My Favorite Insights from Kellie

As we look at winding down the blog, we thought it would be fun to make special note of some of our favorite posts, not of our own writing, but of our blog partner’s writing. This was a fun exercise, of diving into the archives to see what really struck a chord!

As Kellie pointed out last week in her post, my writing tends to be more technical whereas Kellie’s is much more narrative. In my mind, this makes Kellie’s post infinitely more readable, but I suppose reasonable people could disagree. I also love Kellie’s photos (she is a professional after all).

So without further ado in no particular order here are some of my favorites:

I loved Kellie’s post about participating in Spinzilla, Spinzilla: The Dabbler’s Attempt. It demonstrated Kellie’s ability to learn something new and find the value even when it wasn’t her greatest accomplishment (although personally, I was truly impressed with her results). I am not a spinner, nor will I ever become one. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate their skills. It might even mean I appreciate them all the more!

One of our most commented on posts was practically a “throw-away” post from Kellie asking for insights about free patterns: Free Patterns: Yea or Nay?. It is probably one of my favorites, because I always loved hearing from our readers although most of the time not many comments were given. What I loved most was the civility of the discussion (a credit to our readers), because so often these things just degenerate into a virtual screaming match.

Kellie never claims to be a math person but is fascinated with numbers and one of her earliest posts addressed the bane of so many knitter’s existence: Increasing and Decreasing Evenly. I loved that not only did she talk about it in non-mathy terms, but she gave lots of options to choose from depending upon your own preferred choices. The former is just one example of how we are opposite, the latter is an example of how we are the same!

Practically every time Kellie shares something on a more personal level my eyes well up and I remember one of the many reasons why I love this woman so much. On a Personal Note: Knitters are Inspirational was no exception. Even though I was there with her at Stitches, her sharing of the full story and her own emotional rollercoaster still creates a flood of emotion. Of course I know Jonathan, but I dare any of you to read the account and not feel something too! It is just one example of many of her incredible gift of writing.

Although I love all of Kellie’s children (the eldest is the only one I don’t personally know), her youngest is the one I would take as my own. I am honored he feels similarly and calls me his west-coast mom. Think Tank: Off We Go, Into the Wild, Blue Yonder shares a bit about one of Evan’s experiences from years ago, but also shares Kellie’s own teaching philosophy. I call it the light bulb moment, but regardless, it is what we both live for as teachers.

Kellie and I both love movies, but often, her photographic eye sees the movie in a manner I might have otherwise missed. A simple example of this can be found in Inspiration: Colors of India. I didn’t see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel until many years later. But because of this post, I actually watched for the visual stimulation which I am sure otherwise I would have at least overlooked if not completely missed.

From time to time, Kellie posts photos and an update on her current travels. During her trip to New Zealand we got Hello from the Land of the Long White Cloud and Another Week In New Zealand. Just two great examples of both her great photography and wonderful travel-log writing style.

Probably our most read post is Kellie’s post, A Surprising Ride to Productivity. And why not? As soon as I saw it I though it was genius, but nearly 3 years later, I have yet to implement something similar for myself. Even so, I still have aspirations….

Last, but certainly not least is a category of posts that actually have both Kellie and I, but were always actually posted by Kellie. This group is our wrap-up videos that we shot after spending several days of shooting material for EduKnit at Kellie’s house. These were originally Kellie’s idea and I love how it shows our relationship and how we enjoy being together, even when the work is hard and doesn’t always go quite as planned.

So that is just barely over 1% of the entire list of posts we have written over the years. Did you discover one or two new ones that you missed? Did we choose your favorites? If not, please share your favorite(s) in the comments below!