busy fingers

Well, eleven people bought my pattern, which makes me feel like all this time spent knitting ain't been in vain fer nothin', which in turn justifies spending all my time knitting now! Yay! Yes, I am working on another sweater, called Juana La Loca, and it's taking awhile because I'm pausing to document every stitch I knit (twice - once in knitterese, once on a chart). But I'm about halfway done and liking it a lot, so that makes me happy.

In other news, I'm re-knitting one part of the Dunegrass Socks so that I can fix the pattern, based on some very helpful user feedback. Tricky business, this pattern writing - I wanted to keep it flexible, but wound up being confusing. Now I'm making it as clear as I can, but if you follow my directions the socks will fit me, not you. Oh dear, oh dear.

I'm also working on a sweater I'm calling Fernán for now, a design for men. I'm not writing down every stitch, which would turn out to be a problem except that the prototype is for DrBob, so I'm knitting it in black, which is unphotographable. So I'll have to knit it again anyway if I want decent photos, and when I do that, I'll write down every stitch. Maybe I'll make it for my 8-year-old, so it'll be done faster. Maybe I'll make it for the 14-year-old, so that by the time it's done, it'll fit the 8-year-old. We are awash in growth spurts here, they're eating like horses and outgrowing their clothes faster than they can ruin them.

<-- The two-skein shrug is also awake now, after hibernating all winter. I don't think I'll publish a pattern for that, because it's too simple. Anybody could figure it out. But I am looking forward to wearing it.

oh. em. gee

TEN pattern sales, and one of them? Was to the incomparable Yarnissima, my favorite knitstuff designer, the only designer whose patterns I knit without modifying them somehow. Well, except for Spina di Pesce, which I modified to fit a bigger foot than the pattern was written for, and then sent her my notes so she could offer the pattern in a larger size too. I've met her, she is made of awesome, I am a total fan, and she liked my pattern! Swoon!

SO, I'm not blogging lately, yeah? Because my hands are busy knitting. And that, um, whaddyacallit, that job-thingy I've had for a few years now, that takes up a little of my time (too little of my time - I should actually be working right now). Still here, though. Working on a test-knit, plus the inevitable Sniglet-Socks, I always have Sniglet-Socks on the needles. I also have several patterns buzzing around in my head, bapping at the inside of my skull like a fly at the window, and have started developing two, while frantically shushing the others.

Yep. Still here.

TWO!

Two people bought my pattern! Two whole people thought it was worth actual money!

I am completely floored.

gone savant

I'm trying to get the Aliénor pattern into a presentable form, and I've been at it all day. The in-laws came over for coffee and I sat on the couch and twitched while DrBob and they talked about cats. I fidgeted through dinner with the family. But other than that I've been here, typing, tweaking, fixing, re-thinking. This is so fiddly! I'm learning to hate .pdfs.

Anyway, that's why y'all haven't heard from me in a bit, even though I've been right here. I hope to get it finished and uploaded tomorrow.

(Photo by Elemmaciltur)

or, not

Nonward. Nupward! Nowhere! Brace yourselves, people, because what I am about to say will truly shock many of you:

From Tuesday to Saturday of last week, I was too sick to knit.

YES! All the more amazing because I am posting today, when everybody knows that the next step after "too sick to knit" is "quite thoroughly dead." And yet, here I am. And it wasn't cancer or polio or arthritis or anything horrid, it was just some stupid virus. I wouldn't believe it either except I'm still feeling it if I try to do anything physically strenuous, like, you know, walk. Or stand up for more than five minutes. My bones feel tired.

So, despite my lofty ambitions, no more patterns or pictures or .pdfs have been achieved in the week since I put up Dunegrass. Although that has been downloaded 15 times! OMG I'm all famous! And I forgot to put any gauge information in the pattern, so, you know, I'm famous for being annoying and stupid. Well, if Paris Hilton can bear it, I suppose I can too.

onward. also upward.

ZERO progress on Zur Lederhos'n today. I've got the dark variation of the ZL colorway, and I can only knit during daylight hours, so even though the day's not over, I can safely say that I won't knit on those today.

My daylight hours - the ones where no children were home, anyway - were full of Dunegrass! I wrote a from-scratch web page of the Dunegrass sock pattern, hoping I could convert that into a .pdf, but the conversion process was fraught, I tell you, fraught with peril. Much searching through the Ravelry Wiki eventually revealed that you can make .pdfs with Google Documents. Turns out, that is also fraught, and the code is trés messy, but it was successful in increments just big enough to make me keep trying, and around 1 p.m. I emerged from the digital thickets, flushed and sweaty, triumphantly clutching a squawking, flapping, finished Dunegrass_Socks(eleventy-nine).pdf by one leg. I uploaded it to my Ravelry shop and it looks like there is now a freely downloadable pattern. And I just checked: one person has downloaded it! I'm famous!

Then the kids got home and I was too busy making lunch and shopping and criticizing. A mother's work is never done.

Still, the other patterns shouldn't take quite as long, right? And once I know all about uploading free patterns I can spifflicate the Aliénor pattern (needs more photos, which means I need to knit some more) and get that up... soonish. I hope. Can you believe it's been over a month since I finished knitting it?