Hi friends! First off, Happy January! I just wanted to start off with a small introduction for those of you who are new, and then get into some of the fun things we have coming up this year.

First off, Hi, I am Sam – they/them pronouns – and I live in Seattle. I work in the video game industry as a community manager and spend whenever time I am not gaming either tangled up in yarn or nose deep in a book somewhere. I also love to bake, sew, shoot macro nature photography, and screaming Taylor Swift at any and all hours of the day.

I have a kick ass partner named Sean and he will make an appearance quite frequently in the background of many (if not all) of my videos. He is also the badass behind the camera for 99% of the photos on here/instagram. We live in a micro apartment with our perfect loaf of bread Ikora, so you might say we are extra cozy around here.

Welcome to Sam Bartley Designs

Each month will be broken down into some pretty broad topics, and that will give me some flexibility to go with the flow vs forcing something I just can’t get to work.

• Week One – This will normally be where I give you a run down of the month, what content to expect, what date I will have my Vlog Posted, and when our next Sip & Stich is. (The Email newsletter will be sent out on this day too.)
• Week Two – My goal is to release at least one pattern a month, and the second Saturdays of every month will be that day. I have the first 3 months of the year all ready to go, but ill need your help deciding on my next design soon so make sure you’re signed up for emails – thats where ill run my polls.
• Week Three – This week is when my BOTM box should be arriving, so plan on this week being all about what I have read this month, what I got in BOTM, and if I had any other fun book mail come in.
• Week Four – Week four is just going to be about whatever projects I worked on, yarn mail, and whatever else I want to share from the month.

If we have a fifth Saturday in one or two of the months I might just take that week off, but we will see. And stand alone book review blog posts will just be posted as I read them and write them. (Some from 2022 might already be added in by the time this is published.) Sometimes I can clear through 4-5 books in a weekend, sometimes it takes me a year to finish one – we are just going with the flow for this.

Our first Vlog will be posted January 28th, and we are going to chat yarn, tattoos (because I have two appointments for January with my favorite Vermonter and I am bouncing like a tiny kangaroo), BOTM, and temperature blankets. Honestly, if it ends up being an hour long I guess thats the way it will be.

As for our first sip & stitch, that is still TBD – I want to send out an email closer to the end of the month with more details, but my birthday is January 20th, so maybe having a sip & stitch discord chat that weekend could be super fun?

And surprisingly enough, no one has asked me “why are you doing this?” but I wanted to tell you anyway – just in case you were wondering but didn’t know how to ask. I just really missed creating things and sharing them with people. I used to make content day in and day out and abruptly stopped (with great reason, a new job and a cross country move will do that) but after working with my therapist and chatting with a bunch of you, I decided that having my own little corner of the internet might not be that bad of an idea again. I loved interviewing other makers, I loved teaching and giving advice and just making along side so many of you, and now I get to do that but also share books and baking and life and whatever else I want. And because I pinky promised myself I wouldn’t turn this into a full time job, I haven’t and thats super nice. A blog post a week that I can write when I schedule my Instagram for the week is leaps and bounds more manageable than it when I thought I had to do it all, all the time. (Also, adhd medicine and therapy really, really help – I’m just being honest.)

But I think that about covers everything, and if you have any questions feel free to comment them below (if I can figure out how to turn on comments, it keeps resetting itself…) or send me a message on the “contact” page. Anyway, kloveyoubye.

Sam