As such, I’ve revamped the store that was here, moving it to an external site – PayHip. This has made Mercurial Knits load MUCH faster and also allowed me to add a pay-what-you-want scheme for my patterns which used to be at a fixed price. I changed the pricing to free simply because these early patterns of mine were not properly graded or tested, as I was very new to pattern writing. My newer ones are much more size inclusive and better written overall, and thus still have a baseline price.

For me, it’s been a tough few years. About a year and a half into my studies, my dad became severely ill, and the stress of it all while being 3,000+ miles away made it impossible for me to focus. I withdrew, and at this point, I have essentially forgotten most of what I learned. I want to go back to Korean and Japanese, but I am very, very slow with it. Then, another chronic illness added itself to my list, so I am managing that as best I can. Finally, early this year, my mother-in-law, who had been an absolute rock for me ever since I moved to the UK, passed away suddenly. Our whole family barely had any time to say goodbye – it was very painful. We are healing slowly but we still feel her loss deeply.

Eventually, I would like to finish my alphabet of fingerless mitts patterns. Can you believe I already got Q out of the way and then just stopped? There really aren’t that many letters left to do.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Another major change in my life the past year is that I have finally recognised, as a white and cis-passing person, that I am not only able to, but have a duty to use my privilege in life to stand up and speak out for marginalised people. I already had quite a few LGBTQ+ community friends and accounts I followed, but now I have been following more Black, Asian, and other POC designers on my Instagram page. It was easy to sympathise with queer people, many of whom look like me already, but I was unintentionally ignoring designers of colour almost completely. Of course, following, listening, learning, and appreciating are all good things to do, but I don’t think that’s enough on its own. Yu Ra from Knitboop Designs mentioned on her Instagram story how she chooses not to work with designers, dyers, etc. who don’t have an anti-racist or inclusivity statement on their social media or company webpage. Now, I understand that this message was more directed at large companies, but I felt moved to make my own statement and link to it permanently in my site’s top menu. If you’re interested, you can read what I wrote here; please do follow the links to amazing BIPOC makers that I’ve added. I have tried my whole life to not be racist despite the overwhelmingly white community I was raised in, but I now understand that it takes more to be truly, actively ANTI-racist – and I want to continue to do what I can to help dismantle white supremacy.

Lots of love and care.

I’m glad I got to visit my family last year as it looks as though it will be impossible to see them this year. I miss them. We’d had a trip planned for May but as you might expect, that’s been cancelled. I’m not sure when we’ll see each other in person again, which is scary, but the truth nonetheless.

In February, I officially became a British citizen. I have lived here for 8 years and I want to spend the rest of my life here, and it makes me very happy that I can call England my home forever. Once I became a citizen, I applied to start studying at the University of Sheffield (and was accepted!) in Korean Studies with Japanese. I have always been interested in languages, and while visiting my family last year, my sister got me into BTS, the Korean rap / pop band. I wanted to learn Korean to sing along and understand the songs better, so I started using an app called LingoDeer – and I’ve discovered that I absolutely love speaking and reading Korean. My end goal is to work as a translator or interpreter for Korean speakers in the UK. The Japanese classes available to me in this course are just icing on the cake, as I’ve been interested in Japanese culture for many years and being able to read and speak Japanese too would be wonderful.

I find the entire pandemic situation overwhelming and terrifying, but I’m trying my best to carry on despite it all. I’m staying home and safe, and trying not to get too stir-crazy during this lockdown period. I’m wishing for the best for everyone.

Wearing my Knit the Rainbow Mitts. Pattern published May 2017.

As you can see, the site’s had a major makeover. That video up top features my own hands working on something for my brother-in-law. There have also been some updates to the pages listed in the menu, and a whole new page: Patterns, where I’ve collected all of my own knitting patterns to date.  This includes two that were previously only available on my even older WordPress site, Emmy Knits. Those in particular have been given a bit of a refresh and spiffed up with the full PDF download treatment.

My health has reached a relatively stable state – the mystery illness I was plagued by for so long was actually irritable bowel syndrome, and now that I know that, I have ways of keeping it in check. I’m happy to say I haven’t had to check into the hospital since April 2014. This stability has also afforded me a chance to work a “normal” job again while still leaving me some knitting time. I’m currently an audio transcriber and audio transcription proofreader, which I do fully from home. It’s boosted my self-confidence tremendously.

I’m looking forward to posting project updates, pattern works-in-progress, and newly finished patterns, as well as some more slice-of-life bits and pieces. If you’re into the slice-of-life stuff, might I recommend checking out my dear friend Silver’s podcast, Silver’s Dreamland? She has great knit-a-longs, several projects on the needles, and she’s just fun to listen to in general. Also, I’ll be a guest on an episode in a few weeks if you’re curious to hear what I sound like, and if you’re interested in what’s happening with Silver’s Knitted Treats. We may also have a video game-related pattern to debut. 😉

I will be refunding everyone who has sent me a down payment for a commission within a month, most likely in early January. I’m sorry it took me this long to decide what to do, and I know it is likely frustrating to those of you who paid for items years ago and won’t receive these. Again, I apologise.

When I started this business, I never imagined the number of commissions I would receive. It was flattering and fun to work on them. As I got married, moved to another country, then fell ill and even suffered unexpected family tragedy, my work felt increasingly like a burden. I underestimated what the stress of all these events (both good and bad) would do to me. To make things worse, a huge amount of my yarn became infested with bugs over the summer, so I had to throw those skeins away. I haven’t replenished my supply.

The refund emails will all be clearly labelled “Mercurial Knits refund” and will all come through PayPal. Thank you to everyone who has ever enjoyed my work and/or supported me on this long journey.

Despite having yet more hospital trips this year, my doctors claim they have sorted out my problems and so far (knock wood), I’ve been feeling a bit better. Hopefully this will improve and I’ll finally have a healthy year next year.

Two projects I completed a while ago, but only now have gotten to post about (and will mail out shortly): another Metroid plushie and a Lavos plushie!

A commissioned Metroid plushie

Lavos, the Destroyer of Worlds from Chrono Trigger!

Hopefully I’ll have more and better things to write about soon. I’d truly prefer to have happy posts filling up these pages again.

I have been getting back into knitting now and hope to move through my queue. I don’t mean for my words to keep proving empty; I have not taken on new commissions in quite a long time because of these problems, and I still will not take new commissions until I manage to empty my queue.

Thank you all for understanding. It is wonderful to have support even as I’ve been lacking in completing my work.

The slow pace of my knitting is making me unhappy. I want to finish these projects and send them out. It’s just, well, hard to knit when you feel ill constantly.

All I can do is apologize and continue working. Eventually I’ll get through this, I’m sure. There’s another SDA marathon looming as well and it’s silly that I haven’t finished commissions I received not long after the first Awesome Games Done Quick. One day I’d like to be able to stand on my own two feet and take new commissions that I don’t overwhelm myself with.

I’m trying to get back to my queue again.

My husband and I were able to move back into our flat, thankfully, but now there’s a lot of cleaning to do. We couldn’t live here for two and a half months.

I’m mostly just hoping things will finally look up for the two of us. I’m definitely going to finish all the commissions that were already requested; however, I feel pretty doubtful about taking more any time in the future. We’ll see when that time comes, though.

I am working on my queue, have been for a while now, but certain things keep going wrong. For a start, the ventilation in our flat was deemed “unsafe” so Paul and I have had to temporarily move in with his parents while our landlord takes his time fixing our gas (so we can once again have heat and hot water). I get along really well with my in-laws, so things aren’t as problematic as they could be on that front, thankfully.

On top of that, I’ve had to go to the hospital twice in two weeks. We thought the first time that I had some isolated stomach bug; however, the second visit has revealed that I am suffering with either gastritis or gallstones, and until I get tests done (an ultrasound and an OGD), we won’t know which it is. I am waiting for appointment letters to come in the mail so I know when those tests will be. In the meantime, I’m on a strict low fat diet and taking medicine the doctor prescribed.

At any rate I’m glad that I’m starting to feel back up to speed and I can’t wait to get back to work. It feels really wrong not to knit for over a week. I am also planning out some prizes for SDA’s next marathon, Summer Games Done Quick 2012, but those are taking a backseat to my commission queue.