🧶Hey there, fire horse 🔥

Knit Stars | February 22, 2026

🧶Hey there, fire horse 🔥

BY SHELLEY BRANDER

Did you hear? I started a new Substack! I publish Shelley’s Sunday Yarns for free there every week, usually a day or two early, and there’s bonus content for paid subscribers, too. Check it out here.

You may have heard that this past week began a new lunar year. It’s the rare year of the Fire Horse, for the first time in 60 years.

We leave behind the year of the snake. So it’s the perfect time to shed those old skins and free yourself to run with the intense energy and independence of the Fire Horse.

This feels so very apropos for me, because this week I moved out of the condo I’ve lived in the past 4 years, up the street to a little house on the edge of a nature preserve, and just a short walk to the beach. Charles has a little yard for the first time! And grass! And two Cavalier next-door-neighbors, Hattie Mattie and HoneyBee. 💗

Where the condo represented a transitional time for me, this little home by the sea feels like it’s been waiting for me well, all of my life.

And gosh…while I thought I had “shed” a lot of stuff when I moved across the country from my hometown of Tulsa four years ago, I still somehow have a ton of boxes to unpack! But every move is a new opportunity to shed things that no longer serve us.

In learning about the year of the Fire Horse, I discovered that in 1966, in Japan and other parts of East Asia, it was considered a bad omen to have a girl in a Fire Horse year. They were feared to be too headstrong. This led to a significant decrease in birth rates in 1966.

So as we prepare to harness the Fire Horse energy of the new lunar year together, I invite you to shed whatever’s been weighing you down and join me, headstrong and heart strong and fearless.

We ride at dawn.

xoxo,