Cast On

Brenda Dayne
  • 4.7 (459)
  • Crafts
  • Updated Biweekly

Cast On began on Monday, 31 October, 2005, founded on nothing more than the desire to talk about knitting to people who get it. Since then, the podcast has evolved to focus on finding inspiration in the ordinary, using it to kick start the process of making stuff, and finding ways to carve out the creative time and space that allows you to work your ass off on the projects that matter most to you. Like knitting a sweater. Or saving the world. brendadayne.substack.com

  1. 3d ago

    213 Fit

    The quest for trousers that actually fit involved eBay-stalking vintage pattern drafting books - Flat Pattern Cutting and Modelling for Fashion (Helen Stanley, 1972), Pattern Drafting and Dressmaking (Dorothy Moore, 1971), Dress Pattern Designing (Natalie Bray, 1961) - a Craftsy class, and sixty hours of work that produced a toile so catastrophically wrong I couldn’t bend my knees to climb the stairs. Cal Patch has spent years solving this from her studio in upstate New York - flat pattern drafting that starts with the body, not the size chart. This episode is a conversation with her about where the lightbulb turns on. The other revolution arrives by YouTube: top-down-centre-out, originated by Ruth Collins and taught in Stacey Taylor’s free tutorial series, starts with the one thing every well-fitting pair of pants hangs on: the waistband. The Pegs from Merchant & Mills are the making project - 1950s cut, high waist, narrowing to a turned-up cuff. The trousers aren’t finished. The method is sound. FURTHER READING * The 1958 US commercial sizing standard * Ruth O’Brien & William Shelton’s 1941 WPA study on women’s body measurements * The finding that approximately 8% of women have the hourglass proportions commercial patterns are graded for, Joy Spanabel Emery, A History of the Paper Pattern Industry * The 2025 plus-size runway representation collapse * Butterick’s 1863 graded tissue paper pattern - the first commercial sewing pattern Music: Story of Our Lives by Tim Halperin This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Sep 21

    212 Low Impact

    Vinted used to feel like the internet version of a Naked Lady party: somebody else’s wrong thing becoming exactly what you needed, for a fiver and postage. Then the pro sellers arrived, the charity-shop stock moved online, and resale started to look less like an exit from fast fashion than another room inside it. A 2025 Yale study found the catch: people who buy second hand frequently also buy more new clothing. So low impact gets practical. Ghost in the Apple Orchard, Brenda’s red vest, is yarn on its third life. Two cream Vinted blouses become responsibility rather than regret, with Portia Lawrie’s Re:Fashion Wardrobe as permission to look harder at what is already here: one blouse pointing toward the Reed Skirt, the other rescued with £3.20 of Fyberspates Gleem and a willingness to outwit bad quality control. The larger cost is still there. Rana Plaza is not the hook, but it is the floor under the argument. Low impact is not purity, and it is not an escape route. It is attention: what do I need, what do I want to wear, what do I want to make — where did this come from, and who paid for it? FURTHER READING * Laura Edwards, Only the Clothes on Her Back Music: Story, by Abigail Osborn This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Apr 9

    211 Grace Notes

    Ghost in the Orchard. Four inches from done. I’d stare at the cable chart and the tiny squares would dance. Close my eyes. Open them. Over and over. The hands that made those cables could not remember how cables worked. Endel Tulving‘s encoding specificity principle. Godden and Baddeley’s divers learning words underwater. Jonathan Spence‘s memory palace. And 60% of the total surface of our brains committed to our hands. My second sweater - bricky red, carnelian buttons, the physical therapist who inadvertently retired it - became the Gaia Jacket from Jean Moss’s Sculptured Knits. Which became the red cabled vest I’m knitting now. Thirty years of memory in the same wool. Serotonin stripped the filters. Melatonin locked the repair. Dopamine lit the paths. Norepinephrine broke the bridge. Memory is where it all comes home. Music: Rore, Arrival; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental) If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Apr 2

    210 Two Bowls

    Tears in the kitchen. Three bananas on the counter and a recipe I know by heart but cannot, for the life of me, turn into a sequence of actions. Seven ingredients. Too many decisions. My brain could not do seven. So I broke it down. Dry ingredients in one bowl. Wet in the other. Three and four. Manageable. The bread was good. I ate it in bed and felt unreasonably proud of myself. The locus coeruleus is the brain’s attention control room. When norepinephrine depletes, everything arrives at equal volume. A dog barking becomes as important as the eggs. An old friend helps out in the kitchen. And the moment when I realised the invisible labour I’d been doing for decades had only become visible because I could no longer do it. Music: Jude Cosmo, Queen of Angeles; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Mar 28

    209 Desire Paths

    An Eye for an Eye - would the animals we eat, eat us? Impossible Hats. Box Hill Picnic, from Jane Austen’s Emma. Dangerous Questions, where the danger is yours, not your opponent’s. This is what insomniacs get up to at 3am while you are sleeping. Kent Berridge coined the term incentive salience. When dopamine runs hot, everything arrives pre-lit with significance. The creativity wasn’t a symptom - it was genuine creative product on the “this matters” signal. A desire path is a trail worn into the landscape by human feet. Not planned. Just walked so many times it becomes permanent. Some of mine are still here. Also: the duck question has a better answer than you think. And the horses are not going to like it. Music: Tony Anderson, One Perfect Sunset; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental) If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Mar 20

    208 Nighthawk

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Nighthawk n. a recurring thought that only strikes you late at night. Mine struck every night for eight weeks. Zopiclone is a sledgehammer. Daridorexant is a key. One imposes sleep. The other removes the obstacle to it. There’s a big difference, and finding it changed everything. Also: Jasper as Big Spoon. An AI health czar who suggested I should just pour ethanol directly on my brain to save time. And the thing I found at 3am that stayed. Music: Christopher Wohrle, Dust; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental) If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Mar 13

    207 Too Much World

    Trimethoprim for a UTI. Seven days. By day three, everything was hysterically funny. By day five, I could hear things that weren’t there. By week two, I couldn’t track yarn overs in garter stitch. Garter stitch. The projects on my needles when my brain broke Bradford Road, Dark Days, Ghost in the Orchard were beyond me for the next four months. The only thing that still worked was drop spindling. Hands remembered what the brain forgot. So I made yarn. The weird pantry. Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia from folate antagonism - undocumented, as far as I can tell. There might be a paper in it. Hit me up if you want to write it. I documented everything. This is the first episode of Your Brain on Knitting - five short episodes, designed to be listened to back to back. One broken brain. Four neurotransmitters. And the knitting woven through it all. Music: Hannah Parrott, The Feeling; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental) If you’d like to help support the podcast, you can do so via Ko-fi or Patreon, or by spreading the word to a fellow knitter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com/subscribe

  8. 12/10/2025

    206 Quality

    Zabava Shorties disasters. The signs were there. Sometimes, you need to break up with a sock pattern. “It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t like you anymore.” Meanwhile, the Peppermint Pocket Skirt delivers enormous pockets perfect for sock projects, and Ruth Collins’ Top Down Centre Out method might revolutionize trouser fitting. The Bradford Road wrap progresses through garter rectangles. Big Love Cardigan waits for cooler weather. But sewing succeeded where knitting failed—the Peppermint Pocket Skirt (free collaboration between Peppermint Magazine and Paper Theory) paired beautifully with the Block Tee, with right angle sewing tutorial making construction straightforward. The revelation: Ruth Collins’ Top Down Centre Out trouser fitting method. Begin with fitted waistband, construct single-leg toile, achieve proper fit without body-shaming adjustments. Demonstrated through Stacey Taylor’s free YouTube series at The Crooked Hem. Beyond practical successes and failures: Robert Pirsig’s concept of Quality from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Through memories of 4-H sewing club and Claire Schaeffer’s couture techniques, we consider how sustained attention gets woven into handmade items’ structure. What happens when we show up fully present—whether adjusting carburetors or setting sleeves. Music: Jim Fidler, Merrigan’s Reel; The Wilder Road, The Light the Heat; The National Parks, Who Knows This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendadayne.substack.com/subscribe

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4.7
out of 5
459 Ratings

About

Cast On began on Monday, 31 October, 2005, founded on nothing more than the desire to talk about knitting to people who get it. Since then, the podcast has evolved to focus on finding inspiration in the ordinary, using it to kick start the process of making stuff, and finding ways to carve out the creative time and space that allows you to work your ass off on the projects that matter most to you. Like knitting a sweater. Or saving the world. brendadayne.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Brenda Dayne
  • Years Active
    2005 - 2026
  • Episodes
    219
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Brenda Dayne
  • Show Website
    Cast On

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