Well, I wrote out the first in the Designer’s Notebook posts this morning, only to have my blog client eat the entire contents. So if you received an email saying “we have a new post” and you’re wondering where it went… well, so am I. I guess that post’s superpower is invisibility….

Tune in later this week, after I re-create the post and get it up for you.

Shows in 2010 and 2011

Well, it’s official. Handknit Heroes will be at Stitches East again this October, and at Stitches West in Spring 2011. Just giving you a heads up, in case you’re going to be at either show.

Return to Me, My Pretties

One of the saddest parts of my day is opening my email and finding out that we’ve had a return. It pops into my inbox from my mail service with “RTS” as the “address info,” and my heart just goes “oh!” We currently have 7 unclaimed RTS’s for Issue 3 right now. Did your package go astray? If you haven’t received Issue 3 yet, please send a note to support (at) mortaine.com so we can help you out.

On Designing

Over the next 2 weeks, I’m going to share with you the process of designing a basic hat. Now, partly I’m doing this because for Issue 4, I want to publish a few hats (yes, not one but several!) But also, I know how daunting it was for me when I was new to knitting and trying to figure out what I needed to know and do in order to design something new.

So, in the next two weeks, I will be opening up my red notebook and sharing with you some of the process for designing a hat, accounting for gauge, different stitches, and designing for multiple sizes. Hopefully, you will find it useful and informational, and if nothing else, you’ll enjoy watching me try to fit a 5 sts/inch pattern to match 3 sts/inch one.

Shout Outs!

Knitting Knights is a cute new manga-style knitting comic book with kind of a space-alien (in a mangaesque way) theme.

I had a blog article posted last week in Lighting Little Fire’s Midsummer Days Dream blog festival, about traveling with small projects.

And the Crochet Liberation Front gave me a huge honor this week by bestowing the Let My Picot Go award! Thanks, guys! You’re the best!

PS: Sorry this went out with “Untitled 2″ as its creative title– I hit the “Publish” button a little too soon! Whoops!

Within days, our subscribers and pre-ordered shops will be seeing this:

in their mailboxes. Yes, Issue #3 went out into the mail today to all subscribers!

If you don’t receive yours within 2 weeks, please send a note to support at mortaine.com, so we can find out what happened, and take care of it for you.

Issue #3 is at the printers, being printed. I shot a little video so you all could see the kinds of problems we’ve had all throughout the production process. This isn’t the only setback we encountered, of course– it’s just the most recent. But it points up to an attitude we adopted back when we were running late by three months already, with little end in sight: quality over speed. We could have rushed and rushed and not fixed the script problems, or not worked on getting the pattern right, or not fixing the hand diagrams– we even could have said “oh, heck, these dialogue bubbles are only on two pages….”

But we didn’t. I mean, at some point, you have to look at the deadline as it fades into the distance and decide that if you can’t do it on time, at least you can do it right.

So we did. We did it right. It wasn’t fast, but it’s good. I think you’re going to like it.

 

 Issue 3 Sneak Peel: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We’ve had another minor delay, this time until April 15th. We apologize to our subscribers, who have been waiting a long time for Issue 3! We hate to do it, but we will never send you a sub-standard issue, so we thought it was better to delay.

AND, to hold you over, here is the first page from Issue 3!

Issue #3 Progress

Issue #3 is 90% done, the pattern is 90% complete, so we’re winding up for shipping day! If your address has changed since Issue #2, drop us a line and let us know so we can make sure Issue 3 reaches you!

Future Issues in Progress

If you don’t know about Script Frenzy, it’s a month-long script-writing challenge to write 100 pages of script in 30 days. This year, I’ll be participating, writing the next 4 issues of Handknit Heroes.

As I write, I’ll be posting updates and excerpts to my Twitter account, and tagging them with the hashtags #screnzy and #hkh. So you can follow either of those tags, or subscribe to an RSS feed of the combined tags, which should get you any posts with both hash tags– most likely from me, or anyone else writing a Handknit Heroes script for Script Frenzy (if you’d like that to be you, drop me an email; I’d love to know about any fan fiction!)

You’ll notice that most of my tweets are either blog posts or flickr links (to knitted stuff)– I’m not a very obsessive twitterer, so aside from the updates in April, you won’t get inundated with a billion tweets if you decide to follow me there.

RSS Feed Fixed

Speaking of RSS feeds, I fixed a problem with the one on this very blog! I don’t know how long it’s been going on– probably as long as we’ve been live– but the RSS feed displayed in the sidebar was, well, simply wrong, and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. It’s fixed now, so if you’d like to add our updates to your reader, go ahead!

Our subscriber form is still a little wonky. If you’ve tried to subscribe or unsubscribe and couldn’t, go ahead and send us a contact email, and Elizabeth or I will manually take care of it.

It’s been awhile since our last update, but we have exciting news to share with you! A date for shipping the new issue, a HKH appearance by Stephanie, and a new team member. Things are rolling along well again. We appreciate the patience you’ve had with us during this delay.

So, first the news we have been receiving lots of inquiries about: Issue 3! We are very happy to report that Issue 3 is coming together and will be shipped to you on March 30th. Marc and Stephanie have been very busy, and we can’t wait to see what you think of this issue. Maybe I’ll release some more content hints as we get closer to release date. Maybe.

Also, for those of you in the Pacific northwest, we hope you’re coming to the Madrona Fiber Festival! Stephanie will be there all weekend, and she’s going to be demonstrating mask-knitting. How awesome is that? Look for her in the rotunda, and be sure to stop and say hello. It looks like the festival has an awesome line-up of vendors and instructors. If you’re in the area, be sure to check it out!

And the last bit of news would be…me. I’m the newest member of the Handknit Heroes team, and you’ll probably get to talk to me if you e-mail HKH about something as my role is mostly customer service. I’m happy to help with subscriptions and other questions, so don’t be shy! You can find me on Ravelry as emwall24 as well (that’s my personal account – please continue to direct HKH questions to the support e-mail!). I’m so excited about where this magazine is going, and I have enjoyed getting to “talk” with some of you. We have awesome subscribers!