Celebrating My Birthday with Free Knitting Giveaway Treats!

My how time flies! I've been busy with other things, including knitting, writing patterns, submitting designs and babying my ancient computer, and it's suddenly the end of the first week of October? Criminy.  I realize I've not posted in about the longest stretch ever for me although I have, in fact, worked on several posts and will share those soon. (photo Marthastewart.com)

The changing season reminded me that later this month is my birthday. And lest you think I'm still young enough to believe the passage of time a wonderful thing, think again my friend. 

No, I'm not young (or old depending on your perspective) but I've come to love a birthday as a personal anniversary, or new year celebration of sorts, that marks our individual arrival on earth, when we began filling a place in the world that only you or I can fill.

It allows us to look back on life in the last year, remembering joys, challenges, love, failures and growth, reflect on goals from the calendar New Year and think about how we want the next 12 months to play out - perhaps differently than the last dozen.

A birthday is not another day nearer to death, after all, we're dying every second of every day, with no guarantees of even another minute in this life. Rather, I see a birthday as an opportunity to make the most of this moment, to get another 'do-over' and have a fresh start. To hopefully be a better person than I was last year.

In the US, it's customary for a birthday child to bring treats to school to share with classmates, often consisting of cookies, cupcakes or other edibles. Because my birthday is at the end of October, I usually brought fresh apple cider and doughnuts.

Always cake doughnuts, because those were my parents' favorites and because they were easy to tie to a string and hang for a children's speed-eating game. 

To this day, the fragrance of cinnamon, apples and doughnuts make me think of my birthday treats. And in honor of my birthday month, I'm again giving away goodies, and you all are invited to my party.

No tricks here, it's time for pattern discounts and yarn and knitting pattern giveaway treats!

First of all, for the rest of the month of October, all Robin Ulrich Studio download patterns (except Katriel) will be 20% off. The special birthday price will post automatically when you make your selection in the shopping cart.

Next, my brand-new pattern, Katriel, will be 50% off!

 

And lastly, I'm giving away a FREE PATTERN & YARN in a contest for all my followers!

The prizes for this contest include a PDF copy of Katriel (or other pattern of your choice if you've already purchased Katriel) and some yarny awesomeness to include four skeins of Misti Alpaca Lace in a lovely, silvery-lavender color (this is a total of 1748 yards!),

and a skein of hand-dyed Neighborhood Fiber Co. worsted weight, luminous silk yarn.

Like the pattern download sale, the yarn and pattern giveaway contest will run all month through midnight, EST on October 31st. A winner will be chosen November 1st by random number generator from amongst all the entries, and anyone can enter by doing three things:

1.  Be or become a follower on my blog (the button to link is on the sidebar). 
2.  Leave a comment to any post this month answering the question - what yarn weight do you prefer (it can be different for each) for accessories like hats, fingerless gloves and scarves? - before the end date of the contest.
3. Make sure I can contact you via your blog or other site to let you know the news of your win, or message me on Ravelry (I'm Truknit) or on Twitter (I'm Robinulrich) with your contact information.

That's it! I'll announce the winner here in the next post after the contest ends, and also contact you, to let you know if you've won. The winner will have 7 days from the time of the announcement post to let me know where to send the prizes!

Have a terrific weekend and happy knitting everyone!