Fiber arts, systems thinking, and neurodivergent faith intersect in my new channel, where a stitch is sometimes a tiny artifact of history, identity, and survival.
I’m new here. You too? 🤗
This channel is just getting started, but I’ve been doing this for a long time.
As a certified Gen-Xer, I learned crochet from a book in the 1980s using a 5mm hook and Red Heart Super Saver acrylic yarn.
Along the way, I learned to sew, cross stitch, embroider, latch hook, and many other crafts.
About eight years ago, I finally decided to learn to knit—and I’ve been working on my skills ever since.
KnitPickyKnits is one of several projects I’ve developed, but it has become something more than a maker brand.
It has become my teaching laboratory.
My work exists at the intersection of several worlds: theological formation, systems thinking, the tactile practice of fiber arts, and the fascinating ways human beings make meaning through the things they make.
And that’s where this gets really interesting.
Fiber as a lens for understanding people
Yarn and textiles are profoundly human technologies.
Across cultures and centuries, people have taken whatever materials their environment made available and figured out how to transform them into something useful, beautiful, protective, symbolic, or sacred.
The more I learn about fiber traditions around the world, the more curious I become about the people and systems behind them.
Why did this garment develop here?
Why this fiber?
Why this construction?
How did climate, geography, agriculture, trade, migration, available tools, and cultural values shape the way people made things?
And how did those ideas travel?
I want KnitPickyKnits to be a place where we explore other cultures through the things people make—their fibers, tools, techniques, garments, patterns, adaptations, and stories.
Not simply as inspiration to consume, but as an invitation to become curious about the people who developed them.
Because sometimes a stitch is more than a stitch.
It can be a tiny artifact of geography, history, ingenuity, survival, identity, and human connection.
And I think that matters.
Because we’re all makers of one kind or another.
Through KnitPickyKnits, I explore a question that defines much of my professional and spiritual life:
How do we build a life that is as functional as it is faithful?
That question applies to a sweater.
It applies to a business.
It applies to a family.
It applies to a nervous system.
It applies to a culture.
It applies to a life.
And it turns out that fit is rarely universal.
A stitch that works beautifully in one context may be completely wrong in another.
The same is true of people.
We are constantly handed one-size-fits-all systems and told that if we can’t make ourselves fit, we’re the problem.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Finding Your Fit is about moving from external standards toward genuine alignment—learning how we’re designed and building relational, operational, creative, and spiritual systems that support that design rather than constantly fighting it.
I use Spoon Theory as a practical language for understanding energy, but I take it a little further.
Capacity is a variable in the equation.
Whether I’m recovering physical dexterity, managing a creative project, or leading a ministry initiative, my limitations aren’t moral failures. They’re information.
Learning to honor capacity isn’t necessarily slowing down.
Sometimes it’s simply better design.
There is a particular kind of wisdom that can emerge when you’re navigating the world as a neurodivergent believer.
We’re often interested in the how behind the why.
We notice systems.
We notice patterns.
We notice when the pattern doesn’t quite fit.
And we’re willing to get into the messy, behind-the-scenes work of bringing lived reality into alignment with what we believe.
For me, that includes asking what happens when we stop treating the physical, psychological, creative, relational, and spiritual parts of ourselves as completely separate systems.
This channel is my long-form project journal and playbook.
You’ll find:
🧶 Fiber & Culture
Explorations of techniques, textiles, traditions, and the people and places behind them.
🧩 Finding Your Fit
Thoughts about identity, systems, creativity, and designing lives that actually work for the people living them.
🧠 Neurospicy Christianity
Reflections on embodiment, capacity, spiritual formation, and following Christ while navigating a differently wired brain.
🔍 Systems in the Wild
Real-life experiments in applying these ideas to projects, relationships, businesses, injuries, yarn stashes, and all the wonderfully inconvenient variables of being human.
🎬 Behind the Scenes
My process of building, making, learning, failing, frogging, and trying again.
I suppose that’s what KnitPickyKnits really is:
A place to study the intersection of making and meaning.
I’m a systems ontologist and ministry leader, but primarily, I’m a builder of frameworks.
And I’m a maker.
So I’ll be pulling on threads—sometimes literally—to see what they reveal.
If you want casual project journal notes, you can connect with me on Telegram.
If you’re looking for the patterns and products that emerge from the process, I share those on Ribblr and Etsy.
You’ll find video tutorials on YouTube, curated tips on Instagram, local events on Facebook, and fun finishes on TikTok.
All my links and my digital maker tools—including free calculators and other resources—live at knitpickyknits.com
But if you’re here for the Why…
The foundation underneath the stitches, systems, projects, and patterns…
You’re in the right place.
Let’s get into the work.
And if we discover the pattern doesn’t fit?
We’ll frog it, carry yarn, and knit and crochet on!
🐸🧶
