe it’s already mid-October! I wanted to first say, if you’re local here in Portland, there’s this awesome fundraiser street fair / art sale happening on Saturday and my new large patches will be for sale there!! It’s perfect for stopping by after the big downtown march—or instead of that if you prefer a smaller crowd!

Those large patches were printed for my first round of packages for patreon members in September! I’ll get back to those and show you my printing process at the end of this post!

First, speaking (a second ago) of the big march on Saturday, I just released this free pattern for FCK ICE Frog Mod eyes (on my free patreon here, ravelry here, payhip here) to add to a hat and they are super quick to knit up so you have time to raid your stash and knit a pair! The pattern is for any gauge so if you have green, white, and black yarn in the same weight as each other, you’re good to go! Red is optional if you have that too. I also decided to make my old Freak Out! balaclava pattern free to accompany it (ravelry; payhip)!

I’ve done so much in the last month! I got suuuper obsessed with redesigning my old Remixed recycled yarn making ebook (from almost ten years ago!) into a zine, and released that to my patreon members. I also added it to ravelry and payhip with the ebook, so if you buy the ebook (or complete Remixed collection) you’ll get the printable zine file too!

It’s pretty huge (32 pages including covers, using 8 sheets of paper to print) with all the photos edited to high-contrast greyscale. It’s the same as the ebook but freshly edited, a few smaller bits removed for space, but nothing important, and no hat pattern. I love how it looks—I think it works really nicely in this zine format!

As the original ebook did, it includes tons of information: about choosing sweaters that will work for recycling, taking them apart and turning them into yarn, finding the yardage and weight of your new yarn, and using it in different ways, including spinning and plying it if you have access to a wheel!

A great way to lower your consumption of new things but still enjoy your hobbies is to switch to at least some of the materials you use being reclaimed in some way. Making recycled yarn is also a low-cost, fun project itself! I love doing it!

I also released a new (well, newly self-published) pattern last month! Winterthur was originally in Stranded Magazine in 2017, now available to everyone as a solo pattern in my style. This pattern pdf went out to all knit-tier patreon members last month, and is on ravelry and payhip.

These fun fingerless mitts are worked sideways, flat, with slip-stitch colorwork, then joined around to work the garter stitch gusset and thumb in the round. Twisted stitches, or mini-cables, make the patterning (it’s easy to work them without a cable needle!) and you’ll only need to hold one yarn at a time.

The repeating pattern is relatively easy to memorize once you get going, making these a pretty quick knit! They use sport weight yarn in two colors and the pattern is written for three sizes. The self-published pattern includes the stitch pattern fully written & charted and illustrated tutorials for the provisional cast-on, short rows, and twisted stitches techniques.

My payhip knitting tutorials page now includes jpg images which you can download of all my new illustrated tutorials! I have also put them on my free patreon. I’m planning a knitting tutorials zine soon, so let me know other techniques you want to see as illustrated diagrams!

So I think everything from my September patreon has been mentioned now—here is what the packages looked like! Everyone got: a large printed patch, a letter about the patch design/quote and related song lyrics, a copy of the Remixed zine, a copy of my 2024 movies zine, copies of my Saucy Noodles/Rice, seitan, and pizza recipe zines, and a set of four thermal-printed stickers. Knit-tier members also got copies of my two flag pattern zines, and a copy of Coloring Book!

This first month’s package was extra large, as an extra thank you to those who trusted me enough to sign up in the very first month! In the future, packages will be smaller, but you may get slightly special packages on your first month and on your birthday month!

I realized when linking all those things above that I never actually talked about my seitan-making zine here on the blog!

One day my seitan log will have something to say about this. I typed the word “log” so many times while writing my seitan zine that I had to have some fun with it. The free downloadable zine is on my free Patreon, along with a lengthy post about seitan ingredients, the making process, and all the testing I did to create the zine!

Seitan is a vegan meat substitute made with gluten (sorry gluten-free friends, it’s not for you) which can be flavored and cooked in different ways and used in all kinds of different meals. It’s very high in protein, delicious, and relatively easy to make!

I used to use a recipe that involved simmering the logs in a pot of broth and it was more annoying to make, but discovering the baked method has been a game changer for me, and I can use my air fryer’s “bake” setting to make it go faster and not heat up the house! My other favorite method is steaming it in the instant pot, which is also a quicker method and also avoids heating the house. But if you don’t have either of those devices, a normal oven and stove work fine! The zine includes all these methods.

I love seitan in sandwiches, tacos, pastas, stir fries… basically anything that could use a little meatiness. So versatile!

So, NOW everything from September has been talked about, phew! I mailed out the packages on October 1st. I’ll usually try to mail them out during the last week of each month, so if you sign up any time during the month you’ll get that month’s package.

So far for October I’ve released one thing to all paid tiers, a cute zine. I’ll talk about it later along with another related October item, so here’s just a glimpse for now. Sign up at any paid tier to get it!

And now, as promised at the top, more about that patch and my screenprinting process! The words are from a speech given by Arundhati Roy at the World Social Forum in Brazil on January 27th, 2003. I first encountered a modified version of it as a song lyric by the fabulous Grace Petrie in the song The Losing Side, a favorite of mine since it was released in 2021.

Want to see how I make my patches?

I design a stencil in illustrator with vectors. This means altering text and any other elements to be able to function as a stencil—so no holes, etc.

I export that file and bring it into the app for my die cutter, resize as needed, and send it to the cutter.

With my die cutter loaded with a plastic sheet (I mostly use reclaimed transparency sheets that I get from Scrap but you can also use laminating sheets, run through a laminator with no paper between the layers, for higher-quality stencils), I cut the stencil. Then I tape the stencil(s) to the bottom of a blank screenprinting screen, and set up my screenprinting station. I mix a little fixer into my ink so that the patches don’t need to be heat set. Totally worth it!

I print my sheets of patches onto fabric. I spray 1-2 light mistings of water for each sheet. For this large patch, a sheet of patches was only 4, but when I print small patches I can squeeze like 20 different stencil designs onto one screen.

I hang the fabric outside to dry. Once dry, I cut the fabric into the individual patches. All done!

Now that I’m making several new things monthly for my patreon it’s easy to fall behind telling you about them here! I’m a little better at posting things on instagram, so follow me there (or join the patreon, of course!) if you want to see what I’m making in a timely manner!