The Best Things in my Brain, February 2026

I’ve always been a person who loves to learn and find new things and share them with others, but these things don’t always warrant a full blog or social media post. So I’m offering a once a month, short and sweet post on the best things I learned, read, heard, or saw recently.

If you read last month’s newsletter, you know I’m working my way through seaming 99 crochet squares for the next Vintage Afghan Project installment. That’s, um, going to be happening for a while.

Best Things in My Brain Craft Edition:

One of the things I love about knitting is that if there’s a particular method you struggle with, there’s probably an alternate method out there that will make more sense to your brain. Kitchener grafting and bind off seems to be a particular frustration for a lot of knitters, and a couple of alternate methods have recently come to my attention.

First, I recently tried Italian Bind off for the first time. I knew of it for years, but since it was explained to me as “like tubular/kitchener bind off” I figured it wouldn’t be that different in execution. But what I found was that, because all the stitches stay on the same needle, Italian bind off sidesteps my biggest problem with tubular – that if I’m not paying really close attention, I accidentally work two front stitches or two back stitches in a row and then my bind off gets warped. I want to try it a few more times, but I think this might be my new go to bind off!

Also a tech editor colleague recently shared this video on how to do Kitchener grafting without a wool needle – just your existing knitting needles and a crochet hook or DPN! I haven’t had a chance to try it yet but I’m very intrigued.

Best Things in My Brain Non-Craft Edition:

Have you ever noticed that, no matter what kind of organization system you try, there’s always some object that doesn’t quite fit in the system? For me this is true whether we’re talking about organizing data in a spreadsheet or yarn in my stash.  Turns out, computer scientists have been tackling this problem for years and have concluded that there truly is no one best way to store information. (This gets very science heavy, but it’s worth it!)

What’s the best thing currently in your brain?