Check out the Power Purls Podcast to Learn about the Business of Knitting

I have to admit I’m not much of a podcast listener. I want to do better because I know there’s a lot of great content out there, but it’s hard for me to listen to words while I’m writing words, and I just haven’t made myself sit and knit while listening, which would probably work better.

But I want to try. I’d love to hear about podcasts that you love, but right now I want to share a new podcast with you that I really want to listen to regularly.

It’s called Power Purls, and its produced by Kara Gott Warner, who is the executive editor of Creative Knitting magazine, previously a freelance designer, editor and technical illustrator who has a great depth of knowledge about knitting and the business of knitting.

The podcast launched today, will include a new interview each day for the first week, and will then become a biweekly podcast focusing on stories from the business, including chats with designers, yarn company people and knitters of all stripes.

She says in the welcome message for the podcast that she wants to provide empowering and encouraging stories from the business and help listeners to “be a scrappy designer so you can stay in business doing what you love.”

This is such a great idea for a podcast because we knitters are spread out all over and trying to make a living in a lot of different ways. It isn’t always easy to connect with other knitters and talk about the business and learn best practices, so I think this will be super useful for knitters who are looking to become designers and designers who want to have better, more sustainable businesses. And just for knitters who are interested in knowing what goes into knitting magazines and other publications and who want to be more mindful knitters.

I mention all this because I’m going to be on the podcast, probably in December, but I don’t want you to wait until then to check it out.

If you do go give it a listen (as I write there is an interview with Tricia Malcom of Vogue Knitting and an “Ask Kara and Tabitha Anything” with Tabitha Hedrick of Sweet Georgia Yarns, talking about design proposals) I’d love to know what you think!

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I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]

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