Recently, someone reached out and asked how she could purchase the Zelda Cloche pattern.

I thought, This lady probably doesn't know how the internet works.

Zelda is one of my all-time top-selling patterns. It was among my first designs published in a knitting magazine, then sold digitally on Interweave's website after publication. I've probably sold thousands of copies of this pattern PDF, and for more than a decade it reliably appeared near the top of my royalty reports.

All she needed to do was click the “buy now" button. Except…I still owed this person an email, so I went looking for the link.

I Googled “Zelda Cloche Knitting Pattern." The first result was the Ravelry page. Great. I clicked the purchase link and was bizarrely directed to a completely different pattern by the same name, from a different designer, on Interweave's website.

Huh? More Googling ensued. I searched Interweave's website directly. Nothing. Sure enough, there was no way to purchase the Zelda Cloche anymore. Interweave had quietly removed it from their catalog.

Come to think of it, my royalty payments had been pretty low lately. I'd chalked this up to changing fashion and the passage of time and, with a deep sigh, went on with my life. Apparently there was another explanation.

Then I had a more alarming thought: Were there others like this? Yes, it turns out. MANY! This needed my attention.

I began digging through my archive and all the old contracts. I'm not a lawyer, obviously, but I've seen enough contracts—and written enough of my own—to muddle my way through the legalese. This was no small task. Probably more than half of my designs were originally contracted or licensed to various publishers, all with different terms, and some of those old contracts are incredibly opaque.

This is probably why I never touched many of these designs again. I had assumed they were essentially locked away with their original publishers. But they weren't!

A few of them basically are off-limits, including, sadly, all the patterns from my book Graphic Knit. But I discovered that many of my old Interweave magazine contracts were surprisingly agreeable. I had retained the copyright to the patterns I originally submitted and, after a waiting period, could publish my own editions—as long as I didn't use Interweave's edited versions, photography, or other materials they created.

I felt both delighted and a little silly. I could have revisited some of these patterns years ago!

Thank goodness I'm an organized pack rat. I still have my original files, notes, contracts and samples. In Zelda's case, I even have my own high-quality photos from the day I mailed the sample off to the editors at Knitscene back in 2011. Look at that baby face!

This nice lady was going to get her hat pattern after all!

Of course, once I opened the old pattern, I didn't want to simply dust it off and put it back up for sale. I'm a much more experienced designer now than I was in 2011, and there were plenty of things I could do better.

So I went back to my original pattern and created a new Knit Darling edition. I clarified the instructions, added more photos to explain the button loop, and added video tutorials for some of the finishing techniques. I redesigned the PDF from scratch using my own photos and my current pattern template.

And the nice lady who started this entire investigation? She tested the new pattern for me. Full circle!

So, once again, I'm introducing the Zelda Cloche—Second Edition—now available from Knit Darling, Ravelry, and Payhip.

Zelda wasn't the only missing pattern I found.

There are quite a few old designs in my archive that I could revisit, improve and bring back under the Knit Darling brand. Honestly, going through all of them could become a full-time job, and I definitely don't have the bandwidth for that. So I'm not going to turn it into one. I'll rescue the ones that call to me, as I have the time and inspiration to do them. Zelda just happened to call first.

And all because one very nice lady knew how to use the internet better than I did.

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