Today's the day! My latest pattern, Rain Must Fall, is now available in the cold comfort knits online shop, and in my Ravelry shop. Woot woot! And to make life a little less 'rainy', from March 10th to 14th, receive 20% OFF the regular price in both my shops--no coupon code needed :) 

To celebrate the release of Rain Must Fall, Debbie has graciously dyed up some beautiful kits to make yarn shopping a breeze. They will be available in two colour options; the original combo, "Simon + Tea Season", or the equally beautiful "Courage + Smoke Screen".

Each kit will contain 2 x 420-yard skeins of The Loving Path Fibre Arts Nova Fingering (100% non-superwash Merino wool), plus the Rain Must Fall FREE PDF PATTERN! The kits will be available in The Loving Path Etsy Shop on March 10/21 at 10am EST, at exactly the same time the pattern goes live.

​There will only be a limited number of kits and free patterns available, so do NOT pass go, do NOT stop for a cup of coffee--those yarn babies NEED you!

Lastly, I must admit that Rain Must Fall resonates with me on a personal level. If you read my last post, you know that, at the beginning of last year, Ravelry blindsided small designers like myself with changes to their algorithm, and that the fallout in terms of exposure and sales has been extraordinarily shitty.

Even without a global pandemic, the virtual collapse of my main sales platform would have been a kick in the teeth, but add in a virulent micro-organism hell-bent on destroying the human race and, yeah, I'd say it's felt a little "rainy" around here lately.

If the Rain Must Fall Shawl speaks to you, too, I'd be ever so grateful for your support @coldcomfortknits (comments, bookmarks, re-posts etc.) and/or with a purchase from one of my pattern shops, either on Ravelry, or here on cold comfort knits. Flock members unite! 

Sincerely, 
Alexis 

Honestly, I love this hat. I've knit seven of them, so far. It lends itself to nearly limitless fluffy yarn and finished size combinations. AND I expect it to tank hard on Ravelry. I hope to be proved wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

Why? Because everything I designed last year tanked on Ravelry. Something fundamentally changed on the backend of their platform, resulting in a small business nightmare for not-Andrea-Mowry and not-Stephen-West indie designers, like myself. It's been rough. And Ravelry completely fails to acknowledge it. I tried to regain some creative control by upgrading this site--to the tune of several hundred dollars. To date, I've sold one pattern. Let that sink in.

In a year with no markets (no hat sales), and no job (as a non-essential contractor at a hospital I've been 'laid off' since March 2020), the virtual collapse of Ravelry was both unexpected and devastating. Why couldn't they just have left well enough alone? 

TENACITY features clean and tidy slipped stitch edges with neat, almost "raw" looking, cast-on and bind-off ends. The pattern contains specific instructions for a modified WS method of alternating hand-dyed skeins, to preserve the pretty edges, and step by step directions for binding off  so that the "raw" ends match.

You'll need 4 skeins of light fingering weight yarn. I used the utterly sublime FINO by Manos del Uruguay, a blend of 70% wool & 30% silk. 

​If substituting a different colour—or a different yarn—it’s best to use solids or semi-solids with very little variation in colour. Why? TENACITY is based on a vertical pattern. Yarns with colour variation tend to pool horizontally, which will compete with, or even obscure, the overall pattern.

Running a little low in the tenacity department? That’s okay! I’ve included info on how to adjust the stitch count for a smaller project. However, dimensions and yardage for these changes are not included because I, too, have a tenacity limit ;) 

get the pattern in my Ravlery shop before 11:59pm July 8th and save 40%!

If it's exactly the kind of knit YOU need right now, you're in luck! The Aldershot Hat is available in my Ravelry shop at 30% off from now until Sunday, June 21st at 11:59 p.m. EST. Happy stash diving my knitty friends! 

this free pattern is inside 20 care packages heading to OTMH hospital staff
it's also on Ravelry and IG for every other knitter in need of a wee break

Crunch time. The request came just 24 hours before retail shops were mandated to close. But the knitting gods smiled on us and I was able to snag 20 pairs of needles from my wholesaler, while the gals at my LYS hooked me up with 20 cheerful skeins of Cascade Ultra Pima. Thanks Spun! ​

​The Halton Spa Cloth Trio is a free pattern on Ravlery, and on Instagram @coldcomfortknits. And if you don't have cotton yarn in your stash, local yarn shops are still shipping. So de-stash or order online, get the free pattern online, and lockdown like a BOSS. Protect our healthcare workers. Stay home and knit!

Knit Kit Care Packages on their way to OTMH. 

A four-month digital absence is a loooong time by modern standards, but just a blink of the eye when you're in the midst of a global pandemic. As I write this, we are a planet on lockdown, sheltering-in-place to slow the spread of a virus that didn't even exist when I stopped blogging last November. Today, the world looks dramatically different than it did four and half months ago. But, for better or worse, I'm still knitting. Always knitting. 

When I posted on November 14th I had just published my final pattern of the Fall/Winter 2019 season, The Harbour Hat. Normally, I would have immediately turned to mad market prep, but since I'd already sold my entire inventory of cold comfort hats in September at Burlington MADE, it seems I got the gift of time for the holidays. I had planned to use that time to make decisions about cold comfort knits, and the direction it would take in 2020.

To be honest, I'd been toying with the idea of throwing myself head-long (head-long!) into hat making, and decreasing my focus on other types of design work. My goal had been to create a hat *empire*, albeit a very tiny one. A tricked out online hat shop. A book of cold comfort hat patterns. I really *really* like knitting hats.

But then Shibui Knits invited me to participate in a design collaboration I would have been a fool to pass up, the holidays happened, I resumed teaching at the hospital twice a week, our condo went on the market and, if that weren't enough, I had to have some scary cardiac issues evaluated. Suffice it to say web & blog updates went on the back burner, along with my hat empire.

Days passed. Months passed. And Time sorted things out, like it always does. I completed my collaboration with Shibui Knits, we signed on the townhouse dotted line and got an official moving date, and I began to receive follow-up care with a cardiologist. As March arrived it finally seemed like it was time to start that empire. It was not. 

Two weeks later the world went on lockdown, and our collective physical and financial security became a very sudden, very BIG question mark. Naturally, I now find myself questioning the future of cold comfort knits.

Will the financial impact of the pandemic cause families to turn away from the type of high quality (higher-priced) hand-knits I had hoped to stock in my online shop? Will there be a resurgence of illness when the cold weather arrives and, if so, will that result in the cancellation of Holiday Markets--in other words, if I invest the next 6 months of time & money in knitting sufficient market inventory, as I normally would, will I end up "out in the cold" this coming winter?

And patterns? What about patterns? I've given away thousands of free patterns over the last few years...several hundred as a goodwill gesture when the lockdown started. But Ravelry has tons of free patterns. Many are good. Many are the classic you-get-what-you-pay-for knitting nightmare. Will financial uncertainty cause knitters to take their chances with free patterns, or will they still value the clarity and ease of a $4 pattern from an experienced designer?

In spite of all the uncertainty, it's times like these that remind me how incredibly grateful I am to be a Knitter. I've said before and I'll say it again: Knitting saved my life. Knitting saves my life. Every single day, and now more than ever.

So instead of feeling "stuck" at home, I'm feeling SAFE at home, with a comprehensive set of knitting needles, an inspiring set of stitch dictionaries, and a stash that will outlast the apocalypse.

And that's enough for now. ​

I can't believe we are already three months into 2020 and I've only published one pattern. One! Thankfully that one was one for the books; a tap from the renowned Shibui Knits is nothing to sneeze at. Although in light of world events I wouldn't recommend sneezing at *anything* right now.

After a disappointing design collaboration with a U.S. yarn shop last October--big on promises, small on follow through--I'd sworn off collaborations entirely. Go ahead, ask anyone who knits with me--or within ten feet of me. I was pretty vocal in my commitment NOT to make more commitments.

But before I could utter my last protestation, my inbox interrupted me (ping!) with an invitation to collaborate with Shibui Knits. On a design of my choosing. On a schedule of my choosing. With a yarn of my choosing. Oh yeah, and they would send me a dozen unique skeins for my swatching pleasure.

After I picked myself up off the floor, I was ALL IN. Backpedaling be damned. 

​From the bottom of my heart, a great big THANK YOU to Shibui Knits for the yarn-spiration to create such a treasured design. Trust me, I'll wear it well! ​

Introducing The Harbour Hat by cold comfort knits (it me, lol).

I knit a lot of hats. A LOT. And I gotta tell ya', this is one of my all-time favourites. The yarn is a treat for the fingers. The ribbed pattern is almost hypnotic. And the finished hat? Well it's just the coziest, suggliest, most wearable hat you ever did knit. You won't want to leave home without it! 

NEW PATTERN PROMO
The Harbour Hat is now live on Raverly. Enjoy 25% until 9 pm EST 11/17/19.

Obviously that's a lie; I don't have a dog. Truth is, it's my fault. A little bit Apple's fault. But mostly mine. ​

A couple of months ago, my beloved MacBook gave up the ghost. In an effort to save a bit of yarn money (all money saved is yarn money), I decided to replace it with an iPad. I figured a tablet would be lighter, brighter, and better suited to my nomadic, coffee-house lifestyle.

Wrong.

The tablet was indeed lighter and brighter, but pattern-writing and blogging became incredibly frustrating and circuitous. Many features I use here on the web-based blog platform were absent via the app. Not having a normal keyboard felt like having my fingers removed and sewn on backwards. And, strangely, I just really missed my old friend, Mac.

​I gave it two months--and three patterns!--but, finally, I had to surrender. I'm not calling it a mistake, but a "learning experience". A learning experience that robbed me of a tragic amount of yarn money (loud sobbing here).

Silver lining? I can now write patterns and blog posts with ease. So...without further ado...I give you my latest pattern, The Holloway Hat. And this blog post. BAM. 

The Holloway Hat is named after two of my favourite far-away Insta-friends. Julie and Jamie are a spirited sister-brother pair who I just know I would pee my pants laughing with if we ever met IRL.

The Holloway Hat is a super-soft, super-light, super-fluffy wonder hat. Two balls of Garnstudio DROPS Air (retails for about $10 CAD) is enough for two hats. Choose a main colour and a contrast colour for the first hat, then reverse them for the second--fraternal hat twins! For the math-challenged among us, that's two hats for $20. You're welcome :)

DROPS Air is what they call a "blow yarn". Instead of spinning the fibres the usual way, baby alpaca and Merino wool are blown in a tube, which makes the yarn itself lighter and airier, and the finished objects made with this type of yarn 30-35% lighter than those made with conventionally spun yarns of the same thickness. BTW, Garnstudio has no clue who I am--I'm not a spokesperson, just a yarn nerd.

Once again, I owe a debt of knitty gratitude to my friend Christina of @oneloopcrochet, who is, in my books at least, the second coming of Claudia Schiffer. Thanks for standing in Starbucks and letting me take your picture. Thanks for  ignoring the staring strangers. You da best! ​