Last October, @edencottage tweeted that they had some free tickets for the Ally Pally Knitting and Stitching show. All I had to do was RT. I nabbed the last one, I think. Lo and behold, the day arrived and I tripped along to the show armed with business cards and golden bribes (aka honeycomb, one of my few culinary successes). I had a great time meeting the yarnies that I had been in contact with over the year; and tried to put names to the faces of people who had provided me with yarn support. I also stopped by the Eden Cottage booth to thank them for the free ticket. Victoria and David were there and we got to chatting about my designs.

I followed up some time later with a proposal for a girl’s cardigan and Victoria very generously sent on some Bowland DK in a lovely soft colour, “Driftwood”.

I had a whole bunch of commissions for various publishers on all Winter, but I tried to work on Abbye when I could. The next trick was to find a model! Oh my goodness I don’t know what was in the water around North West London about a year and a half ago, but there were hardly any babies of the right age in my circles, or even extended circles! It actually took so long to find one that the ones I dismissed at the beginning of the project for being too small had grown into it!

So my friends loaned me their precious bundle for half an hour, and she was a dote. Not a peep out of her even though I was constantly fidgeting at the cardi and the poor mite was teething. We had a lot of tongue shots!

I posted the patterns last night, and they got some attention. Then this morning I woke up to the hat in the top 5 and IT’S BEEN THERE ALL DAY! It’s so exciting, I’ve been sitting here for ages just hitting refresh on the hot right now home page. Well that, and writing this blog, but you know what I mean. Right now it’s at number 2. Can you believe it? And the cardigan’s at number 15! And the lovely comments are so heartening. I am reminded once again of what a lovely community knitters make.

Abbye Hat is free for the time being; once interest tapers off a bit I’ll charge £1.25 for it.

Abbye Cardigan is available to buy for £3.75, and the hat is included.