In Bryce Canyon, Utah (photo by Lisa Brideau)
As the title of this site indicates, I’m Kim Werker. I’m a writer, editor, blogger, crafter, speaker and brainstormer. Though I do most of these things out of true love or compulsion, I like to get paid to do them, too.
My current passion is the Mighty Ugly project, through which I facilitate hands-on and discussion-based workshops that help people confront their creative demons, experiment with new approaches to creative expression, and build confidence in what they do. (It’s for all sorts of people, whether they identify as creatives or not.) Go on over to that site to learn more about it, and to see what kinds of awesome ugly creatures people have created in hands-on workshops.
Here on my blog I write about crafts, books I read, and books I write and edit. I like to explore aspects of creativity and creative life, and I have a tendency occasionally to totally geek out about some neat thing or another. So if you’re into these things, or if you’re a fan of crochet or crafts or books or creativity or, like, Buffy or Freaks & Geeks, you may enjoy yourself.
If short-form alerts to awesome stuff are up your alley, please subscribe to my newsletter, Kimagination Station Internet Funtimes. It’s a curated cornucopia of creativity, crafts and cleverness.
As for my past work, I’m proudest of having launched and run the online magazine cum social network CrochetMe.com until I sold the site to Interweave Press in 2008.
From 2006-2008 I was the editor of Interweave Crochet magazine. I’m currently freelance editing crafts books, which I enjoy immensely.
In addition to working on the magazines and co-hosting the first three seasons of Knitting Daily TV, I’ve also written or co-authored six books and I’ve contributed articles or designs to several magazines and books written by other people. And yes, as I’ve told more than one border guard while traveling between Canada and the U.S., these books are published by actual publishers and people buy them. For real.
I have a B.A. in linguistics from Binghamton University (SUNY), my honours thesis for which was about the creolization of pidgins. And I have an M.A. in educational studies from the University of Delaware, for which I performed research on babies regarding some particularities of language acquisition. You might surmise from my educational background that it’s possible to find work you love that has absolutely nothing to do with your past schooling. I love my schooling, and I love not working in the fields I studied.
I live in Vancouver, BC, with my partner, our kid and our dog. In addition to my work I enjoy knitting, eating sushi, dabbling in jewelry making, taking nice long walks in the woods with the dog (sans piña coladas, thankyouverymuch), the smell of clean laundry, and reading fiction of many sorts. I really want to learn how to skateboard, and I love (some) science fiction television.
