Reintroducing Home Row & Remembering Lucky Lucille

A new year, a new blog, a new opportunity to introduce myself as I am in this moment in time. That sentence sounds... a little pretentious maybe? But it's true in the sense that there's been a continuous evolution of Home Row up until this point, each iteration an important moment in my small business journey.

And that above sentence is really just a flowery way to admit I don't have my sh*t all figured out yet and that's fine. Who does? I think my cats do actually. Their confidence in having/doing everything exactly right is admirable. Cats, man. What special creatures... But anyways, this post isn't about cats. It's about one extraordinarily lovable dog and a bit of our history in the crafting community.

If you've been with me since the beginning (since 2010-ish?) you'll remember my old blog/brand, Lucky Lucille -- A sewing blog with a special interest in vintage sewing with cameos from my soulmate (and the blog's namesake), a rescue dog named Lucille.

Lucille was my inseparable sidekick for over a decade and we had many wonderful and well documented adventures over the years. We were in magazines and on a podcast and routinely featured on best-blog lists. We did craft fairs and trunk shows and dabbled in different handmade items to sell.

But as Lucille aged I came to the bittersweet realization that I wouldn't want to carry on the name Lucky Lucille without her, so I preemptively pivoted to the name Rochelle New Handcrafted (briefly) and then to Home Row Fiber Co. back around 2016.

I settled on the name 'Home Row' as a nod to being a homebody who loves creating rows and rows of stitches. Lucille's favorite pastime was sitting in bed with me as I knit, propped up on her small throne of pillows throwing her head back every few minutes wondering why my hands were occupied with anything other than petting her.

I also chose this name because "home row" in typing signifies the place you return to when you need to reset. The symbolism of returning to a familiar place to pause and reset before starting something new is continually significant for me.

When Lucille passed in December 2020, it definitely didn't feel right to carry on the blog without her, as I expected, and so I laid that chapter of our lives peacefully to rest along with her. I still miss Lucille every single day and though the blog content is now archived, I still have her photos and our memories forever and ever.

After focusing primarily on handmade items for knitters as Home Row Fiber Co. I decided to return and reset once again in late 2022 as Home Row Handcraft. I like the term "handcraft" as a type of witchcraft-adjacent term. Combining the concept of magic with handmade is something that's always been "on brand" for me, even long before my first publicly published ramblings on niche corners of the internet.

I also wanted to provide myself more space to grow and evolve as an artist first and foremost instead of a project bag-maker and yarn-dyer first. Home Row Fiber Co. was beginning to feel limiting whereas Home Row Handcraft fills me with inspiration again and that's everything to an artist.

Moving forward I want to explore the literal "home" element of Home Row. I want to honor my hermit-y homebody nature and desire to surround myself with lovely things for every corner I call home. I want to re-introduce myself as an artist and a fabric designer, which has always been the core of my journey as a maker.

I want to finally publish some of the sewing and knitting patterns I've been sitting on for years and years and teach my handcraft to other makers, to pay it forward and share the magic.

I want to remind myself that pivoting in business is actually evolution, and evolution is a tangible way to carry forth all the parts of your past worth cherishing and remembering.

So here's to evolving and cherishing, and remembering the sweetest Lucky Lucille there ever was.

Welcome to Home Row Handcraft.

-Ro