January 2026

I started this year with lots of accomplishments for myself in mind, and then promptly settled into a comfortable routine of quietly crafting and disconnecting from my computer in the evenings. Which, is an accomplishment within itself, I think! But did not help me achieve what I hoped to.

On January 3rd, I recorded a video wherein I talked about what I thought about 2026, and some of the things I have in mind for it. You can find that video below, along with a simplified transcript below in case you don't have the time or desire to listen to me ramble for 18 minutes!

Video Transcript

On this 3rd day of 2026, I am reflecting on the last year, the last couple of years and looking forward to what this year holds. This is largely me thinking out loud about what my efforts mean to me, what I want to do, and how that shapes my relationship to everyone else!

I have stepped back from teaching. I know a few folks are aware, but I will go into it a little bit. I received a promotion at my day job, which was great! But with that promotion came, "You are expected to travel more frequently", and I feel like I am unable to maintain commitments the way I was able to before this became the case.

And so, unfortunately that means that teaching is not something I can do in person right now, because I can't be as flexible as I was before. It was a hard decision because do enjoy teaching! I like sharing my knowledge and seeing you guys learn and grow and that is just so much fun to me! Being able to share my progress and show you guys what is possible with crochet is huge to me as well, because I love enabling your creativity.

I am also feeling like crochet has reached a plateau, and towards the end of the year last year I also, finally, am understanding knitting. And so, my focus this year is much less on crochet and much more on building my foundations in knitting. My  ultimate goal is, next year, being able to take the Craft Yarn Council's course on being a knitting instructor. But I cannot do that as a beginner. I need more time, I need more experience, I need to make more mistakes! So that I can tell YOU how to fix them! Because I've already been there, I've already fixed them. So I don't want to rush that.

That being said, I think a lot of this year is going to be a process year. I have some crochet projects in the works, I have a potential crochet pattern that I want to write and release. I am going to attempt to write a crochet hat pattern! I am organizing a hat drive at the beginning of this year! It started two days ago! The point of the hat drive is to encourage us to create for charity, for the cancer patients in our community. Just make some quick, soft hats; build your skills on a project that you don't feel super invested in, you can just kind of go with the flow and really have fun with it and learn something new; or not! Do something that you're really comfortable with and take a break from learning. Either way!

I have a website for that as well that I will link. Everyone is welcome. I really encourage all of my past students, anyone who has not taken a class with me, anyone who is not part of Yarn and Coffee, my yarn group that meets twice a month; everyone! I want to encourage everyone to participate because it feels really good to give back to the community with your time and your effort and your skill.

I am currently trying to come up with some surveys. I know we all love surveys so much! But I'm not sure how else to gauge interest. What I'm thinking of doing is quarterly workshops. Maybe that looks like a waitlist, and as soon as we have that waitlist filled with five people, then the workshop can continue. This is a much more structured format than everyone is used to with my classes. Usually it's you sign up, we have yarn, bring your hook, and we're just gonna hang out and work on whatever you wanna work on!

This is gonna be so much more structured. Yarn may be supplied, and so you'll be asked what preferences you have, if you have any preferences and there will be a very specific lesson plan for these so that whatever time period it is; if it's two hours for two days for a total of four hours, you are getting the absolute best out of that time that you can.

I need to survey to find out what you want, what is interesting to you? Because crochet is huge! It's absolutely huge! There's so many things! You can go garments, you can go plushies, you can go home décor, pillows and blankets, and kitchen goods and baskets. I mean it's immense. And if you want to dive into garments, what kind of garments? Do you wanna make a sweater? Do you wanna make a skirt? Do you just wanna make hats and accessories? All of those, you are using the same stitches but you are applying them in so many different ways. So, the workshops would be way more focused, with some core skills that can be applied to everything. So maybe the first hour or 30min of every workshop is "We're gonna learn how to read patterns and charts". If that's something all of you are very interested in focusing on, that's going to make it into the workshop. But I need your feedback.

So that's going to be something that I'm hoping to get out very soon! Work starts on Monday, which is the 5th, so I know I don't have a whole lot of time. But I'm going to work really hard to try and get a good foundation going for the rest of the year. In the meantime, while I'm not teaching, if anyone is looking for support, please come to the group. It might not be me and it might not be 1-on-1 because I am there to socialize and make stuff myself, but! A quick question? No problem. Just get me unstuck, please come and ask me.

I am also considering, if there is interest, doing virtual sessions that can be scheduled where my schedule allows, and that would be a quick 15 or 30 minute single payment zoom call where we sit down and you describe what you are experiencing and we try to figure it out together. That is not set up yet. I would anticipate that it would be ready around March, because I have too many other things going on presently. I will announce when it is set up.

As far as the knitting goes, I have had so much more interest in that recently. Because I feel like my crochet skill has plateaued, and it has been so many years that I have wanted to knit; crochet has been fun and I have enjoyed it thoroughly, but I love the look of knit fabric. I totally get when crochet designers are trying to design "knit-like" things, but it never works out for me. Crochet is just too bulky to feel good vs a knit fabric. I am so interested in building those skills and that's going to pay off next year. I hope I can become a knitting resource by 2027, or at least be on the path of becoming a knitting resource. Those courses take a lot of time as well, the Craft Yarn Council courses take about 6 months, so potentially I would be finished by mid 2027; provided life does not do anything unpredictable!

It may be something that is exclusive at Yada Yada Pottery or they may pop up on my website, but I am considering doing yarn kits. This would be a pattern, perhaps a local designer's pattern with the yarn and tools needed to create the object, or it may be a pattern I have designed. Those may be coming soon. I will try to be more vocal about updates like these!

Another goal I have is for my blog to be updated more frequently. Instagram tends to be my go-to for its simplicity; I take a photo and pop it into my stories and then people see it! But not everyone is on Instagram. So I'm going to try to be more aware of when I'm taking progress shots and do quicker blog posts. I have a mentality that my blog posts need to be very thought out. The post I made in November about the Worth of Crochet was about a day and a half of thinking and editing and second-guessing. But that's another thing I want to work on. Brief blog posts are okay. Updates on my blog can be delivered to your email, if you're interested! Just subscribe!

Blog posts will also hopefully include information about current local events as well! Including what is going on with Yarn and Coffee, which has so far only existed on Facebook. I am going to "merge" the two. Roving Wren is my online personality, but Yarn and Coffee and Roving Wren are connected by interest. I do not want to blur the lines between the two: Roving Wren is my shop and Yarn and Coffee is a community. But not using Roving Wren as a voice for Yarn and Coffee is losing out on some visibility for it, that could be really useful to some. It's not an effort to use Yarn and Coffee to drive traffic to Roving Wren, but the opposite! So my blog will hopefully include things like "Yarn and Coffee is taking a field trip to Orlando Distaff Day!" which is definitely happening on January 10! Or "Yarn and Coffee is attending the first annual Sunkissed Fiber Festival in Tampa, on January 25th!" Those types of events will get more visibility on my website, but also the Yarn and Coffee website (which is focused on the hat drive at the moment but will have information on those events in the future).

This has been a really long-winded video! But it might have been the easiest way to be transparent about what's going on right now. If you enjoyed listening, and this was a good format for you, let me know! If not, I'll go back to showing more of my hands and what they're doing! Keep in touch! I'm on Slack, you can reach me by email. Let me know how you're doing and how your journey is going! I want to hear from you and share in your progress, even though I can't be in a classroom with you! Have a beautiful and happy beginning to 2026, and I look forward to talking with you soon!

Looking back at this video, I feel very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. But this is just another reason why I am feeling like taking a step back from teaching was the right move for me. It has been a combination of a voracious appetite for knitting skills, a pattern test I am rushing to finish, and the knit hats I have been making for the hat drive I mention that are at the front of my attention. Administrative things have been falling through the cracks as a result.

Since I have mentioned it a couple of times, here are the full details about the hat drive!

To find even more information than is included here, the website can be found at https://yarnandcoffee.carrd.co. This website will also be the location for information about the Yarn and Coffee group meetings. I have been working to keep updates current on the website and Facebook page. If you have any questions, please reach out!!

I will be trying to make a few more posts in the coming weeks. One will be to share my experience at the Sunkissed Fiber Festival, one will be to share details about my workflow and how I keep track of my in-progress projects, and one will be to go over the details of this year's 100 Day Project, which I will be using as an excuse to knit a lot. If I do get around to making a survey, you will see it in your emails if you are subscribed to my mailing list!