HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Let's bump down Furnace Inferno from the top of the page, shall we? How about a new pattern for the holidays? A new FREE pattern?

It's called Engleberg, and you can get it on the Fibre Space blog here. It's a long, relatively fitted cowl, intended for warmth. There's a story behind this design, which is one offshoot of a larger project, and I'll narrate that in my next post. In the meantime, ENJOY!

One side:

The other side:

Hooray!

 

Furnace Inferno

When Baltimore started getting chilly, we turned on our heat. Rather, we tried to turn on our heat. But no heat. A little investigation determined that the fairly new furnace the seller installed in this house was too big for the house, so for our safety, it just kept itself turned off. Which was a really good thing, considering that the ductwork around the furnace was deficient, too.

The inspector missed this during our home inspection.

So we were cold, very cold. Temperatures were in the 40s, and it looked like we were going to have to shell out $5,000 for a new furnace, which, of course, we do not have.

As we were reconciling ourselves to a year of hustling to pay for the furnace, I went to Michigan to teach at the Clever Ewe retreat. And something went very wrong, some perfect storm of safety switch failure and dangerously substandard ductwork.

AND THERE WAS FIRE.

The fire was contained in the furnace and ducts, but the smoke and soot was EVERYWHERE.

It spewed from the vents on the second floor. My friend Karida, who stopped by the house in the immediate aftermath, related this story over the phone:

"It's like Victorian England in there. The bed is covered with soot. And your pretty orange girl cat was sitting on the bed, totally black. And Chris pet her, and his hand came away black."

When I got back to Baltimore on Monday, a cleaning crew had been scrubbing for a few days, and a specialty dry cleaning company had packed every bit of fabric out of our house for cleaning. The house smelled strongly of burning plastic.

We're fortunate, though. We're fine. The cats are fine. We now have heat, and the smell is gone. (Or is it? Have I just become accustomed to it?) Today the dry cleaners returned our clothes. After a week of scouring, the cleaners determined that the second floor needs to be completely repainted and the bedrooms need to be recarpeted, but we had planned those projects for the upcoming year anyway. 

The past few weeks, though, have been exhausting. It will be another few weeks before I feel caught up and in control of my life again. So bear with me as I return to some nearly completed design work.

ALSO: THANK YOU TO EVERYONE who purchased patterns during my Veterans Day promotion! I raised nearly $500 for the Wounded Warrior Project, and those of you who won prizes have been informed!

Service and Sacrifice: A Veteran's Day Promotion

TODAY THROUGH FRIDAY, 11/15, I'LL BE DONATING ALL THE PROCEEDS FROM THE SALE OF ALL MY SELF-PUBLISHED PATTERNS TO THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT. Read more below!

Veteran's Day has come to mean more to me over the past several years than it did when I was younger. When I was growing up, people joined the military to gain skills and pay for college. That changed in 2001. Now I meet, work out with, and work with people my age and younger who have returned from combat.  Reflecting on this, my life seems very easy, even when it's a lot of work. And I feel a little bit spoiled, a little bit helpless, and a little bit overwhelmed.

Because I want to do something more than feel grateful to everyone who's served on Veteran's Day, I'll be donating ALL the proceeds from the sales of all my self-published patterns to the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit created to honor and empower wounded members of the armed forces, on Veteran's Day and for the following week (that's November 11 through 15). All of them, including the ebooks. You can see them all here: http://www.ravelry.com/stores/ann-weaver-designs.

In addition, on November 11, I'm republishing Lost Highway, a design that was initially published in Craftsanity magazine, as an individual pattern. The proceeds from Lost Highway will ALWAYS go to the Wounded Warrior Project. 

I have some fabulous friends in the fiber world who have offered to support this promotion by donating PRIZES! On Saturday, November 16, I'll draw names from EVERYONE who has purchased ANY of my patterns during the week to determine the winners of these awesome yarns:

First, Four skeins of Shepherd's Wool worsted from Stonehedge Fiber Mill, in the colors I used to make the original Lost Highway: Midnight Lake, Spring Green, Black, and White. This is Midnight Lake, which I LOVE:

This yarn is AMAZING, and the mill is in northern Michigan, about two and a half hours from where I grew up. 

Second, a skein of Skinny Bugga! from Cephalopod Yarns in any currently available color. Check them out here. How about Spanish Shawl? I have a design coming out in this colorway in the next two weeks!

Third, a skein of Chromium and a skein of Loft from Neighborhood Fiber Co in colors of your choice. Perfect for making an Iodine cowl (I'll include the pattern), or whatever you like.

If you've considered purchasing one of my patterns or ebooks, now is the best time to do it. You'll get a great pattern and the money you spend will go straight to some heroes who need it. THANKS, EVERYONE!!!

Louise and Linear Systems

Louise has been putting in some hours at the Neighborhood Fiber Co. studio over the past few weeks in preparation for upcoming shows! Never again will she say "Hey, just make kits for that project!" because she now understands the amount of labor that goes into producing a lot of little skeins (winding, hanking, tagging, bagging).

Last week involved a transition from Neighborhood Fiber Co. outfit

to Louise uniform for working at a fancy dinner at a temple in the Baltimore suburbs. Shabbat shalom!

Kol ha kavod, Louise.

In case you missed it (I nearly did), I have a new FREE pattern available from Spud & Chloe, Linear Systems:

It's knit in Spud & Chloe Fine (check out the colors! I love working with Spud & Chloe!). I wish I had a modeled photo, but this will have to do for now. It was inspired by some images of textbook covers in the book Iron Curtain Graphics:

The busyness continues around here. Next up: a post about Vogue Knitting Live Chicago and a Veterans Day promotion.

Bauhaus and Bartending

It's been a busy fall around here. For all of us. Ann Weaver, freelance copyeditor; Weaverknits; and Louise are all in high demand, which is great for paying bills and keeping life interesting, but not so great for keeping up with friends, knitters, and even my own designs. In an attempt to fill this lacuna, I'll be writing a series of posts, each of which will feature a new design and a new adventure.

First up: the Bauhaus Cardigan, which was just published in Knitting Architecture:

Here's the photo of the Bauhaus school in Dessau that inspired the design:

It's not often that a project that isn't self-published so closely matches my vision, so I'm particularly proud of this foray into more mainstream knitting publication.

And my latest adventure: I just graduated from the Maryland Bartending Academy! My staffing agency encouraged me to take this course (and gave me some financial assistance with it), and in a little over a week I went from a moderate amount of knowledge, a small amount of skill, and very slow drink mixing to creating 26 drinks of all different styles and preparations in 20 minutes. Now, time to find a more lucrative part-time job than event waiter!

Really Good New Yarn

It's Chromium from Neighborhood Fiber Co.: 69% silk noil, 31% stainless steel. Yep, stainless steel. See how it glimmers in the photo below? The color is Georgetown.

You know I like designing with silk/stainless yarn.

And now that yarn is available from Baltimore's own Neighborhood Fiber Co. As soon as Karida dyed the first batch, I snatched some in Charles Village and paired with with Neighborhood Fiber Co. Loft in Victorian Village to make Iodine, a cowl that plays with the color and texture of both yarns. For those averse to mohair, you can substitute Capital Luxury Lace (a sample in that combination is being knit now!).

Cowl photo with undyed yarn background

Neighborhood Fiber Co. publicity photo

Now that I have a feel for the yarn and what it does, I'm swatching with bigger projects in mind. A t-shirt. Perhaps a cardigan.

Knit in Stockinette stitch, this is what it does. It stands up. It ripples like a sea creature. It practically designs itself.

Want to see all this goodness in person? Neighborhood Fiber Co. and Weaverknits will have a booth at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival next weekend. Louise has taken the weekend off! There will be Chromium. And Monomanias. And  kits. And new Rustic DK. Samples galore. Books. Patterns. BE THERE!

Meet Louise

who works as a temporary waiter, principally at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Baltimore. This weekend was the Grand Prix of Baltimore, which closes most of downtown and creates crowds in and around the Hyatt. Louise was needed in the Hyatt Bistro!

Who got a working pass? Louise did! (Louise was my Grandma Weaver's name, which is why I picked it out of the Hyatt name tag bag. One of her signature phrases was, "Oh, Boy." That came to mind often this weekend, as in, Oh, boy, this is intolerably loud.)

It's no secret that I often take jobs just because I think they're interesting, and that was certainly the case here.

Throughout the summer, I've been doing a LOT of knitting, and I'll be unveiling some new projects here over the next few weeks. First is a new hat design (I talked about this earlier) called Fixation. It's the companion hat for Monomania: a way to use up leftovers or experiment with stripe and color combinations before committing to the cardigan. So far, I've made three, the two I showed in the previous post, and one from Three Fates Eponymous sock yarn. I bought a mini 10-pack last year at Knit Fit! in Seattle, and it was just the right amount of yarn to make this hat. Amazing!

I just knit until I ran out of each color, then I joined the next one. Great fun.

Until the end of September, the Fixation pattern is only $3 here. Use the code 911fixation at checkout. Now, go crazy! Louise is going to take a nap.