I literally squealed when I opened up a package last night that contained Ann Budd's new book Scarf Style 2, because they chose my design to feature on the cover. I was so surprised! I've contributed a number of designs to a few major publications, but this is my very first cover.

This was the second squealing event that has taken place due to this publication, the first of which occurred embarrassingly on the street outside of a subway station. The squeal was in reaction to an email I received from the Author Ann Budd.

You see, I can't shake the feeling that my success as a hand knitting pattern designer is some kind of silly fantasy that I'm imagining in my head. When I received an email from THE Ann Budd asking me to contribute a design to her new book, it seemed like maybe a mistake, or perhaps I was dreaming, or maybe it wasn't actually THE Ann Budd, just some ordinary NON-knitting-all-star Ann Budd.

In any case, my vocal cords are quite reactionary, and as it turns out so are my legs, because on both occations I jumped up and down and squealed like silly little girl. I was so excited last night that I couldn't even be bothered to pull out a chair. I plopped down on the ground right where I stood to examine the book cover to cover.

I actually have two cowl designs in the book, Cross Timbers and Eufaula.
Eufaula, the cowl pictured on the cover, is one of those long
luxurious loops that can be wrapped around in a number of ways. I
chose a delicious alpaca yarn for the design to give the cowl just the
right amount of fluffy drape to go with the textured chevron welted
stitch pattern.

The other design, the cross timbers cowl, is a color work gator type
cowl. The geometric fair Isle pattern was so much fun to knit. In fact, I had so much fun knitting it, that I couldn't stop myself from knitting the whole thing up in one day!

Having already scoured the book, i can tell you that its chock full of
really great patterns.  My friend Melissa Wehrle also contributed
a pattern, the Shadow Play Scarf. She's a very talented designer, and I
strongly encourage you to check out her new book Metropolitan Knits
and her blog at Neoknits.com.

[caption id="attachment_2049" align="alignnone" width="580"] Shadow Play by Melissa Wehrle (sorry for the terrible picture of a picture!)[/caption]

I'd love to hear what you think of the book and my new designs. Please
leave a comment below to tell me what you think.

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