Cheddar! The CraftLit Critter!

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Cheddar!

What’s a Cheddar, you ask?

Cheddar is my new buddy. I’ve got two (well, the second is getting his tail this evening). It was time for CraftLit to have a mascot, enter…

Cheddar, the CraftLit Critter (pattern)!

or get it by Subscribing (i.e., committing to a monthly payment) to CraftLit

Or

Purchase a completed,  knitted Cheddar from  Penny  for $36 via  little acorn creations  (coming soon!)

He is knit in one piece (because I HATE SEAMING!) and uses Judy’s Magic Cast-on for the nose, grows like a sock toe, then short rows build the top of his head and neck. I weighted the base on mine and my boys agree—Cheddar is a Weeble. He will wobble but won’t fall down.

I’ve knit him with both leftover Koigu KPPPPPPPPPPPPM and with March Hare Sock Yarn (somewhere around 90yds of yarn) on US 0/2mm needles (one set of dpns and two circs—was easier switching b/t the two). I recommend (a) a color that won’t show fiberfill too terribly and (b) knitting at the tightest gauge you can. I give instructions for everything in the pattern, but if there’s something that confounds you, please let me know and I’ll get an instructional video linked in there asap.

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SFF Audio—I’ve hit the big time!
Listen to  The New Mother  here  and SFF with me here. And then go take a look at Tara Swiger’s book  Market Yourself. Love! Her!

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Defarge 2—What (else) Would Madame Defarge Knit?—this time in color!—is in pre-orders! 25+ patterns of yarny goodness (sweaters, mittens, a devilishly cute layette, and more all await you!). The good people at Cooperative Press have found a local printer who can bring you our new book still printed in the USA! Mwah!

Have I told you how much I love indie publishers?

And speaking of Cooperative Press! Two new goodies for you! First, the CP Sock & Mitt Club. Second, the CP Mag! Both of which yours truly will be working on! Yay! What is CP saying about the Magazine?

Let me share what CP says:

Our intentions are as follows:

• as with all things CP, we compensate our contributors fairly, work with indie designers and dyers, and generally keep great content coming at you;
• we will be publishing 3x per year (though we’re doing a special “issue zero” in time for TNNA, the big pro fiber arts tradeshow in June) via our own app. This app will eventually also offer other Cooperative Press content, too. Ebooks, special issues, etc.;
• by popular demand and in response to some early feedback, we’ll do a PDF version of the magazine, which will be available via our website and Ravelry. It won’t have the video/audio/interactive functionality of the main version, but for readers who aren’t interested in reading via app, it’ll offer access to most of the content;
• each year, we’ll collect the magazine content into a book book — think the way Food&Wine or Martha Stewart republishes their “best-of” each year.

Hopefully having multiple access points for the content will make everyone happy. And by having several digital options, it makes it possible to buy it from anywhere (even Australia and the UK!), because as we’ve learned selling books, not everyone feels like paying the (frankly absurd) postage rates these days. It makes me ill to have to charge half again the cost of a print book just to ship it to Europe, and from a purely capitalistic perspective, I’d rather you put that $12 towards another one of our ebooks! 🙂

And, more happiness—the husband gets more good press for his book, too! Yay books! Yay literate people!

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And my new pattern (that I’m so proud of!): Hunger Games-inspired Life and Death socks—designed for those of us who tend to give their socks a beating (more details on knitting blog).

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Ehren, I think you’ll agree, rocks the Gulliver text.

grab the code

And, of course, I’m racking up moments of the usual start-of-book zeitgeist. (Have you seen the advertisement yet? Thank you, Jill!)