Cast On

27:57

214 Enough

Cast On ·

2026/10/02

Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. It’s a joke until you do the maths. Eight complete sweaters-worths of yarn in DK and fingering weight alone, not counting the oddballs, the luxury fibre, or the container of 2-ply jumper weight — one 25g ball of every single colour Jamieson & Smith make. (Shut up. That was for research.)The stash stopped being weight when it got a job. Three questions — what do I need, what do I want to wear, what do I want to make — and a capsule of twenty garments across five

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25:32

213 Fit

Cast On ·

2026/09/25

The quest for trousers that actually fit involved eBay-stalking vintage pattern drafting books - Flat Pattern Cutting and Modelling for Fashion (Helen Stanley, 1972), Pattern Drafting and Dressmaking (Dorothy Moore, 1971), Dress Pattern Designing (Natalie Bray, 1961) - a Craftsy class, and sixty hours of work that produced a toile so catastrophically wrong I couldn’t bend my knees to climb the stairs.Cal Patch has spent years solving this from her studio in upstate New York - flat pattern drafting

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26:30

212 Low Impact

Cast On ·

2026/09/21

Vinted used to feel like the internet version of a Naked Lady party: somebody else’s wrong thing becoming exactly what you needed, for a fiver and postage. Then the pro sellers arrived, the charity-shop stock moved online, and resale started to look less like an exit from fast fashion than another room inside it. A 2025 Yale study found the catch: people who buy second hand frequently also buy more new clothing.So low impact gets practical. Ghost in the Apple Orchard, Brenda’s red vest, is yarn on

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21:06

211 Grace Notes

Cast On ·

2026/04/09

Ghost in the Orchard. Four inches from done. I’d stare at the cable chart and the tiny squares would dance. Close my eyes. Open them. Over and over. The hands that made those cables could not remember how cables worked.Endel Tulving‘s encoding specificity principle. Godden and Baddeley’s divers learning words underwater. Jonathan Spence‘s memory palace. And 60% of the total surface of our brains committed to our hands.My second sweater - bricky red, carnelian buttons, the physical therapist who

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19:41

210 Two Bowls

Cast On ·

2026/04/02

Tears in the kitchen. Three bananas on the counter and a recipe I know by heart but cannot, for the life of me, turn into a sequence of actions. Seven ingredients. Too many decisions. My brain could not do seven. So I broke it down. Dry ingredients in one bowl. Wet in the other. Three and four. Manageable. The bread was good. I ate it in bed and felt unreasonably proud of myself.The locus coeruleus is the brain’s attention control room. When norepinephrine depletes, everything arrives at equal

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19:59

209 Desire Paths

Cast On ·

2026/03/28

An Eye for an Eye - would the animals we eat, eat us? Impossible Hats. Box Hill Picnic, from Jane Austen’s Emma. Dangerous Questions, where the danger is yours, not your opponent’s. This is what insomniacs get up to at 3am while you are sleeping.Kent Berridge coined the term incentive salience. When dopamine runs hot, everything arrives pre-lit with significance. The creativity wasn’t a symptom - it was genuine creative product on the “this matters” signal.A desire path is a trail worn into the

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19:49

208 Nighthawk

Cast On ·

2026/03/20

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Nighthawk n. a recurring thought that only strikes you late at night. Mine struck every night for eight weeks.Zopiclone is a sledgehammer. Daridorexant is a key. One imposes sleep. The other removes the obstacle to it. There’s a big difference, and finding it changed everything.Also: Jasper as Big Spoon. An AI health czar who suggested I should just pour ethanol directly on my brain to save time. And the thing I found at 3am that stayed.Music: Christopher

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18:21

207 Too Much World

Cast On ·

2026/03/13

Trimethoprim for a UTI. Seven days. By day three, everything was hysterically funny. By day five, I could hear things that weren’t there. By week two, I couldn’t track yarn overs in garter stitch. Garter stitch.The projects on my needles when my brain broke Bradford Road, Dark Days, Ghost in the Orchard were beyond me for the next four months. The only thing that still worked was drop spindling. Hands remembered what the brain forgot. So I made yarn. The weird pantry. Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia

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40:46

206 Quality

Cast On ·

2025/12/10

Zabava Shorties disasters. The signs were there. Sometimes, you need to break up with a sock pattern. “It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t like you anymore.” Meanwhile, the Peppermint Pocket Skirt delivers enormous pockets perfect for sock projects, and Ruth Collins’ Top Down Centre Out method might revolutionize trouser fitting.The Bradford Road wrap progresses through garter rectangles. Big Love Cardigan waits for cooler weather. But sewing succeeded where knitting failed—the Peppermint Pocket Skirt

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31:14

205 Big love and secret pajamas

Cast On ·

2025/07/05

It's been a week of finishes and new beginnings. Off the needles, I've completed a Malabrigo hat and love the color pooling. You don’t hear me say that very often.I've finally finished my Amande socks—though I must say I rather hated working both the nupps and wrapped stitches techniques. Sometimes you have to try things to understand what you decidedly do not enjoy.My new obsession is Big Love by ANKESTRIK, a top-down cardigan with fascinating construction that I'm knitting in gorgeous Gilliat

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31:38

Cart before the workhorse

Cast On ·

2025/05/18

Finishing socks, saving the yarn, new projects from old, planning the perfect colourwork sweater, plus a bit of theoretical physics to prove what knitters already know: knitting is magic. Links and references: Admiral Hanf yarn by Schoppel Wolle Lang Jawoll sock yarn Chessmaster, by Christian Mattausch Amande, by Josephine and the Seeds Sophie Shawl by PetiteKnit Bradford Road Wrap, by Kristen Kapur Fox Paws, by Xandy Peters Soft Spot sweater by Elina Maaria ke21’s Soft Spot on Ravelry is one of

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204 Cart before the workhorse

Cast On ·

2025/05/17

Finishing socks, saving the yarn, new projects from old, planning the perfect colourwork sweater, plus a bit of theoretical physics to prove what knitters already know: knitting is magic. Links and references: * Admiral Hanf yarn by Schoppel Wolle * Lang Jawoll sock yarn * Chessmaster, by Christian Mattausch * Amande, by Josephine and the Seeds * Sophie Shawl by PetiteKnit * Bradford Road Wrap, by Kristen Kapur * Fox Paws, by Xandy Peters * Soft Spot sweater by Elina Maaria * ke21’s Soft Spot on

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32:41

203 Looking in

Cast On ·

2025/05/11

We travel from Iron Age firepits to mid-century homemaking manuals, consider the joys of stash organisation, and muse on the performative aspects of home decorating. There's a deep dive into the ancient tradition of human-centred design through textiles, from spindle whorls to soft furnishings, a detour through the joys of vacuum bags and organza, a nod to Swedish Death Cleaning, and a look inside the Granny Cranny.

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203 Looking in

Cast On ·

2025/05/03

We travel from Iron Age fire-pits to mid-century homemaking manuals, consider the joys of stash organisation, and muse on the performative aspects of home decorating. There’s a deep dive into the ancient tradition of human-centred design through textiles, from spindle whorls to soft furnishings, a detour through the joys of vacuum bags and organza, a nod to Swedish Death Cleaning, and a look inside the Granny Cranny. Books & Patterns * Bojagi: Design and Techniques in Korean Textile Art by Sara

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29:56

202 A gentle pastime

Cast On ·

2025/04/06

Replenishing the sock drawer with Priory Socks (project page). My Secret Circles, below. Porthos (project page), below. I moved my decreases to the back of the heel, and the result is similar to Basic Biarritz and the Kite Heel, yet is uniquely mine and oh, is it ever sexy. The joy of a well-fitting heel cannot be overstated. The short row method used in Zabava Shorties is still, hands down, the best method I have found for toes. You'll find the method for Jeny's Square Peg Heel here. Cat Bordhi's

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202 A gentle pastime

Cast On ·

2025/04/05

Replenishing the sock drawer with Priory Socks (project page). My Secret Circles, below. Porthos (project page), below. I moved my decreases to the back of the heel, and the result is similar to Basic Biarritz and the Kite Heel, yet is uniquely mine and oh, is it ever sexy. The joy of a well-fitting heel cannot be overstated. The short row method used in Zabava Shorties is still, hands down, the best method I have found for toes. You'll find the method for Jeny's Square Peg Heel here. Cat Bordhi's

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53:10

Cast On Classic: A Snow Day

Cast On ·

2024/11/28

In which an American Thanksgiving is celebrated in the UK, albeit a day late and a pumpkin pie short. One of the first pieces of writing I recorded for Cast On in 2005, this has become one of my most popular podcasts. This particular version was rerecorded in 2011 for A Knitter’s Manifesto, and features sound design by artist, Felicity Ford. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com

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33:11

201 Knitting through sorrow

Cast On ·

2024/10/27

It’s autumn. Time for finishing projects, knitting socks and celebrating the impending winter by taking the sweaters out of storage. This one is all knitting, and I make no apologies. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com

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32:02

200 Work as written

Cast On ·

2024/08/18

In this episode: Off the needles and on; Tour de Fleece wrap up; notes from the production line; a new bag; a new spindle; good materials; and Bennet’s Boiled Potatoes.

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30:32

The system

Cast On ·

2024/07/21

Knitting the slowest sock in the history of sock knitting. Tour de Fleece. The merits of taking small steps vaguely in the direction a goal. I’m thinking about style again, and looking for systems.

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