Free patterns? Yes, please.

Mystery Toy!

I have two more patterns slated to be self-released this year - Pattern A is a super-cute toy pattern that will be coming out next week just in time for Yarn Con, and Pattern B is a sport-weight sock that will be out by December (year end at the latest!).  I'd like to offer one of these patterns for FREE to anyone who purchases 2 (or more) patterns from my Ravelry shop between now and the end of September.  Here's the deal:

1.  Purchase any 2 patterns from my Ravelry shop.  
2.  Forward your invoice to the e-mail address provided on said invoice with a note telling me which pattern you'd prefer - "new toy" or "new sock" should sufffice!
3.  When the pattern you requested comes out, I will send you a link for your free download!  It's as simple as that!  

Where is all this coming from, other than the goodness of my heart, you ask?   You can thank our sad, dead car.  We've been unable to drive it for some weeks now due to the brakes needing some attention.  We were finally going to take it in to get looked at, then last Friday night, we discovered that the car was missing.  That's right!  It wasn't where we left it - and we really couldn't imagine who would want to steal a '96 Saturn with negligible brakes.

Did you know that there's a website where you can check to see if (and where) your car has been towed or impounded?  I did, and since that seemed much more plausible than someone stealing it, we checked it to make sure it wasn't being held for ransom by the city.  Nope, nada!  The mystery thickens.  A call to 311 connected us with the police non-emergency, and we ended up reporting the car stolen (oh, and we also realized that we hadn't written the plates down anywhere.  How embarrassing is it to call the cops to report your car stolen and admit you don't know the plates?!).

This sign would have been more helpful if they had
actually posted it beforehand.

On Saturday, we decided to walk around and see if we could find the car - if some weirdo did, in fact, steal it, they didn't get far!  Tyler ended up hopping on his bike for a portion of this reconnaissance mission, and successfully located the car.  Apparently the Department of Forestry had towed our car a few blocks away - we only knew this because they put a sign under our windshield wipers.

Why did they do this?  Apparently it was imperative they to trim a tree that was 40 feet in front of where we parked - and the fire hydrant/no parking zone directly in front of our parked car wasn't enough room for them to accomplish this.  There wasn't any sign to notify us before-hand (I'd gotten in the habit of checking on the car frequently for just such a reason, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed a HUGE ORANGE SIGN if it had been posted), which I guess is why they didn't ticket us or impound the car.  I suppose towing it two blocks away and hoping we'd find it eventually is the best thing that could have happened in such a situation, but it's also extremely weird.

Of course, we get in the car to move it and it's completely dead.  The downside to not being able to drive your car is that the battery, most likely, will die on you.  In hindsight, I probably should have fired up the car every now and again and spent a few minutes sitting in it with the engine running.  That's just so umpleasant to do in the summertime when it's 90 degrees out and you have leather interior...excuses, excuses.

So, in summary:  Brakes dead.  Battery dead.  Need money!