crafts – Sycamore Cove Knitting

A Knitter’s Pilgrimage: Why Yarn Shops Are More Than Shopping Trips

June 19, 2026Cynthia Coe

A visit to a yarn shop is never just an ordinary shopping trip. Yes, we may walk in thinking we need a skein of sock yarn, a set of needles, or “just one little thing” to finish a project. But let’s be honest: a yarn shop offers something far richer than supplies. It offers permission to pause.

In the middle of busy lives, a yarn shop gives us time for ourselves. It is downtime. Quiet time. Creative time. It is a place where we can step away from errands, obligations, and the noise of the world long enough to ask a wonderful question:

The Joy of Not Having a Plan

What could I make?

Sometimes we enter a yarn shop with a specific project in mind. We know the pattern, the gauge, the yardage, and the exact color we hope to find. But just as often, we wander in with no plan at all. That may be the best kind of yarn shop visit.

We touch a hank of wool. We pause over a color we would never have thought to choose. We notice the soft shimmer of silk, the rustic beauty of hand-dyed wool, or a label telling us the very breed of sheep that produced the fiber. And suddenly, creativity wakes up.

We think, What could I make with this? A shawl? A scarf? A hat? A gift? Something practical? Something extravagant? Something we don’t need at all, except that it would bring us joy? That moment — when yarn begins to suggest its own possibilities — is one of the small pleasures only knitters truly understand.

Finding Your People

Whether the yarn shop is down the road in your hometown or tucked along a side street in a place you’re visiting, there is almost always someone there who “gets” you. The shop owner. Another customer. A fellow traveler with yarn in her bag. Someone who understands why you are excited about a luxurious all-wool yarn, why you want to know where it came from, and why a label with the name of the sheep can feel like a treasure.

Non-knitters may not understand this. They may see shelves of yarn and wonder what all the fuss is about. But another knitter knows. Another knitter understands that yarn is not merely a product. It is possibility. It is texture, color, memory, skill, and imagination wound into a skein.

Yarn Shops as Travel Memories

When I travel, I love visiting yarn shops. Some people collect magnets, postcards, or souvenir mugs. I come home with yarn. A skein from Canada, Spain, France, or a little shop discovered by accident becomes more than something to knit. It becomes a memory I can hold in my hands.

Later, when I make a scarf or shawl from that yarn, I remember the street where I bought it. I remember the woman behind the counter. I remember the sound of another language, the basket by the door, the color that caught my eye, the thrill of discovering that knitters everywhere speak a common language.

Even when we do not share the same words, we understand the gesture of touching wool, smiling over color, and imagining the next project.

A Small Pilgrimage

That is why I think of yarn shop visits as a kind of pilgrimage. Not a grand pilgrimage, perhaps. No long mountain trek. No ancient road required. But still, a journey.

We go looking for beauty. We go looking for inspiration. We go looking for a little time apart from the ordinary. We go looking for materials that may become gifts, garments, comfort, or art. And often, we find more than yarn.

We find conversation. We find encouragement. We find new ideas. We find a renewed sense of ourselves as makers.

Why This Matters in My Books

This is one reason knitting so often finds its way into my fiction. In my novels, knitting is never just something women do to pass the time. It is how they remember. How they heal. How they create community. How they carry beauty through difficult places.

In The Prayer Shawl Chronicles and The Knitting Guild of All Saints, yarn becomes part of friendship, faith, grief, and comfort. In Knitting Through Time and Knitting Under the Orange Trees, knitting travels across centuries and continents, linking women whose names history may have forgotten but whose work mattered.

Because knitters know something important: A single strand can become something strong. A quiet hour can become a gift. And a visit to a yarn shop can become the beginning of a story.

I hope you have your own wonderful knitting story! Blessings, Cindy

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles and its sequel, The Knitting Guild of All Saints. Her newest novels, Knitting Through Time and Knitting Under the Orange Trees, explore how knitting spread through Europe and on to the Americas. Follow her here on the blog, at http://www.cynthiacoe.com, or on her Amazon Author Page.

As an Amazon Associate and Author, I provide links to products (including books I have written) and earn a very small fee if you click on the links and buy something. There is no additional charge to you!

Waiting for Warmth

February 27, 2026Cynthia Coe

This winter has felt especially cold.

By late February, I always find myself restless. It’s too late to cast on a heavy wool sweater — we know this hard winter won’t last forever. And yet it’s hard to feel inspired to knit airy spring tops when frost still rims the mornings.

It’s an in-between season.

The sparkle of Christmas is long gone. But we aren’t yet in the soft greens and open windows of spring. Lent quietly stretches across these weeks — reflective, slightly uncomfortable, asking us to sit still when we’d rather rush ahead.

Even our knitting reflects it.

We hesitate. Do we commit to something warm and weighty, knowing we may not need it for long? Or do we begin something light and hopeful, even while the wind still bites?

This middle space can feel awkward. Unsettled. A little gray around the edges.

And yet, there’s something honest about it.

Not every season is meant for grand beginnings or festive celebration. Some seasons are meant for waiting. For smaller stitches. For patience. For trusting that warmth will come again — slowly, quietly, right on time.

Perhaps that’s why I find myself drawn to warmer landscapes in my imagination this time of year. Places where sunlight lingers a little longer. Where blossoms promise what’s ahead.

In the meantime, we use our imaginations and our creativity to look towards a time and place where the sun will shine and warmth will envelope us.

Blessings, Cindy

To transport yourself instantly to someplace warmer, read my new novel, “Knitting Under the Orange Trees,” now available in both paperback and e-reader editions on Amazon.

The Appeal of “Granny Crafts”: Have I Got Stories for You

January 26, 2026Cynthia Coe

As a longtime knitter, I couldn’t help but notice the trending appeal of what social media is calling “granny crafts” or even “grandma hobbies.” Am I surprised that young people are taking up knitting, crochet, embroidery, needlepoint, and other unplugged, slow, and quiet crafts? I shouldn’t be.

There’s a lot going on in the world right now. There always is, but the level of stress-inducing, high-anxiety, high-tension news seems to have hit a new peak in recent weeks. Whether you agree passionately with one side or another (and for the record—no politics on the knitting blog here!), you feel it. It’s hard to disengage for your own self-preservation and take a few hours—or even a few minutes—to truly chill out.

Why Slow, Unplugged Crafts Are Making a Comeback

Enter old-school crafting.

I’ve always knitted while watching television or listening to an in-person presentation. During the pandemic, I took up crochet to soak up stress and give myself something new to do while stuck at home. Lately, though, I’ve felt the need for complete quiet—completely unplugged and completely unrelated to anything else I do.

Over the past few months, I’ve taken up both embroidery and needlepoint, and the slow, repetitive stitching has become my go-to way of turning the rest of the world off for a while. These meditative crafts offer something rare: focus without pressure, rhythm without urgency, and creativity without noise.

Knitting, Healing, and Women’s Stories

In my books—the Prayer Shawl Chronicles and my historical knitting novels—I’ve always written about women finding peace and solace through slow, meditative knitting. These are women who turn to craft while navigating stressful jobs, personal challenges, grief, and change. Through knitting, they find healing for both body and soul.

I came to prayer-shawl knitting myself when my father entered the dementia ward of a nursing home. I needed something to help me cope as I sat with him, silently, for hours on end. Knitting became my way of staying present, grounded, and calm during a season when words failed.

Welcome to the World of Meditative Crafting

If you’re new to the soothing balm of simple, meditative crafting—welcome. You’ll find many other knitters and crafters who turn to yarn, thread, and needle to unwind, just like you. Yes, we all have our moments of ripping out a few rows and starting again, but it beats staring at our phones all day.

If you’re thinking of taking up knitting or another slow craft, give it a try. Crafts do not have to be perfect. It’s the quiet moments of concentration that count. And if you’re an old hand at knitting or embroidery, you already know: we need crafts unconnected to the internet—or world events—more than ever.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my books about women who, throughout the centuries, have picked up two sticks and a ball of yarn to make something beautiful—and to heal their own souls.

Blessings,

Cindy

How Knitting Traveled to the Americas (and Inspired My New Novel)

December 30, 2025Cynthia Coe

Knitting didn’t arrive in the Americas by accident—it traveled hand to hand, carried by women across oceans and generations.

As knitters, we know that techniques don’t live in books alone. They live in muscle memory, in watching someone else’s hands, in doing the same small motions over and over until they become part of us. Long before knitting patterns were printed or standardized, knitting moved through the world the same way people did—by necessity, memory, and care.

That history is what inspired my newest historical novel, Knitting Under the Orange Trees.

The story imagines how knitting traveled from Europe to the Americas during the sixteenth century—not through official records or trade documents, but through the daily lives of women. Women who packed little more than what they could carry. Women who brought practical skills with them: how to make clothing, how to keep others warm, how to create something familiar in an unfamiliar place.

In Knitting Under the Orange Trees, knitting is not a hobby. It is essential work. It happens in homes, convents, on ships, and in new settlements where warmth and clothing could mean survival. The novel explores how textile knowledge—quiet, often overlooked—helped shape early communities in the New World.

If you’ve read Knitting Through Time, this novel continues that world and deepens its history. If you haven’t, you can enter the series here, just as you would a new project: by picking up the needles and beginning.

Knitting has always been more than yarn and stitches. It is a way women have cared for one another, preserved knowledge, and carried home with them—no matter how far they traveled.

🧶✨ Knitting Under the Orange Trees is now available in paperback and e-book editions at this link. It is also included in Kindle Unlimited.

You can explore Knitting Under the Orange Trees and the full Knitting Through Time series at this link. ✨🧶

I hope you enjoy this book! I truly LOVED writing it!

Blessings, Cindy

Cynthia Coe is an author, blogger, and avid knitter. Her books are available in paperback and e-reader edition on Amazon.com. Visit her Author page and follow this blog for more info and news.

Creative Detours (and the next book in the Prayer Shawl Chronicles)

August 29, 2025Cynthia Coe

Sometimes even knitters need a break. I’ve set down my needles for a bit and picked up needlepoint — a portable, colorful craft that feels like fingerpainting with thread. After finishing the next-to-last draft of my new Prayer Shawl Chronicles novel, my brain needs a rest.

Do you ever get tired of knitting, even if it’s your primary hobby?

I’ve hit one of those times when I want to do “something else” for a little while — much like when I take a break from my beloved dance aerobics to do yoga, beach walks, or try something new. I always circle back to dance aerobics, and I always circle back to knitting.

Right now, though, I’m rediscovering needlepoint. It’s small, portable, and easy to do — almost like fingerpainting with thread and a needle. On a recent trip to Québec and Montréal, I tucked a little project into my bag and enjoyed the mindful rhythm of stitching in quiet moments. There’s something deeply satisfying about the relatively mindless rhythm of needlepoint: no designing, no choosing patterns, no counting stitches. Just color and thread.

And here’s the real reason for this creative detour: my brain is fried. I’ve just finished the next-to-last draft of my new novel — the upcoming book in The Prayer Shawl Chronicles series. This story travels from Bruges to Sevilla, then across the ocean to Peru and Florida… and it has worn me out!

So for now, I’m resting my writer’s mind with a few easy stitches. But you know me — I’ll be back to knitting soon enough… 🧶…as soon as I finish the final draft of my new novel!

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, a series of fictional stories woven together by the theme of human connections made through prayer shawls and the craft of knitting. Her newest book is her first historical novel, Knitting Through Time: Stories of How We Learned to Knit. Learn more by visiting her Author Page at this link.

Why You Shouldn’t Be Embarrassed to Do “Granny Crafts”

June 19, 2025Cynthia Coe

If you’re a 20-something who knits, crochets, or embroiders—this is for you. Granny Crafts aren’t just for grannies. They’re quiet, powerful tools for stress relief, creativity, and deep comfort through every stage of life.

Dear Young Crafty Kindred Spirit,

Lately, more and more people are talking about how young adults are embracing so-called “Granny Crafts”—and I love it.

If you’re here because you knit, crochet, embroider, or sew—or want to—you’re in good company. I’ve been knitting since I was a teenager myself. But it wasn’t until college, when stress started to weigh heavy on my shoulders, that I really picked it up as a coping mechanism. I’d sit in my dorm room or in a quiet corner of the student center, needles in hand, letting the rhythm of the yarn pull me back from the brink.

Some days, you just want everything—school, jobs, relationships, even the noise of the world—to go away for a while. I get it.

You were born into the digital age. My own kids got their first iPods in middle school and were among the first to start texting. Now, we all carry around little rectangles that buzz and ping and demand our attention 24/7. But here’s the secret: you can turn it off. Just for a few minutes. Really. The world won’t end.

And when you do? That’s when Granny Crafts work their quiet magic.

There’s no algorithm here. No pressure to go viral. No rush to the finish line. When you pick up a needle or a hook, it’s just you, your yarn, and your own rhythm. You can work slowly. Thoughtfully. Or set it down and pick it back up a month later. Granny Crafts are deeply human—analog, if you will. They exist on your terms, not someone else’s timeline.

You may not know it yet, but you’re building something far bigger than a handmade scarf. You’re building a lifelong tool for patience and comfort. Someday, you’ll find yourself stuck in medical waiting rooms. You’ll sit through school pickup lines or kids’ gymnastics practice. You’ll be at hospital bedsides or nursing homes, offering your presence when there’s nothing more you can do. Except this: stitch by stitch, you wait. You love. You breathe.

Granny Crafts give you something to hold on to when the rest of life feels uncertain. They will anchor you when stress comes crashing in, and they will accompany you through every phase of adulthood with grace and beauty.

Welcome to the circle. You’re not alone.

With love and yarn,
Cindy
Knitter, writer, and lifelong lover of “Granny Crafts”

If you’re looking for stories of other women—young, old, and in-between—who have walked that road, I invite you to follow my blog and check out my novels. I write about knitting, community, and faith in a world that is often spinning too fast. Sometimes, we need the quiet power of yarn and human connection to slow it down.

Your Crafting Supplier Goes Out of Business. What do you do?

May 5, 2025Cynthia Coe

Many of us have recently learned that a major crafting retailer is going out of business for good, nationwide. And many of us wonder, what to do? Here are tips.

Here we go again: another round of business closings, and this time it affects our beloved hobbies of knitting, sewing, crocheting, jewelry making, and many other crafts. Those of us using these hobbies to keep our sanity, calm down, express creativity, or just make something nice for ourselves or loved ones might wonder how we get the basic supplies for these crafts.

We’ve been here before. During the pandemic, ALL of the online retailers supplying my yarns for knitting eventually went out of business. And reader, I got some huge bargains on top quality yarns, which I’m still using and expect to use for many years to come. Here’s what I learned:

Don’t fret about where to buy your next yarn stashes just yet. Nature abhors a vacuum. Supply markets naturally fill gaps when they arise. If you don’t have a nice place to buy crafting materials in the near future, again, Patience! Work through your stash. If you have indeed bought plenty of yarns or other materials from the big going-out-of-business sales, you’ll have plenty to do. If you must, order online or visit a locally owned shop. At some point, if there’s demand, another business will snatch up the market for reasonably priced crafting materials!
Deep Clearance Sales WILL Happen. You’re about to scoop up some deals on crafting supplies, but you may need to be patient. Businesses handle these closure sales different ways. One retailer suddenly had huge sales BEFORE announcing a closure. If you see this, read the red flags and move! On the other hand, other businesses may keep trying to sell merchandise they think they can squeeze more money out of before they are finally forced to go to deep discounts. If you KNOW a business is closing and still has vast quantities of yarns or other craft supplies on hand, wait. Then, when those discounts finally happen, pounce!
Buy plenty of yarn or other supplies you absolutely know you will use. If you knit sweaters or blankets, there will be no way to get more skeins if you run out. Buy at least as much as you think you’ll need for a project, plus extra. (You can always make something small, like a cowl or coasters, with the spare materials after you finish your big project.)
On the other hand, DON’T buy yarn you know deep in your heart you’ll never use. Just because something is 90% off doesn’t mean it’s a great deal for you. Only buy yarns you would have bought or strongly considered buying if not on sale. If you see something at 75-90% off that you think you might want to try for a small project, go ahead if you have the spare cash. Otherwise, don’t buy something that will be sitting in a closet ten years from now.
Think about storage and future plans. During the pandemic, I bought huge amounts of all-wool yarns in my favorite colors and weights. I was also in the process of moving and downsizing. Given that I will (and already have) put these yarns to good use at some point, I ended up re-purposing a china cabinet for these yarns. I ditched a bunch of things that cabinet used to hold – items I never used. Before you buy huge amounts of yarn or other crafting supplies, think: where will I store it, what can I get rid of to free up storage, and do my future plans allow for this? (Pssst…you might get storage bins on sale, too, if you have room for them.)
If you’re buying wool yarns, think about preservation. Moths just love wool. They love to eat it, especially if hidden away in quiet, dark places. So if your yarn-buying spree involves wool or other such yarns, be prepared to seal up your purchases in large plastic bags. Save yourself future heartbreak.

In the meantime, happy retail therapy at bargain prices!!! Cindy

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, a collection of interrelated short stories about knitters and those they meet through knitting and sharing prayer shawls.

Be sure to check out my newly published A Prayer Shawl Handbook: Inspiration and Resources for Your Prayer Shawl Ministry, now available in paperback and e-book editions and included in Kindle Unlimited.

Cynthia Coe is a writer, book reviewer, and avid knitter. Her books and blog posts can be found on her Amazon Author Page.

Christmas Crafting is the Opposite of Christmas Shopping

December 4, 2024Cynthia Coe

Click, it’s in your shopping basket. Click, you’ve paid for it. Your purchase will appear on your doorstep in two days without any further effort on your part.

I bought a pair of shoes on deep discount this morning, at breakfast and as easy as pressing digital buttons on my phone while still half asleep. As I later picked up my knitting needles to work on a Christmas blanket project, I couldn’t help but think how my Christmas knitting differed so starkly from my Christmas shopping.

My Christmas knitting project will not be finished in two days. It will probably not be finished by Christmas, in fact. And that’s okay. It’s the slow, calming process that matters to me most. How many “clicks” will it take? Thousands, and that’s kinda the point, too.

The clicking of my phone generally does nothing for me but momentarily serve my impulses to acquire yet another shiny new object I really don’t need. Am I calmer afterwards? Not really. I might get a temporary hit of joy for a minute or two, along with some satisfaction two days later when my item arrives.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of satisfaction, the clicking of my knitting needles keeps me calmer and lowers my blood pressure for several hours, at least. After a half hour of crafting with real materials and with all my fingers (not just the right index finger), my mind is cleared to move on to creative work, planning, or just strategizing to get through the rest of the day.

Crafting highs last much, much longer than online shopping highs. Shopping highs rank right up there with sugar highs for the rebound drops in any joy or satisfaction you got for your so-called efforts. But after crafting for a bit, the calm and satisfaction of actually making something stays with you for a good, long while. And if that satisfaction starts to flag, just pick up those knitting needles again and knit another row. Or just pick up your project and admire what you’ve done, all by yourself. Better yet, show your work to a friend and watch the utter amazement in someone else’s eyes, flabbergasted that you can turn skeins of yarn into a sweater just as nice as whatever they just paid for with their own meager clicking on their phone.

Slow down this Christmas and Advent season. Save your clicking for something that will last, something that will give you fulfillment, a sense of true peace, and maybe even a unique and meaningful gift for someone else.

With blessings for peace and calm this holiday season, Cindy

Keep Knitting Fresh and Interesting – Learn New Skills

July 24, 2024Cynthia Coe

Feeling in a rut? Do you find yourself knitting the same patterns over and over again? It’s time to switch things up!

If you’re like me, you have several “go to” patterns you can do in your sleep…or certainly while watching your favorite show on TV. You know exactly how many stitches to cast on, how much yarn the project will take, and which size needles to use. But you may also have umpteen of this finished project – with too many blankets, shawls, pullover sweaters, or whatever this “go to” project is – filling up closets or going unused.

If this is you, it might be time to learn a new knitting skill. Yes, it will be hard at first. Yes, you will make mistakes and will likely have to frog the thing at least once. But the upside is that you’ll have a new technique in your toolkit of knitting designs and skills. You might even have a new favorite project on your hands.

The best way to learn a new project, at least for me, is to purchase a kit that includes an understandable pattern and exactly the amount and type of yarn you’ll need to complete the project. I had been reluctant to buy kits in the past, scarred by memories of paint-by-number art kits in childhood that never had enough paint to finish the project. But happily, the knitting projects I’ve bought in the last several years have had more than enough yarn to complete projects. (And I’ve bought numerous knitting kits from a wide variety of companies, especially during the pandemic).

My latest new-to-me knitting skill is the mitered square technique. I found the technique a little trippy – you start with a straight line, and by decreasing in the middle of the row, you end up with a square. Who comes up with this stuff??? I’ve enjoyed making a blanket using this stitch, with some simple colorwork to mix it up as well. Yes, it took me a couple of tries to get it right, but I can now do it like a pro. I’ll definitely use the technique again to make placemats, bath rugs and other household items requiring a fairly sturdy fabric.

Of course, some kits I’ve tried have ended up as “never again” projects. One cardigan sweater kit I bought required me to flip the project around six times and use short rows for some purpose I could not discern. But even the “never again” projects keep knitting interesting and my brain continuing to learn.

As much as I enjoy simple, meditative knitting projects, I always enjoy a new challenge, too. We all need to keep our minds and souls fresh, active, and open to new experiences!

Knitting Blessings, Cindy

What is Nalbinding, and What Does It Have to do with Knitting?

July 11, 2024Cynthia Coe

At some point in history, humans learned to make fabric by forming loops with yarn or whatever fiber they had on hand. But this wasn’t knitting; it wasn’t crochet. It was an ancient craft called nalbinding.

Apparently, humans first learned to make fabric by sewing together animal hides, using crude needles made of wood or bone. For “thread,” they used animal fibers (wool) they rolled together to form a crude yarn. At some point, some clever person figured out how to make a stretchy fabric by winding loops of this yarn around her fingers, making a chain of loops with her bone or wood “needle.” That became the ancient craft of nalbinding.

Nalbinding in one form or another was done by humans all over the world. Forms of nalbinding have been discovered in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the Asian Pacific islands, and among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Apparently, the urge and need to make fabric out of a bone or piece of wood with a hole in the end of it, using a length of string of some sort was once a basic means of providing warmth, décor, and protection to a woman’s loved ones.

But how did knitting come out of this long history of nalbinding? No one knows. In my new book, Knitting Through Time, I make a stab at suggesting how this might have happened. We know that knitting was first done in the Middle East, so I came up with a plausible story of how someone with lots of time on her hands came up with knitting out of necessity, then spread this new craft far and wide. Is this “true”? You’ll have to read the book and decide for yourself!

However knitting came to be part of our cultures, I think we can assume that this craft was passed woman to woman, mother to daughter, friend to friend – just like many of us still learn to knit or learn more advanced knitting techniques. Last evening, in preparing to write this blog post, I sat down with a nalbinding needle, wool yarn, and numerous videos demonstrating the craft of nalbinding. Reader, I was an abject failure. Why? I needed a real person to show me how to hold the yarn, correct my obvious mistakes, and to guide my hopelessly untrained fingers. Sadly, I have no one to show me, in person, what I was doing wrong.

We pass on our cultures, our crafts, and the very essence of ourselves to our loved ones and to others in our communities through small moments of one-on-one demonstrations and conversations. I sincerely hope we all will keep knitting and other crafts alive through this long history of sharing our crafts, our knowledge, and our time.

Blessings, Cindy

Recommended Resources:

Nalbinding: What in the World is That? by Ulrike Classen-Buttner, available in English on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3Lkg3FT.

Bone Nalbinding Needle by Hearth and Bone, available at https://amzn.to/464uJCS.