Quite thrilled

I have an eBook!!!

This is 'Flip for the Next Feed', a collection of five double knitted (reversible) baby bibs, which are presented in the book in increasing order of intricacy. The collection starts with 'Zombaby':

A very straightforward bib in worsted weight yarn, with a zombie on the front and a severed finger on the back (yum).

Next is 'Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock':

Also straightforward, except with finer gauge (sportweight), which means more stitches. It's got the classic rock, paper, scissors, lizard and Spock hand positions on the front, and glasses on the back.

Things start getting more intricate with 'Pysanka', which was originally published in issue #24 of Knit Now:

This has designs on the shoulders as well as on the front and back, and has multiple motifs.

Then there's 'Feast Your Eyes':

This has no charts, but it does require changing yarn colours on a regular basis, as opposed to just using the same two yarns throughout the bib, as in all the other patterns.

And lastly, the collection finishes off with 'Double the Love':

This introduces double knitted cables - which honestly, are just the same as regular cables except that you alternate knitting and purling the cabled stitches instead of just knitting them all.

Instructions on the double knitting techniques used in the pattern are explained in the book.

It's my very first pattern collection and I'm really proud of it. :) If you like it too, you can go right ahead and...

Clever people

Remember this?

It's my "Tracery" vest from Interweave's special issue, The Unofficial Harry Potter Knits. It's a design that I'm very proud of having thought up, but when I designed it, I didn't seriously think that a lot of people would actually make it, because although it's fairly simple stranded knitting with no yarn changes, it looks tremendously complicated and I thought it would scare a lot of people away.

To date, however, there are 51 projects for it on Ravelry! Many knitters are making, or have made, really beautiful vests. But I was surprised by the fact that many of those projects are not actually vests. Knitters have shown tremendous creativity in adapting the chart for their own fabulously diabolical purposes. And I really wanted to share them! (Although you'll have to follow the links to see what they look like, as I'm not sure of the legality of 'lifting' other people's photographs that they've uploaded to Ravelry. Trust me though, following the links will be worth it.) [note: project links removed for safety as they all went to the Ravelry website]

• PunkYarner seems to have been the first person to think outside the Tracery box, and is making a purse.
  
• The hilarious DrusillaWormwood turned her swatch into a cowl for her cat.
  
• Both AmyClaire and pacasha are making some awesome-looking socks.
  
• La-Piccola is extending part of the window motif and is thinking of making it into a short-sleeved sweater.
  
• Both pnjaban and JoycersB made slightly different pairs of fingerless gloves.
  
• The amazing Amberjatko made a skirt!!!
  
• And finally, the very talented (and determined!) MonicaInMd made a full-on cardigan.
  

Three cheers for creativity!

More tiny and sweet

So I released the fourth bib pattern that's destined for my eBook collection! It's called 'Double the Love'. It's a smaller bib than the others, intended for babies who are more new to solids, or producing copious amounts of drool due to teething. This pattern 'steps it up' a notch because because it has double knitted cables. But no worries, they're not any more difficult than regular cables. :)

It's a fun and quick (considering it's double knitting) knit, and if you like it, you can go ahead and...

Of course, this means that all five of the patterns for my eBook have been written up, which means that in the next week or two, I'll be releasing it! Very exciting stuff. I'll be setting it up on Ravelry so that if you've already purchased one of the bib patterns individually, you'll automatically receive a discount of that cost towards the purchase of the eBook.

Tiny and sweet

I'm very pleased to announce that I have a three-pattern set in the latest issue (#31) of Knit Now magazine!

© Rachel Burgess for Practical Publishing

It's called "Darling", and it's something that happened when I was fooling around with a bunch of motifs about two years ago. I came up with the idea for scratch mittens using a combination of lace, bobbles and a texture motif.

I pitched the mittens to the magazine, and they came back with a positive answer, and asked if I could also do a matching bonnet and booties? Okay, then! I guess I could!

In hindsight, I'm super glad they asked for a whole set, because I think I might actually like the bonnet and booties more than the mittens. Not that I think the mittens suck, of course, :) but I just love how the bonnet turned out; and I'm so jazzed about the motif detail I was able to put on the back of the heel flap and the top of the foot for the booties. For anyone who's curious, I was sent some Debbie Bliss Rialto 4Ply to do the samples with, and I liked the yarn very much indeed.

Knit Now is published in the UK, so if you're in North America it's going to be tough to impossible to get your hands on a copy anywhere local. However, thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can buy a hardcopy or buy a digital copy all from the comfort of wherever you happen to be at the moment.

Power

So I was one of the hundreds of thousands of people who lost power during the Toronto ice storm at the end of December. At the time, I thought our two days without power was pretty bad, but it turns out our house was one of the lucky ones. Some people I know went a week or more before they got connected back up.

We were also super-lucky in that we were able to stay in our house, and our pipes didn't freeze. It turns out that our gas fireplace must run on a battery or something, because when I came downstairs on Sunday morning (the power having been out for twelve hours already and the house being quite chilly by that point), I decided to flip on the fireplace switch just for lulz, and...foom! It worked! This kept the house from freezing, so we were able to stay there. We were even able, with some extra blankets piled on, to sleep in our own beds upstairs instead of having to curl up on the floor next to the fireplace, huddled together for warmth.

We put as many food staples into coolers as we could fit, put the coolers out on the porch, and lived off of fruit, cereal and cheese or peanut butter sandwiches for two days. It wasn't fun, and the kids got super-bored once the sun went down (which of course was very early in the day since this was right around the solstice), but we were okay. The power came back on after almost 48 hours, and we ended up being able to have our turkey dinner on Christmas Eve after all.

One of the most frustrating things about the whole experience was the serious suckage of the communication about what was going on from our power company. Their phone line was almost completely useless - there was absolutely no way to get in touch with an actual human being, and even the automated service gave out only vague information about what was going on, and sometimes even that went offline. It wasn't until I trekked down to work on the second powerless morning and finally got an Internet connection that I saw the power company's Tweets and website with a map of the outages (which didn't actually work anyway).

(Newsflash: If you are a company whose sole product is to provide electrical power...and you lose the ability to provide that product to someone...communicating to them about it via a system WHICH REQUIRES POWER TO ACCESS is NOT VERY FREAKIN' HELPFUL.)

But I digress.

The thing I absolutely can't complain about was the dedication of the hydro workers during all of this. They gave up their holiday time with their families and went out into the cold and generally nasty weather, working long, long hours, to try and get everybody connected back up. They are champs. I am so very, very grateful.

I decided to show my gratitude, as I so often end up doing, with handknits. So over the past month, I've knitted four pairs of socks, in various adult sizes (mostly big, because I figure most power workers aren't exactly my size), and will be getting them over to our local power company hopefully this week, with a request that they distribute them to whichever of their workers who were particularly dedicated during the storm recovery (and whom the socks fit, of course).

Pair #1, worked from the two balls of Bergère de France Goomy 50 which appeared in my stocking on Christmas morning:

Pair #2, worked from some of the Regia Blitz Color that came in my 10-ball grab bag purchase from Little Knits last May:

Pair #3, worked from more Regia Blitz Color from the grab bag:

Pair #4, worked from a ball of the incredibly cool Zwerger Garn Opal Vincent van Gogh, in the "Café Terasse Am Abend" colourway, which I got for my last birthday:

I hope they'll keep some very deserving people very warm!

(And why yes, I am incredibly anal about making sure my self-striping socks are exactly the same as each other, thank you for noticing. :)