Carousel Hat: Free Knitting Pattern

I like milestones.  I'm not as good at remembering every anniversary (baby's first haircut? no clue!) but thanks to the Happiness Project I keep a diary, and I remember things I would not normally be able to readily recall.

For example, one year ago, on July 25, 2013, I sketched out 8 designs to take to the upcoming TKGA event in Oct 2013. I was able to knit up samples for 5 of them and 2 were purchased by Coats & Clark (you might know them through their yarn brand, Red Heart).  By February of this year I had completed the samples to send to Red Heart, along with the patterns.  And so the waiting began.  I admit, I am not a terribly patient person. Every few weeks I would go into the craft store and check the labels of the Red Heart With Love yarns to see if either of my patterns had shown up, knowing full well that the turnaround time for such things is many months.

On Saturday, I got a message from my friend Pat, who shared with me her friend Julie's new pattern on Red Heart (oh, my, goodness!  This sweater!!!) and I thought, let me check the new releases.  As I had done many times since Feb, I chose the yarn type and "knitting" on the free patterns page and scrolled through, but this time I stopped when I saw this:

The Carousel Hat as shown on the Red Heart website. Can you handle the cuteness?

This is my hat!!  And they found the most adorable model to show it off! 

I would say my patience paid off, but, like I said, I wasn't very patient!  Regardless, it's up on the site now and I'm very pleased.  I think it's kind of nice that the publication of the pattern is almost a year to the day since it was first just a sketch in my notebook.  Quite a milestone!

Now I'm off to go check and see if they've published the shawl pattern yet.........