happy holidays sale

Do you still have time to fit in one or two little holiday knitting projects? Of course you do! Or perhaps you'd like to gift a pattern to someone who likes to knit cute toys? Starting November 22 and running until November 30 (eastern time in Canada), there will be a Happy Holidays Sale in my Ravelry shop!

Use the coupon code "happyholidays" to get 20% off the following holiday patterns:
Baby Penguin
Cozy Elf Tuque
Festive Knits (ebook)
Macaroni Penguin
Polar Bear
Santa Reindeer
Surfer Koala (for my friends in the Southern hemisphere)

But even if you decide not to use the coupon, I have a new holiday pattern for you which should be ready very soon!

so hard to write...

It gives me great pain to admit this, but the new edition of Fuzzy Knits will not be ready before the holidays. It's been upsetting me so much that it's taken this long, and I finally had to admit that the stress wasn't healthy for me, and might compromise the quality of my work. This Autumn has been so much busier than I imagined, with Lev running headlong into toddler-hood, and Mr. Mitten working overtime at a new and more demanding day-job.

We really want to take the next few weeks to enjoy the holiday season, visit with family, and wind down from such a hectic few months. (I hope you have the same opportunity.) Then we can get back to work in the new year, and with luck, get the book ready for the next big holiday season. With the pressure off, we should be able to give you the quality of book you deserve.

If you were thinking of giving the new book as a gift this holiday, perhaps you could consider the Festive Knits book instead. If you live in the US, you should even have a little time to order a printed copy. Or, if you don't mind a bit of do-it-yourself craftiness, you can order the download (Ravelry link), print the book out at home, and put it all together into a nice binder. With a bit of yarn and some other supplies for a toy or two, it would make a great gift for a knitter who loves cute critters!

However, I know a few of you were counting on the new toy versions to complete some gifts, and I don't want to let you down. The two posts following this one will have the instructions for the head and ears of the new Mouse and Panda. You will still need to use the original patterns to complete the toy, but I haven't changed these much in the new versions, so you should still get a very adorable toy.

Introducing Qoop

Hello, Mr. Mitten here. I haven't blogged in a long while -- I'm back full-time at work, and late summer is very busy time of year in the world of education (I work at McGill University in Montréal).

We're not quite ready to go forward with our plans of having a self-hosted shop (this requires lots of work and lots of time), but we're making small steps toward that goal. One of them is cutting back on our dependence on Lulu, and we're now glad to introduce an option to buy printed copies of our books through Qoop, which is another on-demand printer like Lulu.

Qoop offers a number of benefits over Lulu. First of all, they provide similar quality printing services, but at a significantly lower price. For example, a wire-bound colour copy of the "Festive Knits" on Lulu costs $23.55, and on Qoop it is $19.03. They also offer a USPS "Media Mail" shipping rate, which literally costs about 3-4 dollars to ship a copy of the book across U.S.

Qoop also gives you more control over how you want your book done. If you prefer "Perfect Bound" books to "Wire-O," you are welcome to select that option (it's fifty cents cheaper, too, though I find that pattern books are way nicer when wire-bound). If you don't care for colour and just want it for the text, then you can even choose the "Black and White" printing option, which further cuts the price by about $5 (a black-and-white wire-bound copy of "Festive Knits" is $14.22).

If you've been holding out until the price of the book drops, then now is your chance. :)

• Fuzzy Mitten's Festive Knits on Qoop

Once the new edition of "Fuzzy Knits" is done, it'll be available both at Lulu and at Qoop as well.

Hope you have a good evening, and happy knitting! :)

-Mr. Mitten

give-away today!

In case you're dropping by here for the first time, thanks so much! Maybe you'll have a look around and find something worth reading. But without further ado, let's get on to the contest!

The prize: a printed copy of my new Festive Knits pattern book, sent directly from the printers to wherever you live. Or, if you already have the book, an equivalent value in goodies directly from me! If this is the case, I'll email you with a few questions to make sure I send stuff you'll enjoy.

The rules: very simple, just leave a comment on this post before 8:00 am EST tomorrow, including your name! Your email address would be useful too, but you must know I can't give a prize to anonymous.

The winner: I will use a random number generator to pick one of the commenters, and post that name here tomorrow morning. However, since I have to send the prize by this weekend, I need you to email me with your shipping address by Friday afternoon. If I don't hear back from the chosen winner by then, I will choose another.

Good luck! And don't forget, to increase your chances of winning something, check out the list of participating blogs on Sew Mama Sew.

festive knits kits

This is just a quick note to let you know I listed three Festive Knits kits in my Etsy shop. I wanted to make more, but sewing has become a little difficult with such a big belly to get in the way! There's a kit to make an Owl and Baby, a Fuzzy Farm set, and a Baby Penguin. Each is a little special and different.

It seems people like the Felted Stars pattern I posted! I can't believe how many copies have been downloaded from Ravelry already (you can find it through the Ravelry Shop link there on the right). I wish I could have taken better photos of them, since they are super cute and fuzzy (just like the other things I knit!). But, I didn't want to put up holiday decorations yet, and we just had our first snow today. Which, by the way, is nasty and wet and not at all nice to be out in. Anyway, this left few options for cute holiday photos. I've knit bunches of the stars myself, since they will most likely be gifts for my family this year, and there's something addictive about their simplicity, pretty colours, and playing in a sink of hot water when it's cold out.

Book pricing and costs

Hi, everyone. Mr. Mitten here with some more info on the book's pricing. As Barbara said earlier today, Lulu recently had a price hike on all printed materials. Before, you were paying $12 in printing costs per book, but now it's up to $15, which is quite a significant difference. Unfortunately, that means that we couldn't continue charging $19.95 per book, especially considering that we also have to pay Lulu's commission on each item sold.

This is why the price for printed books went up by a bit. We tried to make it up to you guys by lowering the price on the download version to $17.50 -- hopefully this will help those of you who aren't interested in getting the printed version (though it's nice and shiny! I'm very pleased with it.)

Just a couple of words about our operating costs -- we barely have any. :) The book was written entirely in Free Software (pictures done in Gimp, covers and charts done in Inkscape, and the layout done in Scribus, all of it running on Fedora Linux). Apart from Lulu (or Etsy), there are no other middlemen, so anything you pay goes straight to the artist, making sure that she is always pregnant with new ideas (*badum-pum!* ;)).

Overall, this distribution model works out pretty well for everyone, and unless Lulu's printing costs go up again, we should be able to continue to offer patterns at comparatively low costs (at least compared to some other pattern designers.)

nearly ready

After a few late nights, and some agony with a bug in the software, my wonderful hubbie finally finished the draft version of the new book. Having worked on it so hard, for so long, it's strange to think it might be nearly ready. We've ordered the test copy, which should be here in a week. My fingers are crossed that it all looks good, because that will mean we can put it up in the shop!

I thought I should mention one thing about the Festive Knits book: it's a different size (6x9") from the old one (8.5x11"). We decided that a smaller book would be easier for you to carry around, or have sitting in your lap or on the arm of your sofa. It has the coil binding, though, which makes it easy to keep open at the right page. However, this smaller size means that it would be a real pain for you to print, so for now the book will not be available as a download (also, the quality of the pictures makes the file too big to download easily). Mr. Mitten will be working on a different format which will be download-able, but it probably won't be available until after Christmas (he has a few other projects to work on before he can get to it).

This has made us curious if we should change the size and format of the Fuzzy Knits book, so I've put up a poll with a few possibilities. Whatever the popular opinion ends up being, I doubt we'll be able to work on it anytime soon. We just want to find out what you think, so we can make plans.

Also, I've gotten really behind on my email the last few weeks (both my business and Ravelry messages). Between babysitting, working on the book, knitting, and everything that needs to get done at home, I just haven't had time to sit down and reply to everyone. However, I have a half day off tomorrow, so hopefully I can take a couple of hours to get back to you. I'm sorry if you've been waiting a while to hear back from me.

holy cuteness, batman!

(I actually used to watch the original Batman show with my younger brother, but I'm pretty sure Robin never used that line. Anyway...)

I thought I would share one adorable little bat I found in the Fuzzy Mitten flickr group. This little guy is knit by Claire, and I think she did a great job! I know there are a few more finished bats on Ravelry, although not quite as many as I hoped to see so close to Halloween. But if other knitters are anything like me, it can take a while to get around to taking photos.

In response to a few questions from the comments, the patterns from my new book will be sold individually. I just haven't decided yet exactly when. I want to make sure I keep enough in reserve to spread out over the time of my maternity leave next year. Also, I will probably be sticking around on Etsy for now, but I'm still thinking of closing that shop once I have my baby. I still feel that a new shop somewhere else, plus my Lulu shop, will be best for everyone.

mamas and babies

Most of the photos for the Festive Knits book are now in the set. I'm really pleased with them, and hope you like them too! I seem to have a slight mama and baby theme going, but who can blame me for having that on my mind these past months? I especially like the mama bunny - she's the same size as the big teddy, and so cuddly! She does take a lot of yarn, but because it's thick yarn, she knits up really quickly. Plus, the big polar bear's sweater and the big teddy overalls will fit her, so now you have more clothing options for the bigger toys.

Okay, I need to go do some proof-reading before my niece wakes up from her nap. Hope you're all having a lovely day!

getting there

The new Festive Knits book is taking it's time coming together, but with hard work and some luck, we will be ready to order a test print by the end of the week. We've been trying to find a few spare hours in the evenings and on weekends, but with so many other things happening this time of year, the book is taking longer than we planned. Oh well, it should still be ready for you by early November. We have photos of most of the patterns now too, and I'll be getting them up on Flickr in the next day or two. That way you'll have a better idea of what's coming!

I'm feeling a bit better today (hooray!), but I get tired so easily. Although, that could have as much to do with my pregnancy as the cold. Unfortunately, I've made my niece and my hubby sick, so I now have two sick people to look after. I better get well soon! The big bowl of home-made chicken noodle soup I ate for lunch should help. Having a sister who went to cooking school is great!

We've had frost here the last two nights, and the colourful leaves are starting to fall. As much as I enjoy the colour of the season, it just makes me think of all the gardening that must be done soon! I'm so happy that I'm not working as a gardener this year. It was fun and interesting, but I think fall is definitely the hardest part of the year for gardening. It's cold here, and often damp or raining, so you're always waiting for break time and your thermos of hot tea, hoping your gloves will dry on the air vent on the way to the next job. Last year we also had snow early, so many days I worked in that, trying to get the last of the plants out or tied up for the winter. I'll go back to gardening some day, perhaps, but for now I'm happy to settle down to being a mom, and designing toys for you to knit.

big surprise!

What can I say about our holiday? It was a nice, relaxing break. The weather could have been warmer and drier, but we made the best of it. The scenery was very pretty and autumn-ish, with plenty of rolling hills, farms, colourful trees, and an occasional glimpse of the sea. I won't have any photos to share until we get our regular computer back (it's off getting a new hard-drive), but hopefully we managed to get a few good ones. We shot lots of video too, so at least some of that should turn out well. I even managed to find myself some yarn, although I wasn't sure the shop-owner was going to let me escape without talking off both my ears.

So, I think I promised to reveal a surprise? Well, the project that has kept me so busy for the last few months is a new book! It will be called Festive Knits like our very first one, but most of the patterns are different, and organized on a seasonal theme. Some of them are animals you have seen before but with different outfits, some of them are new toys altogether. I wanted to work up a bunch of new patterns to have for next year, and it seemed like a good idea to put them all together and reuse the book name. We're hoping to have it ready for the first week of November, so there will be plenty of time to order for Christmas. If you don't want to buy the whole book, though, most of the patterns will be released separately later this fall or some time next year. (I'll let you know more details about the book as we get closer to finishing it)

Now you know why I've had so many mysterious new toys in my flickr photos lately :)