Not me, I’m a very long way from wanting or being able to afford that! But a few eBooks will be soon.

As I’ve been reviewing every single pattern and eBook over the last couple of years, rebuilding the business from the bottom up, I’ve been preparing to retire a number of patterns and eBooks. Some of those single patterns have become free patterns - such as Urchin Cap and Trenza - and others will simply be removed from sale, especially if they’re part of a collection.

Most of the single patterns that I planned to retire have been already, and it’s possible going forward there’ll be a few more - if I can convert them to free patterns all the better, but I won’t promise that as I’ll review each one of an individual basis.

What I want to talk about today is the eBooks that will be retiring.

Front cover of the Wee Woolly Toppers eBook

These 4 eBooks - Going Straight, Bambeanies, Wee Woolly Toppers and Hatopia - will be retiring within the next month.

It feels quite monumental, considering that GoingStraight was my very first book, and has been revised and updated more times than any other! And Wee Woolly Toppers was my second book, with the designs developed just after Aran was born.

There’s a few reasons for saying goodbye to them, but the biggest one is that going forward, with the new website, I not only want to present the products that I’m proudest of - both in a design and photography sense - but also ensure each product makes sense with the new business structure that we’ve been working on back-end. There’s a lot of things I’ve needed to simplify in terms of the new database, pattern and eBook formats and layout, ISBNs, pricing and much more. And it’s with this in mind I’ve decided it’s time to say cheerio to these collections.

This doesn’t mean that everyone’s free to share the copies they have - they are still my copyright and I will still defend that! I know that it’s no fun running across a pattern that you like only to find it’s no longer available. And that’s why, where possible, I’m keeping as many of the single patterns within these eBooks available. The most popular patterns in Going Straight were revisited in GS The Remixes for example. A number from Hatopia are now free, or otherwise still available as singles.

With this is mind, I wanted to give everyone plenty of warning that they’re going to be retired! I will have a retirement sale a little nearer the time, and if you’re a member of The Woolly Hat Society you’ll not only hear about the sale first, but also get a deeper member-exclusive discount - if you’ve not signed up already, it’s free to join.

Going forward, all new eBooks will be in the same format as the recent collections from Circled onwards - I really like this zine-like feel and layout, and it works well for me in a few ways. It works in print and print wholesale as well as digitally - they’ve a collectable feel about them and folks seem to enjoy that. Sales wise their figures are stronger and I think that’s because I can deep dive and get much better designs when I’m focussing around a technique or construction method, compared to trying to achieve 10 or 20 designs under a lose theme. And in turn, I’ve noticed knitters are keener to knit through them all, completing most or even the whole collection! Overall, I’m delivering much better designs, much better books and eBooks with better tutorials and layout these days, and this new format has a lot to do with that. Not that it’s really new any more, it’s been just over 5 years now since Circled was published? Where does the time go!

Anyhows, keep your eye out for a newsletter in the next couple of weeks - this will be the last chance to get these eBooks, I’m not likely to bring any of them back.

Considering retirement

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