Lulu, Andrea, Candi and Edelmira model the Little Swift.

Though we officially retired the Little Swift in 2014, we've decided to bring it back for one more production run. The Little Swift is the smaller version of our Swift knitting bag—a shoulder bag specifically for knitters and crafty types, designed by Tom in collaboration with the readers of Knitty® magazine. Welcome back, Little Swift: it's been a long few years without you!

The Little Swift will re-debut (in more than a few surprise colors) as part of our November 28th debut alongside the Aeronaut 30 Packing Cube Backpack (New Design), Side Kick, and a number of Surprise New Designs. To be notified the exact moment all of the new designs debut, you can sign up for the notification email lists on those "Coming Soon" pages (sign up here for the Little Swift), sign up for our general email mailing list, or simply keep an eye on the website, Forums, and Blog.

You might be wondering why we decided to bring back the Little Swift, and there's no one answer:

• First of all, our crew here in Seattle are big fans of the Little Swift and many of us have them: we selfishly wanted to see more of them in the new colors that have been introduced since the Little Swift was retired.

• We feel graced by the kindness and generosity of the knitting community since we debuted The Swift way back in 2006. You guys know that neither I (Darcy) nor Tom knit and yet you've welcomed us outsiders with open arms and shared your feedback, encouragement, and expertise with us. We've heard your requests to bring back the Little Swift, and what better way to express our appreciation than a special holiday re-release of a well-loved and classic design.

• Tom still loves the size and proportions of the Little Swift—he smiles big-time when he sees them around. Having just had rotator cuff surgery, we figured he could use something more to smile about. :)

• Lastly, the new, top secret small backpack design (code name: Muse) that Tom has been working on for the past six months is pretty much done, but we're still waiting on cutting dies and some specialized materials to make the first production run. Sadly, this means the Muse won't be ready for the November 28th debut (more like February or March). We're very excited about this new design here at the factory, and it was a bit of a let-down to realize we wouldn't be able to offer it in 2016. So we wanted to cheer ourselves up (and hopefully you too) with some new colors of an old favorite.

We'll end this post on a sobering note. We're a small company that offers a lot of different designs, colors, and sizes. Add them all up, and suddenly you have thousands of unique options, all made by our expert crew in Seattle. Inevitably, we find our imaginations tempered somewhat by reality: we choose a certain amount of complexity because it's representative of the chaos of creativity in which we indulge, but our finite size keeps us practical and pragmatic. We can't keep adding without, at times, subtracting.

That's all to say: expect more designs, colors and fabrics to be retired in 2017 as we make room for all the new and wondrous stuff that's in the works.