About
A man in the north of Ireland who makes things slowly and writes about what the making teaches.
Near Slieve Gullion, County Armagh
My name is Patrick. I live in the north of Ireland, in the shadow of Slieve Gullion, where the gorse blooms yellow against grey stone and the weather comes at you sideways.
I knit socks. I crochet blankets. I am planning a quilt. I write about these things not because the world needs another craft blog, but because making things by hand has taught me more about patience, attention, and acceptance than anything else I have done in a life that has included quite a lot of doing.
Before this, I studied Latin at university. I spent time in a seminary. I toured with a choral group and saw the world from the inside of concert halls. I worked in technology in London. I wrote about travel for twenty years. None of those things were wasted, but none of them were this.
This - the needles, the wool, the slow accumulation of stitches into something - is the thing that makes the most sense to me now.
What this site is
Stoic Stitcher lives at the intersection of three things I care about: making, thinking, and travelling to places where textile traditions still breathe.
Making
Project notes and craft essays. What I am working on, how it is going, what the work teaches. Not tutorials - I am not qualified to teach anyone. Just honest notes from the needles.
Thinking
Where craft meets philosophy. The Stoics understood that repetitive work is not mindless - it is mindful. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus. Their ideas make more sense when your hands are busy.
Travelling
I travel for wool. Shetland, Gothenburg, the mills of Yorkshire. These are essays about the people and places behind the fibres, written by someone who goes for the craft and stays for the landscape.
Why "Stoic"
Not because I am unmoved by things. The popular understanding of stoicism - the stiff upper lip, the suppression of feeling - is a misreading. The actual Stoic philosophers were deeply engaged with the world. They felt things keenly. What they practiced was not indifference but attention.
Pay attention to what you can control. Let go of what you cannot. Do the work in front of you. These ideas are two thousand years old and they are also the three most useful things knitting has taught me.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations X.16
Or, in the language of this site: waste no more time arguing about what a good maker should make. Pick up the needles and make something.
Get in touch
If you want to write to me about wool, philosophy, a yarn shop I should visit, or anything else related to the quiet work of making things, I would like that very much.
I read every message. I reply to most of them, eventually. I am better at knitting than I am at email.
hello@stoicstitcher.com
The view from here. Somewhere near the Ring of Gullion.
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