July 8, 2026

The real reason I built this site

For years, my evenings looked the same: a lamp pulled close, a paper chart flattened under a book to keep it from curling, and my glasses pushed up my nose so I could see which square was which.

About six years ago, my hands started telling me a different story. Nothing dramatic — just a stiffness in my fingers by evening, worse in winter, worse if I'd been stitching for more than twenty minutes at a stretch. My doctor called it, gently, "the ordinary kind" of arthritis. I called it inconvenient.

I didn't want to give up stitching. I really didn't want to give up stitching. So I started experimenting: a bigger screen instead of a small paper grid, being able to zoom in without holding anything steady, being able to walk away mid-row and find my place again without hunting for it.

That tinkering is, quite literally, where this site came from. Every feature that lets you hide colors while you stitch, save your place, or read a chart on a tablet propped against your kettle — I built those for myself first, on the evenings my hands needed the help.

I still keep threads from my grandmother Milena's old sewing box, most of them long unlabeled, and I still lose an embarrassing amount of time each week trying to match a scrap of pale green floss to a DMC number. Some things paper and screens both can't fix.

If your hands give you trouble too — I'd love to hear how you've adapted. Just reply to this email, or leave a thread below.