I was not naturally crafty. My mom doesn't cook or sew or knit or scrapbook or anything that you'd find at Joann Fabrics. I don't think that I realized brownies could be made without buying the Duncan Hines box until I was a teenager. However, somewhere deep down I did feel vaguely creative though and it came out in awful teenage poetry and then pretty decent photography.

Eventually, I was a soulless drone working for the man and living in Brooklyn and feeling vaguely unsure of what I was doing with my life like every 20-something feels. Somewhere during that time, my mother-in-law came to visit and decided to teach me how to knit. I started a burgundy scarf that day and I didn't finish it for about two years. I was not a natural talent. I made some truly hideous sweat bands after that and discovered that no matter what yarn I bought from a store or how beautiful I thought that it looked while I was there, it was always pea green when I got home.

Then one day I made a toy. I made a knitted penguin and my spouse looked at me, shocked, because it was adorable and that was a pretty big surprise to both of us. After that, I wanted to make more and more toys but I found knitting to be an awkward and finicky medium so I found that YouTube was full of more than just cute kittens and learned to crochet. I found the amazing book Creepy Cute Crochet by Cristen Haden and realized that toys could be weird and geeky. I started the slow march to inspiration.

Now, I'm in my 30's, working a job that I love, living on a tiny but beautiful little piece of the planet where I sometimes can hear cows from my living room and am embracing my love of toymaking. I hope that you love the geeky and strange and adorably offbeat toys that I make as much as I love making them.