crafts & knitting · new patterns

New Patterns: Small Coats & Cardigans

Hello, I hope you are having a good week, here the sun is shining and it feels warm out there today. Yesterday Toby and I walked in our T shirts for for the first time this year and there were definite signs of the beginnings of Spring. I’ll give you an update on Katsue the fox soon but she’s doing well and things are looking hopeful.

I’m popping in here today because I have a new pattern for clothing to fit any of my 7 inch (18cm) tall animals (there is already a coats and cardigans pattern to fit my 9 inch animals).

This new pattern has 3 basic cardigan/jacket/coat shapes:

  • a short waist length cardigan/jacket,
  • a short waist length V neck cardigan
  • and a longer length ‘A’ line coat

The short cardigan/jacket and the longer ‘A’ line coat can both be made with either a round neckline, a little ribbed collar or a hood. The hood will fit over the head of the animals with smaller ears such as the mouse and bear and for the animals with taller ears, such as the rabbit, it looks nice just folded at the back and I’ve designed it with a curved bottom edge when it’s worn in this way.

As always the patterns are available on Ravelry and Etsy and I’ll hopefully be adding them to Lovecrafts later in the week. I think Lucylocketland may soon have some of her sweet kits that include yarn and a printed copy of the pattern and if your local yarn shop is signed up to the Ravelry local yarn shop service then you can buy a copy from them and ask them to print it off for you.

Please remember that the above listed places are the only legitimate places that you can obtain copies of my patterns. In the last year pattern piracy has become a lot more common and me and my fellow pattern designers are noticing the impact, please don’t support theft and pattern piracy by either uploading or downloading copies of patterns to/from websites that offer them in exchange for tokens.

Please also be extremely wary of the masses of AI generated images and videos that are now on facebook and other parts of the internet, these feature amazing looking ‘knitted toys’ and promise free patterns so you can make them. I know it can be hard to understand how something that looks so very real and beautiful does not actually exist, but the lovely looking AI generated images are merely bait to entice the unsuspecting to follow a link to a dodgy website (‘knitbangkokbikethailandchallenge’ for instance* see note below) or a link to buff.ly with the true web location hidden behind it. By following such links you will either risk picking up malware, or have to scroll past masses of adverts (which make the website owners money), in order to obtain an AI written pattern which does not work out and bears no relation to the fake AI image that was pictured.

*If in doubt about any facebook page you can look at the ‘transparency and privacy policy’ for that page by clicking on the page name. This brings up an info box that tells you how long the page has been active, what previous names the page has had and who manages it. The facebook page daily knitting ideas, which is completely full of AI generated images and links to the knitbangkokbikethailandchallenge website, lists NY, USA as their location (the address they give is actually a hotel), but is run by 7 people in Vietnam.

Stay smart and thank you so much for supporting independent human designers and allowing us to make a small living from our own work , J xxx

 

crafts & knitting · free patterns · new patterns

Free Holly Pattern

Hello hello, it’s just a quick post from me today in order to share my free holly pattern with you again. This was first shared in November 2007 as a post on my previous Typepad blog, but when Typepad closed and deleted all blogs from their servers the post was lost, so I have written a revised version of it which includes better increases. It is free to download from Ravelry:

Free Holly Pattern

As always I look forward to seeing what creative ideas people come up with for using it; maybe on a Christmas napkin ring, a hair slide, a pretty trim on a well wrapped present or on a hairband for a knitted bear, whatever you decide to use it for I hope you have fun with the pattern.

Happy knitting, and as always love from me, J x

crafts & knitting · new patterns

New Patterns: The Squirrels

 

 

It makes me very happy today to pop in here with news that my latest 9 inch animal pattern is ready to share. This is a pattern for a squirrel, which you can either make as a red squirrel with little tufty ears, or a grey squirrel without tufts.

As usual with my patterns there are 2 options: one for a squirrel in a removable dress with knitted on shoes and tights; and one for a squirrel in a removable sweater and shorts.

The squirrel in a dress pattern comes with these 3 dress options:

There is one that is worked in a single colour and has an openwork textured design, reminiscent of acorns. And two colour-work dresses, one with a bold acorn and oakleaf design that wraps around the lower skirt and the other that has a contrast coloured border dotted with small acorns.

 

 

The squirrel in a sweater pattern comes with these 3 sweater options.

There’s a plain stocking stitch sweater, knitted in a single colour and then a large acorn colour-work design is added in duplicate stitch afterwards. There is a chart for this in the pattern, and if you prefer you could choose to follow this and use the intarsia method to knit in the acorn design as you go.

There are also two textured sweaters, one a very simple knit and purl textured pattern, and the other a little more complex and with a bolder texture created by a combination of double increases and decreases.

Also included are a pair of shorts that have a functional button closure at the waist in order to accommodate the large tail.

 

Both patterns are now live on Ravelry and Etsy and because I recently had a small price increase (the first in 12 years) I’ve also increased the discount for buying any 2 or more LCR patterns in the same transaction to a 20% discount on the basket total. Mentioning it in case you wanted to get any of my other patterns at the same time in order to get the 20% off.

As always I am really excited to see what other people make with these new patterns, so if you do give either of them a go please do consider sharing a picture on social media or on either the Little Cotton Rabbits Facebook Group or the Ravelry group, I’d love to see what you’ve made.

Well I’m off to finish a couple of grey squirrels, because only their heads made it in to the pattern so I’m feeling a bit sorry for them, ’til next time keep well and happy, J x

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A little note on purchasing:

Ravelry have a really efficient and easy to use email delivery system of the download links and it is very rare that customers have any issues, (the vast majority of the issues that do occur are down to buyer input errors of email addresses).

If you choose to purchase via Ravelry I will actually get to keep a little more of the money that you pay for the pattern (Etsy seller fees are much higher than ravelry and I have to pay them at least a quarter every single sale, and almost double that if you click on an Etsy ad for my shop on google or pinterest, as they will then also charge me an advertising fee on anything you purchase from my Etsy shop anytime in the next month, even if you are an existing customer of mine).

If you do choose to use Etsy then please, please, please don’t check out as a guest, because if you do not receive the emailed link that they automatically send it is almost impossible for me to help you. Instead log in to an Etsy account first, and that way it is very easy for me to help if you have any problems as the files will be stored forever for you in your Etsy purchase history. And remember that Etsy do not allow you to download any digital purchases via the app, so you will need to log into your account via your browser to access files.