I am terrible at naming things—an unfortunate handicap when you write speculative fiction. Names are so important in what the convey about a person and their context. I have to think about them for a long time. There were characters named George and Monty and Lucy in my current fantasy novel well into the second draft, when I finally forced myself to think about what these people would actually be named.

Naming a blog is no easier. It needs to be pithy, while still conveying a perspective; unique but not hard to remember. It needs to say something about me and my context. Bonus points if it’s some kind of pun.

As I always do when I need an answer I don’t have, I went to the internet to see if it knew. I’m always asking the internet if it knows things it can’t possibly know, like how should I write my book? What comes next? Like my book is out there on the internet already and I just have to look it up. This felt the same. The internet doesn’t know what my blog should be called.

Sadly—as always happens in these circumstances—I had to actually use my own brain. I started to free-associate. One of my main interests is knitting. Was there a cool-sounding knitting stitch I could name myself after? Aha, a question I could ask the internet. I looked up a glossary of knitting stitches. But before I got past "brioche stitch" (which honestly has some potential, since I also love baking) my subconscious kicked up the idea of moss stitch.

Moss stitch, like its relative seed stitch, is dead simple: a matter of knitting purls and purling knits. I’ve always loved the way it looks, so much cozier and more interesting than plain stocking stitch without being any harder to do (and without the curling edges.)

Also, I just like the word moss. It’s fun to say.

Digression: There's a line in You've Got Mail, where the guy who works at the Shop Around the Corner says he's going home to light his eucalyptus candle before his date comes over because it makes his apartment smell "mossay" and that's always cracked me up--both the way he says it and the idea that "mossy" is a way you want your apartment to smell. It made me kind of love the actor. I was really excited to see him in the first season of White Lotus. (He's been in a bunch of other stuff but nothing I've seen.)

A rolling stone gathers no moss is usually, I think, interpreted as complimentary to the stone. It’s an adventurous stone, unlike its boring, fuddy-duddy compatriots who sit around getting covered in growths. We have a tendency to romanticize rootlessness.

But that wasn’t its original implication. The phrase is attributed (perhaps speciously) to Publilius Cyrus, who was criticizing the rollers. "People who are always moving, with no roots in one place or another, avoid responsibilities and cares." That was considered a bad thing in the classical world, right up through the Victorian age and into the 20th centuries, until the hippies made rootlessness cool.

I am not an adventurer. I’m a homebody—I prefer to stay in one place, put down roots, and grow some moss. Some of this is due to chronic illness—adventuring takes an awful lot of energy—but more of it is just due to my personality, I think. I collect “responsibilities and cares.” I treasure them. They ground me; they let me know that I’m here, that my presence on this earth is touching others, that I’m causing a ripple that will keep moving outwards long after I’m gone.

Let’s celebrate the moss-gatherers again.