Introducing The Straight Stitch

The secret project is a podcast! I probably need my head examined, but I am having such fun with this.

On the afternoon of August 21—the day we took the pigs to the processor who wasn’t there and had to bring them back—I went into town to run errands. As I drove into town, I listened to Nicole Sauce’s podcast episode 784 entitled “Failing Homesteaders From the Internet.” Wow, did that resonate. I felt like a failing homesteader.

The weird thing was that the podcast wasn’t really about failing homesteaders. It was about content creators who think they are failing because they can’t keep up with everything—when, in fact, they are kicking ass at being homesteaders AND content creators AND all the other things they do. The podcast wasn’t about failing. It was about showing up consistently and producing something of value.

And my brain went to a very weird place. As I pulled into the Walmart parking lot, listening to Nicole’s words of wisdom, the thought popped into my head that I needed to start a podcast.

[I have learned, in all my years on this earth, that when the universe tells me something, I probably ought to listen.]

I knew I didn’t want to start a homesteading podcast. That market is rather saturated. Everybody and his brother who has a chicken coop in their backyard with three chickens in it thinks they are homesteading. I thought about a question I had seen on Facebook a few weeks ago: “What topic could you speak about for 30 minutes without any preparation or notes?”

[My first thought was, “Only 30 minutes?” I’ve always said that if you put a microphone in front of me, I will talk.]

Good sewing podcasts are few and far between. I used to listen to the Sewing Out Loud podcast, but their last episode was almost a year ago. The Whipstitch podcast is also good—although her intro music is jarring and her audio editing needs some work—but the episodes come out infrequently. I stopped listening to the Love to Sew podcast when they went sideways into social justice topics. I also have a lot of trouble listening to podcasts with multiple hosts or hosts who spend the first 10 minutes talking about their cats. (Yes, I am picky, but my time is valuable.) Right now, I’m down to the Sew and So podcast (Bernina), the Threads podcast, and the Seamwork Radio podcast.

And thus, The Straight Stitch was born. I want my sewing podcast to be informative, fun, and on topic. I do plan to have interviews—I need to purchase a few more pieces of equipment, first—because I know some very interesting people. The biggest hurdle was getting the first few episodes recorded. I bought a mic and had to learn how to use Garageband for audio editing.

Another hurdle has been trying to organize my websites and social media presence. That part is still in progress. I didn’t want to have Yet Another Website, but I had no good way to preserve what I already had built while adding something new. I have been with Squarespace for close to 15 years, and for the most part, I’m satisfied. However, my websites are built in version 7.0. A new website would have to be built in version 7.1, which has a different layout editor, and this blog wouldn’t transfer. (The same thing happened when I went from Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 7.) I would have been paying a lot of money every year to keep this blog available in its current form, with nothing else on this website because I’ve decided to shut down Buttercup Made for the moment.

This part is important if you want to keep reading the blog: My solution was to purchase all the domain names—domains are cheaper than websites—but continue to use this website under the domain name JanetSzabo.com. I created a “landing page” that points to the Big Sky Knitting Designs website, this blog, and the podcast page. I suggest you bookmark the new URL for the blog and the podcast. Click on the links on that landing page and new windows should open.

At some point, I may have to suck it up and create a website solely for the podcast, but I will try this as a stopgap measure. Also, I am still trying to figure out how to submit my podcast to all the podcast sites, but if I waited until all the pieces were in place to release some episodes, we’d all be waiting another year or two. In our homesteading chat group, we call that the “toolbox fallacy”, or the habit of waiting to do something until you have all the tools you need. Sometimes you just have to set the foundation and build the walls and the roof as you go along.

The first two episodes—an intro and a longer episode—can be found here. At some point, they will be on iTunes (and hopefully Spotify and a few other places). I’d love it if you’d listen. If you enjoy the podcast, I’d really love it if you’d share the link, tell your friends, and leave a review on iTunes when it shows up there. And feel free to leave show ideas and comments either here or on the episodes page. In Squarespace, podcasts are set up much like blog posts, with a place to comment on each episode. I’ve got a list of ideas, as well as three interviews lined up, but I welcome suggestions. The addition of “and other fiber arts” was done deliberately so I could venture off into topics like spinning or embroidery.

I have no plans to abandon the blog. The podcast is just a longer-form way for me to pontificate on sewing topics. I will do at least one episode a month, but I think it will soon settle into a twice-a-month or once-a-week schedule.