Episode 50: We thought that would be fun! And a giveaway!

We made it to our 50th episode, so what keeps us going? In a word, YOU. From our listeners to invited guests, to family members who helped with tech and made suggestions--to everyone who graced us with their time, support and expertise, we want to say THANK YOU. And that's why we are offering a great giveaway--two of Debie Frable's Skellie Kits will be awarded to two randomly selected subscribers to our newsletter--if you don't subscribe, it's easy to sign up through our website bootieandbossy.com. Please subscribe by October 7th, 2025 to be entered into the drawing. Thank you, Debie, for providing the fabulous Skellie kits!

"What is the meaning of life? That was all--a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one."

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

When we first embarked on this great podcast adventure, we had no idea how meaningful it would become, offering us a series of "little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck in the dark," as Virginia Woolf wrote in her novel, To the Lighthouse. Woolf herself was an avid knitter and wrote to her husband in 1912 that "Knitting is the saving of life." Her sister Vanessa Bell even painted a portrait of her knitting quietly in a chair. The opportunity to connect with others, hear their stories and learn tidbits of history (like the whereabouts of Napoleon's penis . . . ) and share our mistakes and missteps as well as those little daily miracles, has propelled us through 50 episodes. Along the way listeners in 44 of the 50 states (time to step up, you knitters in Utah, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota!) and in 17 countries abroad have joined us.

A special shout out to our families. You are the reason we started this and the reason we're still here. Bootie's husband and son have offered unending tech support. Bootie's daughter has agreed to model on occasion and has been the source of much knitting inspiration. Bossy's husband suggested the knitting in pop culture feature and gifted us the Anne Macdonald's No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting that has been the subject of many of our latest episodes. He is ever vigilant looking for more examples of knitting in pop culture. All three of our kids contributed to the making of the knitting game you can access through our website. All have kindly eaten whatever we put before them with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Our sister Liss, who created our awesome logo and came on the show twice (Episodes 24 and 28)!

Mom, (our first celebrity guest) came on Episode 7 with her brownie recipe which is sooooo good! Hi Mom!

In addition to her amazing recipes, Laylita has offered very helpful photography advice (we still struggle with this but it's not Laylita's fault). She was interviewed in Episode 8.

To the other guests we've interviewed, your insights and laughter have filled our cups:

Christina Kading, Episode 36

Kim Davis, Episode 39

Debie Frable, Episode 42

Michele Lee Bernstein, Episode 47

Bossy talked about The Power of Meaning by Emily Esfahani Smith. Smith has come up with 4 pillars of meaning: Belonging, Purpose, Storytelling, and Transcendence. Our podcast has brought us at least three, if not all four of those pillars.

And a good drink has helped too--try our celebratory Kir Royal--a nice glass of sparkling white wine with a splash of liquor. And then grab your pointed sticks and tune in to hear us reminisce because, well, like Mom setting off to marry Dad, we "thought that would be fun," and frankly, that's as good a reason as any to do anything.

Here is the list Bootie wrote after spending several months trying to launch the podcast:

The Steps involved in making our podcast Bootie and Bossy

1.       Decide to do it 😊

2.       Make an unrealistic timeline

3.       Decide on content and name (thanks Doug!)

4.       Fiddle with making a website. Wordpress was not as intuitive as I had hoped, went with Wix and that made it much easier (thanks William). This involved many steps including getting a domain name with Wordpress and then switching to Wix but keeping the domain name at Wordpress.

5.       Create email account: Bootieandbossy@gmail.com

6.       Record one episode 3 times because of problems with sound. Do the same for the Trailer but many more times. (Thanks Arthur for helping with sound and figuring out the horrible neck pain that Booty was having while working on the computer.)

7.       Figure out how to edit the audio using Audacity (thanks again William!). Here there are also many steps: figuring out how to transfer the audio from Riverside to an mp3, expand the sound so that it’s easier to edit, learn how to delete unusable audio, and learn how to rerecord segments and splice in recording when we make a mistake. Each episode of @40 minutes takes about 3 hours to edit. Maybe someday we will learn not to say um, but, like, you know so much but so far that hasn’t happened. We are equally terrible about this.

8.       Work on Show Notes. Decided to draft them using word and then transfer to the website.

9.       Take pictures for recipes and patterns. Realize we are not very good photographers and/or we need better equipment.

10.   Create FB, Insta and Ravelry profiles. Many steps here as well. FB does not allow business profiles—it has to be linked to a personal account.

11.   Figure out how to link everything on website—social apps, links to other pages within the website, references, etc.

12.   Get an LLC

13.   Get Liss to create a fabulous logo!

14.   Figure out what kind of disclaimers we need.

15.   Create an RSS feed. This needs to be done through RSS.com . I think each time we have a new episode it will need to be uploaded to the RSS feed.

16.   Link the RSS feed, to Spotify and Apple podcast. Still figuring this out but I think once we load an episode to the feed it will automatically upload to Spotify and Apple podcast (we can add more podcast apps later). Spotify is done and linked on the website but waiting on Apple.

To be done:

Finalize website—Jenny’s bio, any other changes to text, layout, etc. Link Apple podcast once we get it (or delete from website for now)

Create FB and Insta post directing people to the podcast. Try to get others (Melissa, Doug, Mom) to share our post.

Create posts for FB, Insta and Ravelry. This will be ongoing.