a Drop Dead Easy Knits video + GIVEAWAY

Presenting our book trailer!
 My co-authors,Kirsten Kapur of Through the Loops and Mary Lou Egan and I could not be more excited that the book we've been working on for the past year  DROP DEAD EASY KNITS will be out in the wild this week.
In the spirit of the book, which is all about enjoyable but smart knitting- things you can knit while sitting around with friends, or in meetings, or on trains, or while watching the sports practices/rehearsals/schoolboard meetings or waits in the carpool pickup that come our way...stylish but not requiring isolation to follow the pattern. 
We present this video with a few of our favorite knitting (and life) tips.
And a peek at some of the 28 wonderful projects in the book.

 GIVEAWAY: a copy of DROP DEAD EASY KNITS

 signed by all 3 of us 

Leave a comment below, by midnight September 22nd,  pacific US time, letting us know which of the tips in the video is your favorite. 

We can't wait to hear from you.  Tips up!

Book Launch 

 Thursday September 22nd at Fibre Space in Old Town Alexandria VA on Thursday evening, 

with classes from all three of us the next day, details here, please join us! Kirsten will be teaching one of my fave projects, the Short Beach Shawl, shown below, and modeled by me in the video. I'll be teaching a Ten Tips & tricks Photo Class , guaranteed fun. Mary Lou will be running a drop in Finger Puppet Bar, so bring your littles, or , um, make some adult puppets happen. We won't judge!

(but sign up soon, these are almost sold out)

sneak peek: rhinebeck style

So, last year  at this time, and in 2010, I went to Rhinebeck for the NY Sheep & Wool Festival, set up my big white backdrop, and invited everyone to pose in their handknit finery for what became my Rhinebeck Style photo project. It was a blast. And it evolved into a book. That isn't ready yet.

What I've got for you? A glimpse of everything. It takes more than 8 minutes, and feels  like a home movie. For a very large & covered-in-knitwear family. So get a cuppa and pull up a chair.*

I can't tell you how much I appreciate every single one of you who posed. Thank you.

My favorite part of the festival is our special world on the fairgrounds, where you not only don't look loony even though you're wearing 4 layers of handknits...but you are greeted by strangers who know the pattern by name, applaud your stitches and can shout out your colorway and yarn dyer at twenty paces. 

Curious about the book? Get yourself onto the elist from Cooperative Press, they'll be my publishers, at the bottom of that linked page. 

* I'm not as savvy as I might be about what size to insert a video in a blog--I know some of you are reading it on an iphone and I don't want to jam it up...so if you find that window, above, too tiny, you can try this YouTube link for a clearer view. (or...so I hope)

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ps I am not doing the photo booth this year...but I am teaching a Photo Safari workshop each morning, so you may see us wandering the grounds..and you probably can still strike a pose...