The HEAD FOR TROUBLE count-down continues. Take advantage of the pre-order promotion, and your very own copy (signed by yours truly, if you so desire) will ship to you the week of October 26th. Get ready to make a little trouble!!

To whet your appetites further, here are the last two of six total designs from my upcoming mini e-book collection, A Head For Fashion :

Please say hello to Caroline (the lovely toque on the left) and Jane (the fetching slouch cloche on the right), both of which already are up on my Ravelry Designer project pages with all the details.

For a very short time (Oct. 15th – 31st, 2014), you can get either one of these patterns for FREE when you pre-order either the paperback or the electronic version of my new book, A HEAD FOR TROUBLE; What To Knit While Catching Crooks, Chasing Clues, and Solving Murders.

If you order both hard copy AND electronic version, you’ll get the entire mini e-book, A Head For Fashion , with all six patterns. Watch my SHOP section for ordering specifics, coming on October 15th.

Only one week to go until A Head For Trouble‘s pre-order promotions begin.

I hate to admit it, being a grown-up and all, but I’m having a really, really hard time containing my excitement.

Because given my tendency toward excess, I couldn’t just create a new book with 20 projects in it.

Oh, no.

That would be far too restrained for me. Sometimes I believe, to paraphrase Mae West, that “too much of a good thing is wonderful.”

So here’s what I did: I designed a collection of six bonus patterns – five additional hats and an utterly charming pair of fingerless mitts, also inspired by the Roaring Twenties. These will be available online as a PDF only. Let’s have a little sneak preview:

All six of these bonus patterns have been collected into a mini e-book called A Head For Fashion, and you’ll be able to purchase it right around the same time that A Head For Trouble is released.

Why A Head For Fashion, you ask? Each of the six bonus projects is inspired by a female fashion designer who was known for her innovative hat creations, and was active during the 1920s, such as Rose Talbot (one of her stunning millinery designs is modeled below on the left) and Simone Mirman, who rose from poverty to become “Milliner to the Queen” of England during her long life:

But here’s the really exciting news: if you pre-order both the hard copy and the e-book of A Head For Trouble together during the promotional period of October 15-31, 2014, you will get this bonus e-book for FREE.

If you decide you want only the hard copy or the electronic version of A Head For Trouble but not both, of course that’s fine, too. Not to worry – you’ll still get something extra special.

Purchase either the hard copy or the electronic version during the promotional period, and you will be able to choose any one of the six bonus patterns from the e-book for FREE.

The individual patterns from the bonus collection will be available to purchase both on Ravelry and here on my website for $5.00 each. The mini e-book collection will be available to purchase as well, for $14.95…. and any way you look at it, that’s an amazing deal. The collection includes special features such as detailed instructions for sizing and styling to ensure your success with the patterns, as well as resources for the fabulous notions you’ll see on the projects.

More information and bonus collection photos coming soon!

Here’s a question: how many books can one author sign in 7 minutes?

Answer: 42 – a full case (and a cramped hand, but that’s another story).

And how do I know this? In preparation for book signings at Stitches Midwest this coming weekend, I signed lots (and lots) of copies of Knits That Breathe. Hope to see you there!

On another note, I can’t wait to share the details of this new design, coming for fall:

Meanwhile, summer in the city is in full swing, with all its most compelling distractions on display. For example, these new temporary sculpture exhibits at Millenium Park:

Concerts at the Pritzker Pavilion, the perfect picnic venue:

The “living” art fountain display at Millennium Park:

And the majesty of several spectacular summer storms, complete with dramatic cloud formations, lightning strikes on the tallest antennae in the city, and claps of thunder that send the cat scurrying for her “safe place” in the apartment, otherwise known as “under the dining room table.”

That is, when she’s not helping me knit:

Working on new swatches all week, in preparation for some fantastic surprises this fall:

Experimenting with new stitches and embellishments, which are always fun to audition before stitching them oh-so-carefully onto the final project. I was irrationally pleased to find a home for a cherished vintage button from the stash:

A little bit cross-eyed from this working up mini-landscape of cable crosses:

It’s always a challenge is finding the best foundation textures for a new project. Sometimes it falls into place quickly, when the *perfect* stitch pattern leaps out at me from the pages of one of my stitch dictionaries. More often, though, I’ll swatch four or five different stitches to discover the best one for a particular yarn. Here’s one example:

Starting tomorrow and in honor of Bastille Day – July 14th – if you order a paperback copy of Knits That Breathe on my website,  you will be able to score a free download of the electronic version with its wonderful interactive features!

This promotion will run for a limited time, so take advantage of it while you can. As the French would say, *”Le jour de gloire est arrivé.” Only where Knits That Breathe is concerned, there will be several jours de gloire when you can obtain your very own copy.

*Translation: The day of glory is here!

The positive reviews of Knits That Breathe keep appearing, much to my delight and everlasting appreciation. Herewith, two more, the first from Jimmy Beans Wool blog post last week,

and the next from Carol Sulcoski’s Black Bunny Fibers blog.

Carol and my friends at Jimmy Beans Wool are among the knitting world folks whose work I most admire. Their creativity and business acumen are qualities I emulate to the best of my ability, and achieve with, at best,  mixed results.

I enjoyed being interviewed for the review by Jimmy Beans… Kristen asked thoughtful questions, most of which were different than those I’ve been asked before.

And when Carol writes one of her “no bull book reviews,” it’s often the final push I need to add a new book to my knitting bookshelf – so I can only hope that those who read her review of Knits That Breathe will be similarly motivated!

Off to enjoy a relaxing Fourth of July weekend, and hope you will do the same! I leave you with several colorful blooms from my recent visit to the Chicago Botanic Gardens that resemble booms – that is, exploding fireworks!

Up for review today is the prolific Visionary author Hunter Hammersen‘s final addition to her Knitter’s Curiosity Cabinet trilogy, KCC III:

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with either this self-published book series or with Hunter’s prodigious knitting talent, let this be your introduction. I apologize in advance if this sounds like a girl-crush — but in a way it is.

Hunter is the real deal; a multi-talented designer whose intellectual curiosity  is surpassed only by her wide-ranging creativity. She’d probably say that her ability to keep her finger on the pulse of our knitting community’s zeitgeist is just a bonus.

Taking its theme from curiosity cabinets (holding collections of the marvels of natural science) and history, the patterns in KCC III are inspired by antique marine illustrations that date back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

Hunter is an inspired sock knitter, and the projects in KCC III showcase that talent. Here are two lovely examples:

Planorbis corneus Sock

Fucus asparagoides Sock

Each sock pattern has a companion project, and these are pretty evenly divided among shawls, hats, and mitts. All are graceful, use only a skein or two of yarn, and are very wearable. Some of my favorites include the delicate Fucus asparagoides Shawl, made from The Plucky Knitter’s Plucky Single:

Each one features yarn that seems to have been spun and dyed specifically for that project, so beautifully do fiber and end product work together.

PELAGIA NOCTILUCA Hat

In addition to the projects themselves is ample evidence of Hunter’s affinity for History with a capital ‘H.’ She shares the history of curiosity cabinets as a cultural trend, describing the artifacts people collected in them hundreds of years ago, and weaves a seamless, fascinating tie-in with the knitting.

Zostera marina mitt

Hunter is a staunch proponent of charted directions for lace, cables, and the like. In fact, there are no written row-by-row instructions for the projects in KCC III. But she facilitates the user-friendliness of her charts – and every pattern in the book includes at least one – with detailed stitch keys and careful explanations of every stitch that might give the chart-phobic knitter pause.

I’ve heard that knitters challenge themselves to get comfortable using charts specifically so they can make Hunter’s patterns, and having seen the effort she makes to keep them accessible, I’m not surprised.

Limneus stagnalis cowl

I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk a bit about production values here. Hunter’s books are, without exception, right at home on the knitter’s bookshelf next to any volume from a major mainstream publisher. In terms of layout and design, photography, and styling, her books are generally more attractive than those from some of the major craft book publishers.

Even details such as paper quality, and whether the cover has a glossy or matte finish, do not go unconsidered. The end results are beautiful, substantial, and uncompromising. All attest to the effort Hunter expends to ensure the quality of her ‘product,’ and make them worth every penny.

Serpula contortuplicata mitt

For the accessory knitter looking for whimsical but wearable projects, for the history and science buff, and for the aesthete who revels in pure beauty for its own sake, The Knitter’s Curiosity Cabinet III is a gorgeous capstone to the 3-volume set.

Padina pavonia Sock