I'm so excited to announce my new retail partnership with Bogart Home & Decor! This independently owned an operated shop, right in the heart of Bronte village, is the perfect place to #shoplocal #shopsmall this holiday season...and all year round! cold comfort knits + Bogart's, spreading the knitty love! 

A curated selection of cold comfort knits is now on display at Bogart's, including many of my most popular styles: The Lakeshore Toque, The Lighthouse Hat, The Trafalgar Hat, and many more...plus some funky cowls, too!

So why not take a stroll by Lake Ontario, pop into Cafe Colombia for a cuppa--or the Harbourside Cafe for something more substantial (they make a mean butter chicken poutine!)--then head over to Bogart's for some cold comfort, and whatever other treasures strike your fancy! You won't be disappointed.

So it seems like y'all kind of liked this little pattern of mine, eh? #iamcanadian LOL.

Just last week, after soaring to #1 on Ravelry's Hot Right Now Top 20, The Trafalgar Hat has now reached 4800+ likes, and is being knit the world over!

​In fact, just a few days ago, a customer at the yarn store where I work asked me if I knew that The Trafalgar Hat was super-popular in England! She had been talking to her daughter, who's currently living 'across the pond' and, apparently, this pattern is making the rounds there, too!

Well, blimey! Someone put the kettle on. I think I need a spot of tea. Honestly, my Basingstoke-born grandmother would be so proud. This one's for you Granny!

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This post is a follow up to my last post "karma". Like most of my posts, it's a bit of a read, but here's the short version: We're still BFF's. ​

The longer version goes like this...

Just three short weeks after the crazy-fast turn of events that made The Glen Abbey Hat and The Elm Road Hat "Hot Right Now", it happened again!

This time it was The Lighthouse Hat and, honest to goodness, my phone almost exploded from all the "love". Related to the near-explosion: I learned a valuable lesson about sale settings on Raverly...but that's a story for another time ; )

The funny thing is, I wasn't even planning to publish The Lighthouse Hat on Raverly. The same unpleasantness that caused me start moving my patterns there in the first place had also worn me down a bit. And, despite the unexpected success I'd had moving the first two patterns, I'd become anxious about moving any more. 

What changed my mind? A fellow knitter; she tagged @coldcomfortknits in an Instagram post of a beautiful hat she'd made from The Lighthouse Hat pattern (originally published here). She had lovingly hand-knit each stitch from a soft, warm, hand-dyed yarn--the finished hat was now ready to be gifted to a friend who was about to start cancer treatment--her first chemo cap.

I published The Lighthouse Hat to Ravelry later that same evening. The next morning it was #1 on the Hot Right Now Top 20. In the following days it went on to receive more likes than my previous two hat patterns combined. As an aspiring designer, that's the stuff knitty dreams are made of. A wonderful moment, to be sure. 

But as a human being, I realized that only one number truly mattered: One. One person in need of comfort. One person knitting a heartfelt gift. 

What more could there be?

When I was in high school, I had a BFF named Carma. Yes, that's the correct spelling and, yes, her parents were probably hippies, lol. Despite her unusual name, Carma was a wonderful friend; bright, funny and down-to-earth. Today, however, I'm feeling particularly friendly with the other Karma.
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Here's what happened...

​If you've been reading the baa baa blog, you know that, recently, I encountered some pretty serious copyright violations. In one instance, one of my PDF files was lifted directly from my website and misused by another.

In order to help protect my work, I decided to move all my patterns to Ravelry, and to charge a fair price for them. To help ease the transition, I decided to give each pattern away for free for a few days, so knitters would have time to adjust.

It was a tedious, but necessary, process that required me to undo countless hours of website set-up and editing. To help take the sting out of all the extra work, I "cognitively reframed" it as an important lesson in my budding design career. Yes, I really did that. And, yes, it really helped :)

Fast forward to September 26th and, finally, I'd finished all the back-end details and was ready to re-publish two patterns: The Glen Abbey Hat & The Elm Road Hat. I went into my Ravelry shop, set phasers to "free", then went to bed.

The next morning, all knitty hell had broken loose...in the best, most wonderful, most surprising way possible. I awoke to find The Glen Abbey Hat & The Elm Road Hat occupying the top two spots on Ravelry's Hot Right Now Top 20!

For me, this was the knitty equivalent of having my name in lights. Suddenly, I could imagine knitters around the world asking, "Who the heck is this Alexis Adrienne person?". I even got a 'congratulations' e-mail from a local yarn store that had never been particularly warm or welcoming to me (actually, that might have been more weird than wonderful).

And all of that was great; I was very grateful for the recognition. But a girl's gotta eat. Once the flurry of free downloads was over, I had to wonder, would I really, tangibly, be any further ahead? Happily, it turns out, YES! After all that positive exposure, knitters actually started purchasing my patterns. Can I get a Hallelujah?!

Isn't it ironic that after years of hard work, planning, and strategizing, it took a reactionary move to propel me forwards? I mean, if that blatant misuse of my pattern file hadn't happened, I never would have felt so deeply betrayed, never would have been moved to protect my work and assert my right to fair compensation, and never would have had the same sudden audience for my patterns, or the resulting sales.

Karma is normally known for her more bitchy qualities; payback for slimey, icky behaviour. But when you're on the kind end of things, when you're trying to do good in the world with an honest, open heart, it turns out Karma really can be a girl's best friend! ​