Eleanor's Very Important Pattern of the WEEEEEEEEEEK - 9026

You know what this is going to be about don't you? It should have been up this time last week but I was too busy being drunk and selling the things to you.

Without further ado - King Cole 9026 as designed by ME! ME ME ME ME! ME!

 

This is MY pattern. And I can't believe how professional it looks. It is available all over the place but obvs you should only buy it from us (as an aside, Deramores have got a kit in it. Haha. Don't buy the kit, it'll cost you a bomb but if you know how I feel about Deramores... MWHAHAHAAHAHA). 

Now, I thought I'd not bother with top tips today, I'm not sure what I could say but I will tell you the story of the pattern. I think you'll like it. :) So it started on the 6th of June 2014 when I posted this on facebook:

 

Luckily at the time nobody guessed what it was, but it is a blue and yellow fish from the blanket. You can tell that now can't you? Haha. The idea just fell out of my fingers. Nothing went wrong on this one. Other things, you think you've got it and then it turns out you're actually tripping and it was never going to work. But this one just fell out of my fingers, got written up and bish bash bosh it was a pattern.

I sent it off to Mike at King Cole at some point towards the end of June along with two other things (that I potentially liked better than this but we'll see where they end up going) and then waited for him to make his mind up. It was tense. But then it took so long that I kind stopped thinking about it until the 18th or 19th of July when he sent me a text saying that it was done! AMAZING! But I was on the way to my holiday which was a brilliant way to start the holiday but also set me up with a sense of dread about how much was still left to do.

And then I got home, and didn't hear anything from him. My mum kept on at me - 'have you heard about that pattern yet? Are you going to contact him? What's going on with that?' but I didn't hear from him. I had no idea how long these things take so I thought a few months might be normal and then Christmas happened and the shop was too busy and it went to the back of my mind and I kind of forgot about it. Until my first day back after Christmas when I e-mailed Mike and asked him what was going on. And I still didn't hear from him. Nightmare.

So I gave it a couple of a weeks and rang him and it turns out - we weren't getting his e-mails!!!! FACKING NIGHTMARE! So we swapped over to my personal e-mails and from then on it was all go go go. I needed to find some test crocheters - Steph, Toni and Nona stepped into the breach and they each did a marvelous job of testing my pattern without photos or anything and in a massively quick time. They were great! I'm hoping that next time it will be less of a rush though, bit stressful for all involved... In fact, a lot stressful for all involved.

Once the pattern was tested, I sent it back to Mike who sent it to the printers and they put it into the proper format which I had to check. AND I AM SO GLAD I CHECKED! There were about 20 tiny little things wrong, like spaces in the wrong place and bits that weren't in bold like they should be but most importantly the bloody stripe sequence was wrong on the jumper! I've no idea how that happened but it did and it was put right with the help of the testers. Wonderful women.

Once we'd got to the end of that it was sent back to Mike and printed. And then it was a case of waiting, waiting and waiting again. Lots of waiting here. Mike didn't tell me when it was released so every time I rang King Cole I was like 'has my pattern been released yet?????? Please?!?!?!'. They all got to know me good and proper. In the end I found out it was released by Zoe Halstead tagging me on facebook on a Sunday evening. Haha. The glamour.

And then I had to wait until I could afford to make an order with King Cole before I could get my greasy mitts on it. It turned up in the shop a couple of days before the shop party whilst Lis was here and we celebrated together which was lovely because it would have been a lonely victory without her here:

She got the first signed copy and we made lots of silly photos to share with you all. Then I put it on facebook and people started sharing it and it's just gone mad! I finally got it on the internet on Tuesday, I didn't have time before or during the party obviously and then I felt like I needed two proper days off so I didn't bother on Sunday or Monday. Feels like it was kind of a drawn out process but we got there. If you buy on our site you have the option of having your copy signed or not - I do realise that it's not that important that I designed it to lots of people so I didn't want to force it on them but for the regulars you know what it means to me and I know you want to share in my excitement with a good autograph. Haha.

It's written for the Pricewise DK. I want to design with ALL THE KING COLE WOOLS but I just loved the combination of colours in the Pricewise so I stuck with that. I have so many ideas for what else to make in this and other yarns and so little time! But I suppose summer is the perfect time to get going again on this and I did wake up the other day with an idea in my head for the bum of a certain animal but if I tell you what animal you'll know what I'm thinking and if King Cole want me to design more for them then I need to keep it secret - which is so hard for me - I'm not a good secret keeper.

So that's the story of the best pattern that King Cole have ever published. I hope there's lots more to come because I really loved the process even if it was a long one. I'm hoping the next one won't be so waity aroundy.

Once more for the google stats - King Cole pattern 9026!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love, 

Eleanor. xxxxxx