Kate Braestrup's husband, Simon van der Ven calls their home "The House of Relentless Creativity." Simon is a full-time artist, but everyone else in the family probably qualifies for part-time status. Kate Braestrup is seldom seen without a knitting project close at hand. Because she has a short attention span, and her eyesight is getting too weak for reading patterns, Braestrup is forced to design all her own works. The results are often awful and only occasionally pretty good, so Braestrup has become ruthless about unraveling her failures (and yes, that's a metaphor). She inflicts the reasonably good stuff on her relatives and friends at Christmas time, with the result that everyone in Braestrup's intimate circle has far more hats, scarves, legwarmers, felted bags and tea cozies than they could possibly require.