Holy smokes, I can hardly believe it's November already! It's been pretty quiet here on the Knit Darling blog because I've had an extremely busy summer and fall. I have a ton I want to write about for this upcoming knitting season, so let me catch up on what I've been doing in the recent warm weather months . Since May, I went on a wonderful trip to Italy, traveled to Cape Cod with my family, went to Rhinebeck for the Sheep and Wool Festival, visited friends in Portland, Maine, and even made it upstate for a few small weekend trips. Whew! Just typing all that out was a little exhausting.

I also began working in the pottery studio again after a very, very long break, which really feels good. Diving back in to this new/old medium has inspired me in some wonderful and unexpected ways... more on that very soon!

I also worked on a few new patterns for some upcoming publications, and if you keep up with my blog, you of course know about my Yarn Box collaboration designs, The Zea Hat and Mitts.

But what's kept me most busy is something really exciting-- the development of a new self-published knitwear collection. The process has been pretty much all-consuming, which is bad news for my blog, but when you see the new pieces I hope you'll forgive me for my egregious blogging delinquency!

Here is a tiny sneak peek—you'll have to wait a couple more weeks to see the real deal.

The collection is really starting to come together, so I've decided to release the patterns on my birthday, November 17. The collection features 5 new designs that I plan to release as an ebook and also as individual pattern PDFs. I might also release a limited edition of printed booklets, but it remains to be seen if that will pan out because I've had trouble nailing down a printer. This is all pretty new to me, so I'm a little unsure if there is even any interest in a printed book among all you tech-savy modern knitters. If you have an opinion, please let me know in the comments below :)

That's all for now. I just wanted to let you know about the exciting new things to come—stay tuned!