How I ended up writing a fantasy novel about knitting magic — with my husband

Almost twenty years ago, I first traveled to New York City and fell in love with the city—especially the folklore surrounding its subway system. I started writing the earliest iterations of what would eventually become my current novel, although the story has taken on many forms over the years.

Little did I know that one day it would become a 100,000-word fantasy novel about knitting and magic.

As I restart this blog at the beginning of my publication journey, it feels like the right time for a reintroduction.

I’m Crista Scott Tappan, a writer, knitter, fiber artist, researcher, and strategist based in Portland, Oregon. My novel, RAVEL, is an adult portal fantasy built around fiber arts, knitting, folklore, and a hidden world called Goblin City.

As a lifelong Jim Henson fan, I was inspired by Labyrinth and wanted to tell my own Goblin City story—but this time, influenced by all the things I love.

At the center of the story is Esther Wolfe, a rare-book specialist and award-winning knitter who is pulled into a world where knots can bind agreements, intention can be spun into yarn, and magic is worked stitch by stitch.

As a lover of fantasy novels, I’ve always craved a book where knitting is actually magic, rather than simply something happening in the background of a scene. I’d been craving real knitting magic! I love all things witchy and horror, and the overlap with knitters who love witchy things is deep.

In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that this is the book I ended up writing.

How my husband and I started writing together

RAVEL also became a book I wrote with my husband, Michael.

Although I had been writing earlier versions of Ravel for years, in many ways it became a completely different book because of collaborating with Michael—my husband and partner in all things.

Michael and I at a Renaissance Festival!

When we first fell in love, we bonded over our shared passion for storytelling. We would send each other the short stories we’d written. We would dissect (and still do!) storylines in TV shows and movies. We always said that someday, when we retired, we would write books together. I’d always dreamed of being an author and writing books, but put it on the back burner.

A few years ago, I realized waiting until retirement to follow my dreams was pretty silly.

So I started writing Ravel again. And, of course, I immediately started talking to Michael about it.

Anyone who knows Michael knows that he is not only an incredibly talented tattoo artist who specializes in fantasy and the macabre, but also a lifelong tabletop RPG fan and storytelling enthusiast. He quickly became my brainstorming partner, helping me shape the world, mythology, characters, and figure out how to organize all of my wild interests into a coherent story. He also has a borderline photographic memory, which includes the innate ability to memorize entire plot structures. Which is incredibly helpful when writing a novel because I, on the other hand, tend to have the memory of a goldfish.

That combination ended up working very well.

It’s also worth noting that Michael has long supported my passion for knitting through his tattooing—by designing my forearm tattoo (which inspired the book cover shown below!) and he even designed the tote bag art for the Rose City Yarn Crawl here in Portland in 2022. He’s tattooed dozens of magical knitting (and spinning / crocheting!) tattoos for folks our community and knows about as much as any person could without actually knitting themselves.

So although he isn’t a knitter, he was able to partner with me in writing a magical book about knitting pretty fantastically.

What started as me essentially saying, “What if knitting were magic—and what if it became a much bigger part of this story?” slowly turned into the two of us asking increasingly strange questions. One of Michael’s biggest strengths is in creating magic systems and backstories that make plots feel lived in and real.

We talked about all the things: What did Goblin City look like? How do you get there? How is it related to disappearances of people in the subway systems? What kinds of creatures lived there? What happened when someone stayed too long? How was Goblin City first formed?

The world kept growing.

I wrote the first draft of Ravel alone, struggling to articulate on the page everything we had brainstormed together. I wouldn’t even let Michael read my drafts, which is pretty funny to think about now, considering I’ll now happily toss him half-baked pages to review and help draft.

But I digress. :)

The turning point came when I realized that I could not—and did not want to—write the book entirely alone.

So around last November, I finally handed Michael my laptop and asked him to read what we had spent so much time imagining together.

He spent the next few months essentially live-narrating the book to me while helping me edit it. He made up voices for the characters, and suddenly the story came alive in front of me. It was one of the most fun bonding experiences we’ve ever had, and I now joke he would be an incredible audiobook narrator.

It also became very apparent that there was a lot of room for the novel to grow.

I embraced the idea of Michael becoming more than my brainstorming partner.

Together, we spent the next six months revising, adding chapters, rewriting scenes, and transforming Ravel into the novel it is today.

Michael also challenged me to build more structure and depth into the magic system. I realized my own knowledge and skills only touched the surface of what is possible.

So naturally, I went on a research deep dive and essentially tried to become a fiber-arts historian myself—just like the main character of the novel.

Why knitting and magic?

I’ve been knitting for nearly a decade and have loved fantasy for as long as I can remember.

At some point, I started wondering: why do fiber arts so rarely sit at the center of a fantasy magic system?

Swords, potions, elemental magic—we see them everywhere. Textile arts have a long history in fantasy and mythology, from the Fates weaving human lives on their looms to magical spinning and enchanted cloth.

But what about dyeing yarn?

What about knitting?

I dug into books about the history of weaving, knitting, textiles, and the folklore surrounding fiber arts. I highly recommend The Fabric of Civilization, Women’s Work, and With Her Own Hands.

I even found myself reading about witchcraft and spell-making. Many traditions did include magic involving thread, knots, textiles, and making—but rarely integrated into the kind of fantasy world I was imagining.

These crafts are incredibly old and deeply symbolic. They are tied to storytelling, ritual, labor, survival, identity, community, and folklore.

For Ravel's magic system, I became fascinated by the idea of going deeper into every process involved in making yarn and knitting. That intention could be spun into yarn. That color could hold actual meaning. That a knot could become more than a knot. That magic might require the same patience, repetition, skill, and physical labor as making something by hand.

And as many knitters and fiber artists know, making something with your own hands already feels a little like magic.

The physical act of making matters.

Skill matters.

Material matters.

Color matters.

Intention matters!

That was especially important to me because crafts historically associated with women are so often treated as decorative, domestic, or secondary. (Hellooooo Women’s Work and With Her Own Hands!)

In Ravel, I wanted them to feel powerful.

That ultimately became the foundation of the novel’s magic system.

The knitting patterns that go along with RAVEL

Early in our brainstorming, Michael and I realized something very fun:

I could write actual knitting patterns for the pieces Esther creates throughout the novel.

It has become one of the strangest and most satisfying parts of the entire project.

There’s something surreal about inventing an object in a fictional world and then sitting down with yarn and needles to figure out how to make it exist in the real one. It also proved to be challenging!

Luckily for me, Michael is an incredibly talented artist, so he has also been able to help design the imagery and artwork incorporated into the patterns. He spent a lot of time meticulously drawing designs in what felt like pixel-art.

Finishing RAVEL

It’s been nearly a four-year journey: Three years writing Ravel on my own, followed by roughly ten months rewriting and editing it with Michael.

We finished the official draft of the novel about two weeks after I had surgery, while I was recovering on the couch with plenty of time to occupy my mind. During that same period, we planned several knitting patterns connected to the book, two of which I’ve now completed.

RAVEL is now a complete novel of approximately 100,000 words.

In all honesty, finishing it was both thrilling and a bit disorienting.

For so long, the book existed as this enormous unfinished thing in my head and on my computer.

Now there is a beginning, a middle, an ending—and an actual manuscript. Even real-life pieces from that imaginary world that I could hold in my hands!

Michael and I were thrilled. He even designed a super-rad concept cover!

RAVEL cover concept by Crista Scott Tappan and Michael Tappan

Then we sent the book to around a dozen trusted friends for feedback and review, which has been one of the most rewarding and exciting creative experiences of my life.

Right now, Ravel is in the querying stage, which means I’m seeking literary representation and sending the manuscript to agents. Turns out, traditional publishing is just as big of a marathon as writing a book!

Querying is an entirely different experience from writing a novel, and I’ll probably write much more about that process here as I go.

For now, though, I keep coming back to how strange it is that an idea about where the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan might disappear to somehow became a novel about knitting and magic—and eventually an entire world my husband and I created together.

A world with goblins, impossible trains, magical yarn, and one very determined knitter trying to find her way home.

A knitter who, like me, takes a leap of faith toward adventure despite the challenges her body sometimes puts in her way.

I hope someday I’ll get to see Ravel sitting on a bookstore shelf and in the hands of readers.

For now, as I begin the journey of finding an agent, I’m grateful to have a place to share what I’m learning along the way.

With love,

Crista