Today's the day! The Bramble Wrap is now live at purlsoho.com and WOW, what a feeling! It's kind of like when the yarn babies you ordered finally arrive in the mail...but, you know, times a million. 

The journey to today's publication began simply; with an idea, a sketch and a swatch. The year that followed was an absolute whirlwind of creativity and yarny delight! The privilege of working as a freelancer with the amazing team at Purl Soho has been a dream come true. 

The Bramble Wrap was a pleasure to knit for so many reasons, not the least of which being its almost magical ability to fit into my smallest shawl-size project bags...it went everywhere with me! 

Another reason? The yarn! The main yarn is Cattail Silk, and for a little somethin' somethin' the contrast yarn is the uber-fluffy Brume. Those eye-catching details will have everyone asking "Where did you get that wrap?", to which I hope you will proudly reply "I made it MYSELF!!!".

Eleven (eleven!) Bramble Wrap Bundles are ready and waiting for you, so snap up your favourite today. BTW it's totally okay if you have two (or three, or four) favourites. Seriously. No judgement over here ;)

It's official! My first freelance design in collaboration with Purl Soho is launching in less than 72 hours!!! The Bramble Wrap will go live on purlsoho.com this coming Saturday, March 25th, 2023.

It's hard to believe that I shared this "teaser" image on Instagram (@coldcomfortknits) almost a year ago, but in the world of design, there are so many moving parts, and so much prep work is involved. It really is a labour of love!

Update: I got in...and then I got out. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say I lost faith that the organization had their vendors' best interests at heart. The good news? When the Craftadian door closed, the door to EcoFillosophy opened wide up! See my next post for all the wooly details >>

​I just submitted my application for the 2021 Craftadian Hamilton Market, and so many of my fingers are crossed it's going to be pretty challenging to get any knitting done! Two fingers are crossed hoping my application will be accepted. Two more fingers are crossed hoping that large events will get the green light this season. And another two fingers are crossed hoping for no last minute COVID cancellations. Six fingers crossed. None of them thumbs. Like I said, knitting should be fun LOL. 

If you've been following @coldcomfortknits on Instagram for any length of time, you've likely seen your fair share of "pod knitting" posts. Early on in the pandemic, the car (a.k.a. the mobile self-containment pod) quickly became my personal sanity saver, replacing locked-down cafes as a daily outing/knitting spot/caffeine source.

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. ​