Category: Uncategorized

Looking toward a post-pandemic Fallingblox Designs

First of all, I don’t believe we are in a post-pandemic world. A lot of people have decided that masking is no longer necessary for them to feel safe, but regardless of how we feel, the pandemic is still occurring and it’ll be a while before we can truly say we are past it. But in the knitting world, as in other communities, we have already started to move past pandemic measures — more in-person events are being scheduled and happening, to begin with.

The current phase of Fallingblox Designs is primarily based on education — during the pandemic, I found virtual workshops possible and practical (and profitable) and this has been my main focus over the past 2 years (I got a late start due to the fire). Throughout these years, I’ve told myself (and others) that I intend to keep doing virtual workshops even as physical ones become possible again, primarily because I’m able to reach people I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to reach. Not everyone has a “big show” near them or can afford to travel to one.

But as people tire of the pandemic and the trappings of pandemic life, I am seeing fewer enrollments and having to cancel more of my virtual workshops. This is almost certainly partially my fault for letting my social networking slide — but if the survey I put out last year is any indication, social networks are less important to the majority of my customers and the issue could be simple market saturation. Regardless, I need to figure out how to proceed.

A few things occur to me, after conversations with some students and further discernment on my part:

  1. I need to schedule my virtual workshops further out. I’ve been scheduling them a month, maybe two, ahead for the past couple of years. This worked during a time when people had fewer conflicts due to lockdowns or simply lack of events, but with more and more events now vying for everyone’s time and money, I need to allow my students to plan further ahead. This also means I need to be able to plan further ahead, which has been difficult.
  2. If I need to settle into the reality of lower enrollments, I need to raise my rates so that I won’t need to cancel so many workshops. This may mean I come up with a slightly different way to deal with my “sliding scale” model, perhaps enacting a more formal “scholarship” process. More on that later.
  3. I need to figure out how better to get the word out about my virtual workshops to people who might actually be interested in attending.

Am I ready to take all of this and put it into practice? Not yet. Right now it’s more important that I let folks know about my upcoming workshops than that I radically change my process — but expect workshops for the rest of the Fall season to be announced soon.

Right now, here’s what I’ve got scheduled. As usual, I’m starting my season with an intro workshop, then I’m bringing back the two workshops I cancelled in June for a second chance. Then, at the end of September/beginning of October, I’m teaching some workshops at Knitters’ Day Out in Harrisburg, PA. These are the last of my in-person workshops for the year (stay tuned for more in 2023). All times are in Eastern Time:

In other news

I made a proclamation to my mailing list that I was taking August as a break from knitting-related work — no workshops, no pattern work, etc. August last year was miserably hot and I don’t have effective AC that makes it comfortable for me to knit. This year it’s been a bit better but I have largely been absent, on “actual” vacation (from which the photo above is taken). It’s also a time when many others in the US take vacations, and less knitting is done due to the heat, so workshops rarely fill. But I knew I needed to schedule some workshops, so it couldn’t be completely devoid of knitting work. I also said that I hoped to use this month to do some experimentation on some new or undeveloped techniques, and I’m happy to say I probably have enough to do a workshop on double-knit short-rows, and am starting work on stacked stitches. I hope to have some experiments to show for my next podcast, but if you want a look sooner, I recommend joining my Patreon, where I’m showing these swatches as I go.

Stay tuned!

June and July workshops are up!

…and there are two new ones to choose from!

Advanced Double-knitting Texture draft sample (probably not actually the one from the upcoming workshop)

I have been watching interest in some of my workshops dwindle a bit, and in order to breathe new life into them, it’s really past time that I brought in a new workshop or two. Some months ago, I put out a survey where people expressed interest in some new workshops I had in mind, and while I have not been able to work out all of them, I’m a little further along on a couple. To be honest, I am not ready to teach these workshops right now. But scheduling them at the end of July will give me a deadline by which I must be ready. And I will be. I look forward to it, and I hope people are excited about them.

Also, my Off the Grid workshop which was cancelled in May for low attendance has now been rescheduled for next weekend. It’s got enough people to run now, but I’d love a couple more, if you’re interested and free.

Without further ado, here’s my list of upcoming scheduled workshops, both virtual and in-person (all times in Eastern Time):

BuildingBlox virtual workshops:

(all of these will be recorded for all who enroll, whether or not they are able to attend at the scheduled time)

Vogue Knitting Live workshops (NYC):

Also in September/October, I’ll be at Knitters’ Day Out in Harrisburg, PA, with a schedule very similar to the VKL workshops above. Links to that when I have them.

I have a new mailing list signup form which you should go check out, especially if you’re interested in my new workshops. Aside from the main list, you can sign up for the individual workshop interest groups (including for the two new workshops), which get first crack at my virtual workshops when they’re announced.

Thanks for your continued interest and I’ll have more to post soon!

Alasdair Post-Quinn, Fallingblox Designs

I have come to a realization …

In the absence of my social media guru, I have tried my best to keep up with the weekly scheduling of social media posts. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you’ve probably noticed the result. The reason I had a social media person working for me was simply because I don’t “do” social media naturally. I am working on it, though.

However, in the past couple of weeks, I have been so overloaded with responsibilities, real and self-imposed, that I have realized something very important: in any given week, I have time for either production or promotion — rarely both. This realization has been very freeing for me — previously, I would get hung up on the fact that I was unable to get any social media posts scheduled, then get stuck in a spiral of guilt and executive dysfunction and the week would end with nothing getting done on the knitting front. Last week, instead, I just told myself “OK, I didn’t do any social media posts — this must be a production week” and I got 3 Youtube videos out, moved my mailing lists from MailChimp to MailerLite, set up some email automation, and cancelled a workshop for low enrollment 🙁 .

Will this mindset work forever? It remains to be seen — but I think it’s healthier than the alternative. So if you don’t see any social media posts from me for a week, you can rest assured that I’m being productive and will have more news for you soon (hopefully). This isn’t great for the almighty algorithms, but short of spending a mint, very little that I can realistically do will help much with those. The best you can do is like and follow my Facebook page, and with luck you may see some of the posts there. That, or stay tuned here or on my mailing lists — which the last survey I ran told me were much more important to most of my customers than social media anyway.

Workshops update

Per my recently-posted virtual workshop cancellation policy, I’ve had to let my Off the Grid workshop go this week for low enrollment. I am still trying to figure out June, and in all likelihood, I will move that workshop to June and give those students another chance to take their preferred workshop (as well as more time to get more students into the workshop). However, I have two more workshops this month as well as new in-person workshops scheduled for August at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC! (all times below in Eastern Time)

BuildingBlox workshops:

Vogue Knitting Live workshops:

When virtual workshops for June are scheduled, you’ll find out here (or sign up for my workshop interest groups to get first crack at them).

New videos posted

Hopefully you’re following my YouTube channel so you already saw these go by as they were posted, but just in case you’re not, I now have 3 new short technique videos up. These were originally the “Technique(s) of the Month” from my last 3 podcasts, so if you’ve been watching those, there’ll be nothing new here — but they are at least easier to access than having to scroll through to the end of a podcast.

Patreon updates

If you’re interested in joining my Patreon but don’t want another monthly charge on your credit card bill, I’ve just qualified for (and enabled) yearly payments, which come with a 10% discount on your month-by-month tier cost. Thank you to those of you who support me there in whatever way you do so! Not sure what Patreon is or why I’m using it? Read more here.

A good start to May

It’s only May 4th, and I’ve released a new pattern, gotten a podcast out … now if I can just get some more enrollments in this month’s workshops, I’ll be golden. Without further ado:

Two new patterns!

Since the last blog post, I’ve now released two new scarf patterns that are available for purchase on Ravelry or LoveCrafts, both using Rowan Felted Tweed/Colour solid and gradient combos. Vesica is a wide scarf based on a sacred geometry pattern; Arabiyya is based on a segment of a pattern I’ve been playing with for years. Arabiyya uses increasing and decreasing to shape the ends of the scarf, but there is an option for a plain rectangular scarf for those who’d rather keep the pattern intro-level.

Fallingblog Podcast #7 has been released

If you’re interested in the two patterns above, head over to the recent podcast for some more info about them, as well as a long-requested tutorial on weaving in ends in double-knitting.

Workshops in May (and beyond)

I have virtual workshops galore — both my own and through Stitches — and also some in-person workshops coming up in August and September. If you’re interested in intro/intermediate level workshops, sign up soon for the Stitches ones; if you’re interested in advanced-level workshops, look no further than my BuildingBlox series — I’ve even got the elusive Double-knitting Entrelac workshop this month! You can see them all on my calendar but here’s a quick rundown:

Stitches Expo at Home (2 hours each, all in Central Time):

BuildingBlox workshops (all in Eastern Time):

As usual, all of my BuildingBlox workshops will be recorded so you’ll have access to the workshop video even if you’re unable to attend at the time of the workshop (but you do have to enroll to get access!)

I also have in-person workshops coming up at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC in August, and Knitters’ Day Out in Harrisburg, PA in Sept/Oct!

In other news

If you’ve been trying to access my website over the past several weeks, you may have noticed some glitches and changes. I’ve been struggling with some serious instability (of my website! I’m OK) and I’ve had to do a bit of an overhaul. It’s stable right now, but at some point I’m going to need to delve into the back-end of the site and finalize some things to make it easier to manage in the future. So what does this mean for you? Not much, unless you run into something that doesn’t work as it should — if so, please just get in touch and let me know. If it just looks like the formatting is a little weird, you can ignore that for now — it’s a work in progress. Thanks for understanding!

Stay tuned — more to come sooner or later!

Alasdair Post-Quinn, Fallingblox Designs

April and May workshops update

This is a quick update about workshops — BuildingBlox, other virtual ones, and in-person!

BuildingBlox

Enrollments in my April workshops are on the low side, and all are in the next couple of weeks, so if you’ve been thinking about it, maybe go sign up now?

May workshops have me working around a number of scheduling difficulties such as Mothers’ Day, plus a weekend with two other big virtual shows (one of which I’ll be teaching at). So in all likelihood, I will schedule May workshops for the last couple of weeks of May. Stay tuned for an announcement about those soon!

I’m also thinking about some policy changes to ensure I’m using my own and others’ time wisely. Right now there is no minimum enrollment number — because I’ve never had trouble filling workshops to a reasonable level. But if/when a workshop doesn’t fill enough to compensate me properly for the time I spend teaching it, I’ve got two options: cancel it, or … shorten it. My workshops by default are 3 hours long, but I frequently teach 2-hour versions of many of them. Shortening the workshop removes some of the time available for Q&A, but with a smaller number of students, there are usually fewer questions. I tested this with a recent workshop, and it worked out well for all involved. I won’t go into a lot more depth here now, but I’ll work up a new policy page on my website soon and mention it next time I post here.

Live Workshops

Later in April, I will be in Loveland, CO for Interweave Yarn Fest. There’s still room in most of my workshops, and while I can’t link to them directly here, I’ll list them and how much room is left, and if you’re available and interested, you can go enroll!

All times are in MDT.

  • Thurs, Apr 21, 9am-12pm: Double-knitting Off the Grid (2 spots left)
  • Thurs, Apr 21, 1:30-4:30pm: Intro to Double-knitting (5 spots left)
  • Thurs, Apr 21, 6-9pm: Multi-color Double-knitting (17 spots left)
  • Fri, Apr 22, 9am-12pm: Double-knitting Lace (15 spots left)
  • Fri, Apr 22, 1:30-4:30pm: Double-knitting Intarsia (13 spots left)
  • Sat, Apr 23, 9am-12pm: Intro to Double-knitting (14 spots left)

Other Virtual Workshops

It’s been a while since I’ve taught virtual workshops for anyone other than myself, but Stitches and Vogue are still doing their virtual shows, and while I don’t have enrollment links yet, I can let you know that I will be teaching for the Stitches Expo at Home event in May, and most likely the Virtual Knitting Live event in June. Once I have enrollment links for those, I’ll post about those too.

In other news

I’ve got a new pattern — one of the 3 scarves in Rowan Felted Tweed/Colour, of which the first was the Tendrils pattern — on the blocking mat right now; once it’s blocked, measured, and photographed, I’ll release the pattern and post about it, so stay tuned! And don’t forget, if you join my Patreon at the $5 tier or above, you’ll get that pattern (and any/all other patterns I release while you’re a member) for free!

I’ve also got a new workshop on Advanced Texture in Double-knitting — folding the old Marling workshop into a new 3-hour session that focuses on transitions between knits, purls, and marls, including some new techniques (and new ways of using old techniques). That will debut later this Summer or Fall, so stay tuned!

News from every corner of Fallingblox Designs

Hello, friends! It’s a jam-packed update today, and I’m trying something a little different. If you’re a subscriber to my RSS feed, you’ll most likely just see this blog post as a normal post — but I’m tying it to my email newsletter as well so that the newsletter is a little more brief, whereas the blog posts will have more info. In the long run, I’m going to change up the format of the blog — but for now, we’re going to just see how this works.

General Fallingblox updates

The watchword of 2022 is “automation.” Perhaps also “integration” — I’m trying to do more with less, and let technology pick up some of the slack. In other words, where things can be done by automated systems, I’m trying to set that up, so I can streamline my content creation a bit more. Part of what gets in the way of my creative output is the time and trouble it takes to process things after I’ve created them. So we’ll see how I can do that a little better in the future.

Speaking of which, I have been working on getting my podcast back underway, thinking about a one-and-done live stream format on Twitch (subscribe there to be informed when something happens), which I will also record and release on my Youtube channel. The thing that really killed me was all the editing I needed to do after the filming, and if I can automate some of the transitions and come to some happy medium between the previous live versions on Facebook and the pre-recorded ones I’ve posted to Youtube, I may be able to get to a more sustainable place where I can do regular recordings again.

A new pattern — Tendrils

I have a series of new scarf patterns which will be released over the next month or two, depending on how quickly I get them back from my sample knitters. This was the first to return and is now the first to be released. It’s called “Tendrils” and is a basic double-knit scarf pattern in Rowan Felted Tweed/Felted Tweed Colour (their new gradient line of colorways). It’s been too long since I’ve released a truly intro-level pattern, and I hope people will enjoy knitting something pretty that doesn’t require a lot of special techniques.

Perhaps when the pandemic is properly over, I’ll be more easily able to find models; until then, I’m not going to let my lowered social contact stop me from releasing patterns. Lucy Neatby takes photos of her work in nature, why shouldn’t I?

Patreon supporters at the Slip-stitch tier and above already got their free download of this pattern; if you join this month, you can also get it for free (as well as the upcoming ones when they’re released).

Virtual Workshops continue unabated

Regardless of what happens with the pandemic in the future, virtual workshops are here to stay. Yes, I’ve done some live workshops and will do more this year and beyond, but I will continue to run virtual workshops at a rate of 2-4 per month depending on other scheduled events. As I alluded to in last year’s survey, I am thinking about some new workshops but I have not had the time to flesh them out for this season. I expect I will be working on those over the summer and testing them out in the Fall.

Without further ado, here are my currently scheduled virtual workshops; almost all are my 3-hour BuildingBlox workshops which you can enroll in directly through my website, but there is one other special event as well. All are in Eastern Time:

The workshop on March 19th is in danger of being cancelled due to low enrollment. To be honest, the marling workshop has never garnered as much interest as I thought it deserved, so if it doesn’t get more interest this time around, it may be that this workshop will be retired and I’ll find some other way to work marling concepts into a different workshop. Or I’ll put it on the back burner for a while and expect more interest when I have more patterns that use the techniques (nota bene: I have 3 or 4 already, which is more than I have in double-knit intarsia). If it is cancelled, everyone who has enrolled will get their fees refunded, of course.

… and live workshops continue anyway

I’ve just returned from my first “away” show (Red Alder, in Tacoma, WA) since the pandemic began, and it was a bit of a harrowing experience but good to get back into the swing of physical shows. Barring any new variants, I’ll be attending Interweave Yarn Fest in CO in April, and another TBA in October. I am not looking to do more physical shows this year, but will hopefully be doing more in 2023 if/when things have calmed down a bit, epidemiologically.

I can’t link to the individual workshops on Interweave’s site, but you can see what’s available and get there via their main workshop link.

Interweave Yarn Fest, Loveland, CO, Apr 20-23:

  • Intro to Double-knitting
  • Multi-color Double-knitting
  • Double-knitting Off the Grid
  • Double-knitting Lace
  • Double-knitting Intarsia

What’s next?

I’m in a designing lull and have cast on to replace some of the patterns that were never replaced after the loss of many of my samples in the fire almost 2 years ago. Many generous souls volunteered their time to replace some of the lost samples, and all but a couple have been finished now. Some, however, either never found a match or the sample knitter had trouble and decided to return the yarn. Those I never passed on to another knitter, figuring I’d either do them myself, find someone later, or just live without. Spring Willow, however, I’ve always felt a little weird about my needle choice for and I welcomed the chance to rework it on a larger needle for more pronounced lace. So I am finally starting on that. Once it’s a little further in, I’m sure I’ll post it alongside photos of the original.

I am also well aware that I am overdue for a new book — but I have not been developing new techniques at the rate I would want to in order to write a book that continues the progression of the first two. Instead, I am thinking about going backward somewhat and creating a book which fills the space of a truly intro-level double-knitting book, which goes into depth with the basic technique, supported by exclusive and extensive videos, and offers a number of projects which will help new double-knitters get a really sound foundation in the technique. Possibly toward the end, I will add in some decreases to allow for some simple hat patterns. I expect that a lot of the knitting for this will be done by sample knitters to speed up the process.

Stay tuned for more soon — and thanks for reading!

New Year, New Start for Fallingblox

Hello friends and happy New Year! OK, I know that was a couple of weeks ago, but time has been weird for a while now, and I thank you for your patience. As you’ve probably already read, I was injured at the beginning of December and had to put my personal well-being ahead of my knitting work for a little while. A quick update on that: I am not out of the woods yet, but my recovery progress has been sufficient that I believe I will be able to teach workshops again starting in February (more on that later in this post).

As I begin this new year, I am taking the opportunity to make some changes.

First of all, I’m taking a break from my constant social media presence. I had been contracting a social media guru to write and post on a near-daily basis, but after some analytics and the survey indicated that most people were not interacting with me via social media (and my mailing list and other methods were much more important), I decided to cut back a bit. Then when I was injured and my future was uncertain, I had her take a break. Now, after a meeting with her, we’ve decided to take a longer break and see if I can swing things just with other forms of media.

My virtual workshops are going to remain a big focus and will (as I began in the Fall season of 2021) be recorded for those who enroll, whether or not they attend the workshop. But I am also raising the minimum fee to $35 (from $30) as the beginning of a gradual movement of my hourly fee to a more sustainable, industry-standard number. Most people pay more than the minimum anyway, so I doubt this will change my enrollments much (and I am always willing to negotiate price with people who really can’t afford even the minimum).

I am starting the year strong with new patterns on the horizon, having just finished the Bocote hat and completed the Wuxing: 5 Elements collection. I still intend to combine that collection into a single eBook but I need to get past some other design work first. Sometime in April, there will be three new patterns released using Rowan Felted Tweed and Felted Tweed Colour (their new gradient line). These are currently in the hands of some of my sample knitters. I am also working on a secret project for Scheepjes. When that’s done, assuming my arm behaves, I’ll be able to start work on some of my back-burner projects.

My Patreon is also set to undergo a change soon — I have added a lower tier to make it even easier for people to support me, and will also soon be offering a yearly payment option. This will also require that I change the payment structure a bit, which will make it a little harder for people to abuse the system by joining, getting all the perks, then leaving before they’re ever charged. Not that this happens a lot, but it can. Patrons will get news of this before it happens, and will have a change to upgrade their tiers under the old system before the change happens. If you haven’t joined yet but have been thinking about it, now might be a great time.

Followers of my Fallingblog Podcast have no doubt noticed its absence recently; for a number of reasons I have not had the content or motivation to make more. I hope to be able to get this back on track this year as well, but it depends in part on having something new to offer each time, and the pace at which I’ve been knitting has kept that harder to achieve. If I can streamline the process, I’ll happily get more episodes out, but it’s been hard to find a good balance; I may need to do some research on how other podcasters are able to produce the volume they do.

Finally, I will be exploring other platforms and ways of increasing my visibility without relying on Meta products (Facebook, Instagram). Stay tuned (and if you have any ideas, please drop them in the comments).

Now, to business.

First, I’m going to be part of the Longmont Yarn Shoppe’s set of virtual “Fiberside Chats” with a session on February 6th. This is a really neat way that a bunch of LYSs are supporting their communities and helping to support fiber craft professionals like me in this time of Zoom. I hope you can join us!

I’ve just scheduled a bunch of virtual workshops in February and March, and now that the folks on my Workshop Interest Lists have had their first crack at them, it’s time to let everyone else know. You can find the whole list on my Calendar, or just my BuildingBlox series on the BuildingBlox page. But a quick rundown is also below:

In slightly more surprising news (especially given the current state of the pandemic in this country), I do have some in-person workshops scheduled. While it is certainly possible that some may be cancelled, here is a list of the ones that are scheduled now:

Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat, Tacoma, WA, Feb 17-20:

  • Intro to Double-knitting
  • Multi-color Double-knitting
  • Double-knitting Off The Grid
  • Double-knitting Intarsia
  • Double-knitting Entrelac

Interweave Yarn Fest, Loveland, CO, Apr 20-23:

  • Intro to Double-knitting
  • Multi-color Double-knitting
  • Double-knitting Off the Grid
  • Double-knitting Lace
  • Double-knitting Intarsia

More will be scheduled soon, so stay tuned. Thank you for your continued interest in double-knitting and my work in particular.

Fallingblox Designs on hiatus again

Obligatory cat photo for social media visibility

Hello loyal friends and followers, and thank you for your patience with me. Fallingblox Designs‘ social media presence went dark two weeks ago, at the worst possible time for a small creative business to do so — the start of the holiday gifting season.

You may have seen the previous iteration of this post while it was briefly up a couple of weeks ago. Shortly after I posted it, I was advised by a friend with experience in these matters to remove all mention of the incident from any public location until I’d had a chance to speak with a lawyer. I have been trying for two weeks to get a lawyer to respond, but at this point I am tired of waiting and I owe you an explanation. I have received some basic guidelines to what I should and should not say, and will do my best here.

It’s been a year and a half since the last time I had to do this. In that case, my home burned down and I lost almost everything I owned. I had to stop all my work and life responsibilities while I regrouped for a while. I have news on that front (short version: we’re finally proceeding with the rebuild!) and wanted my next post to be an uplifting one about how we’d faced adversity and came out victorious. But then something else happened.

As you may or may not be aware, I have a day job outside the city 3 days per week. Due to Covid, I’ve been trying to keep off public transit. I used to bicycle home from work most days, after taking my bike to work on the commuter rail. For the past year or so since work restarted, I’ve been biking in both directions. Mostly I keep to the bike paths which run from my home city to my workplace, with very little reason to ride on the streets. But I do ride on the streets when necessary, and on Tuesday (Nov 30) I was dropping something off at a friend’s house a few blocks from the path.

As you can probably guess from the direction of this narrative, that day didn’t go smoothly: I was hit by a car. At the recommendation of legal counsel, I’m leaving out all specifics and just saying that I have sustained an injury and I am not sure how long it will take to fully recover.

So what does this mean for Fallingblox Designs? In short, I need to dial everything back for a while. I’ve cancelled my virtual workshops where possible. I’m putting my Patreon on pause (they’ve already been notified). Patterns I was designing will need to slow down or stop, depending on how well I’m able to knit going forward. My social media posting will be paused for a month and we’ll re-evaluate beyond that. For those looking forward to my in-person appearances at Red Alder etc, I am assuming I will be recovered enough by February, but will update you if not.

Unlike last time, however, I still have the infrastructure I need to fulfill book and pattern orders, so that part of my business is still operational. I know I’ve missed the ideal time for holiday shipping of physical books and patterns, but if you are not concerned about timeliness, I am (with help from my wife) still capable of shipping. Otherwise, you can still get (and gift) my digital versions.

Stay tuned. I’ll update you as soon as I have a better idea of where things are going from here. In the meantime, if you want to support me, join my Patreon (you’ll be charged if/when it restarts), buy my books and patterns, tell your friends about my books and patterns, or (as I’ve lost the immediacy needed for something like a GoFundMe), toss something in the Tip Jar. And if you’re interested in my virtual workshops when they restart, sign up on the workshop interest lists to be informed.

Alasdair Post-Quinn, “Softwear Engineer,” Fallingblox Designs

Introducing the fifth Element: Bocote

The Wuxing: 5 Elements collection has been a long time coming — I released Agni Deus in March of 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning. I had finished one more pattern from the collection when my home burned down a few months later. This slowed my creative process (to say the least) but finally, about a year and a half later, all five hats in the Wuxing collection are complete!

Bocote has been a journey, and not always a smooth one. The hat is very complex, so I decided it needed test-knitting before the pattern was released (3 of the 5 hats in the collection fell into that category). I released the pattern to them in chunks while I was designing it, expecting to complete the crown decrease planning well before any of my testers got to the decreases. With their feedback, I made a number of changes to the pattern, and all three of them finished their respective hats before I’d even cast on for the final version of mine.

My own hat was slow in coming because I made some math errors along the way — a couple of glaring ones right in the pattern that none of my testers caught meant that their hats ended up quite a bit larger than expected — as did my own. Once I fixed the errors, I had to rip out and start fresh, which was disheartening and I had trouble restarting with as much enthusiasm (this was also during the hottest part of the summer, which made it harder to spend a lot of time knitting). Finally I hit my stride and made some true progress — but as I reached the decreases, it became clear that I had made still further measurement errors in both directions. The hat that I was expecting to be a 21.5″ circumference ended up closer to 23″ around. The height of the hat was also considerably taller than I expected, despite the round gauge matching my original calculations — another case of sloppy designing (now rectified in the final pattern). I did do some livestreams of me working on the pattern for my supporters on Patreon, so if you’d like to see the recordings of those (and now that I’ve got a good setup for doing livestreams of me working on knitted pieces, probably more in the future), join my Patreon!

But those two mis-measurements went together to make a hat that’s still quite wearable for me, because the need to roll it up twice means that it now hugs my head a bit better (and even fits my wife pretty well). So even though it wasn’t exactly what I had intended, and if I had figured all this out earlier I could have saved quite a bit of time, I’m happy with the final result (especially the crown). I opted to model it myself for simplicity’s sake.

The yarn I chose for this is 3 natural colors of Bare Naked Wools Stone Soup Fingering. I was able to do the largest size with the equivalent of three 2-oz skeins!

Thank you for your patience through this journey — if you’ve already bought a copy of the collection, thank you! If not, and you’ve been waiting to see all five patterns before biting the bullet, it’s available to purchase now!

In the coming months, I plan to put all of the patterns together into a single eBook rather than five individual patterns, and I might even consider printing it (similar to the Parallax collection). If I do that, I’ll make a discount code available for anyone who purchased the digital version.

In other news

I have some workshops coming up in December, both my own and a couple for VKL. Especially if you’re interested in the techniques around the Wuxing collection, I recommend taking the Off-the-Grid workshop on Dec 4th. All times are in Eastern Time:

If you’re waiting to hear about January virtual workshops (and beyond), stay tuned; I will have a dedicated post for that soon. In addition, my (in person!) workshops at Red Alder in Tacoma, WA are up and taking enrollments:

Thanks for your continued interest and stay tuned for more soon!

Workshops to round out 2021

I’ve scheduled some new virtual workshops in the BuildingBlox series, and I’ve given the people on my workshop interest lists and my Patreon supporters first crack at enrollment, so now it’s time to give everyone else a chance to get in. There’s still space in all of my workshops, even the ones later on this month. As usual, they’re pay-what-you-want, above a modest minimum. I have just opened some more slots in the Intro workshop this coming Thursday, so if you were trying to get into that, there’s now more room!

In case you missed the memo, all of these workshops are being recorded. But you need to enroll to get access to the recording. The good news is that you don’t actually need to attend the workshop (if it doesn’t work for your schedule/time zone/etc)! If you enroll and select “No” on the attendance dropdown, you’ll still get access to the recording but we won’t wait up for you at the workshop itself. Access to recordings is promised for 3 months but it’s likely that they’ll be online for at least 6 months, possibly longer. It’s still a new wrinkle in my workshop process, and just as with everything else, I’m still figuring it out and will try to make it better and better each time.

Without further ado, here are all of my upcoming virtual workshops (all times in Eastern time). For more info on each workshop, click through the enrollment page to the workshop page:

Virtual workshops for January 2022 and beyond will be scheduled and announced later. I am also going to make an appearance at Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat in February, 2022 — yes, in person! Here are the workshop links for that event:

Stay tuned for more soon(ish)!