What a crazy week.

First off, thanks again for all the lovely comments on the blogiversary post! I had so much fun discovering a ton of new-to-me blogs and making some new Ravelry friends as well. I closed the comments shortly after midnight last night and copied everything over to a spreadsheet so I’d have numbers to feed into the number generator. It selected Holly and Rachel as the knitter winners and Dave as the coaster winner. Check your emails folks.

Speaking of last night, a certain YarnHarlot was in the general vicinity, and my friend Rachel and I headed out to Ann Arbor after work to hang out with all the knitters. Her talk was fun and funny and fabulous, just as it was the last time I saw her. I didn’t spot as many of the local knitters that I recognize as I thought I would, but we had fun anyway. (We’ll pretend that that isn’t a blurry dark photo with the camera still in macro mode and the flash turned off, ok? I was star struck, who thinks to check the camera settings?)

I was knitting away frantically on sock 1 for Round 3 of Sock Madness the whole evening and we sat at the end of the row and talked to just about everyone as they passed by until the end of the book line caught up to us. I was just finishing up the toe, and actually kitchnered it closed shortly after while we waited for dinner. I’m working frantically on sock #2 today, hoping to get the pair done and submitted tonight and maybe make it through to round 4.  More info on the socks when the pair is done. Must get back to frantic knitting right now.

Thank you for the wonderful response to the blogiversary post! It’s amazing how a few little links and a teeny bit of shameless self promotion can spawn so many great commenters to come out of the woodwork. It’s by far the most response I’ve had to any one post on the blog to date. There are still a couple weeks to post (I set my drawing date the day after the Harlot is in Ann Arbor not thinking to look at the calendar and realize that that is still another two weeks out, but it’ll give some stragglers a chance to pop over and discover it in the mean time.) I’ve found some great new blogs to read through those comments too.

I haven’t really knit much since I finished up my hat. I signed up for the wee tiny sock swap on YarnMiracle’s blog and have been picking at a teeny sock, and I may pick up another project to pick at here and there in the mean time while we wait for the next round of Sock Madness to start.

Speaking of sock madness, specs for round two were posted today. STR, US1 needles. I used STR the last round for my zombies, but they didn’t specify varigated vs semi-solid this time, so I’m leaning towards using either the Fairgrounds colorway or the Knitty colorway. I’ll have a few more days to sort that out though, it looks like the pattern won’t drop in our inboxes until sometime on April 1st.

Instead of knitting, I’ve been working on getting the apartment back to some level of almost-orderly, and I’ve been experimenting with some advertising stuff behind the scenes on the blog. The site I signed on with seems to draw a lot of webcomics, but there are a handful of crafty advertisers poking around there and it makes me smile a little when they out bid the comics for my little ad spots. I’m trying very hard to keep the ads small and unobtrusive and off to the side or down in the footer. Let me know if they get annoying or out of hand.

I also finally replaced my ancient cell phone. It was falling apart, wouldn’t hold a charge for more than one call, and was making a clicking noise in the background when I talked. So yesterday when the screen display started getting flaky, it was time. My new one is an LG Scoop. It’s nice having a functional phone again and it’s so much newer than the old one that I have all sorts of new gadgets built in that are going to be fun to experiment with. I’ve finally joined the era of the camera phone. It just took me like 3 years to get here.

 And I’ve had another finished dishcloth laying around that’s ready for it’s day in the limelight. This one’s even more abstract than the ferris wheel was, but it should sort of look like steel coaster track.

Click here for the pdf file.

I actually posted the pattern on Saturday after reading all the comments, but to make it official…

Ferris Wheel Dishcloth pdf

I’ve also got all my free pdf’s up on Ravelry.

And check out the cool color’s Jody is using for test knitting the frog mittens!

I actually resorted to blocking a dishcloth. It still seems a little bit oval squat and I’m not 100% positive it’s as identifiable as it should be. Plus, it required blocking before it truly took on it’s intended shape. Maybe this one will just be a prototype and I’ll tweak it some more before writing it up. Does it look like a ferris wheel to you? Am I just being too much of a perfectionist over a dishcloth pattern?

A bit of randomness today.

1) I’ve had a membership on wheresgeorge.com for years (at least since ‘03 or ‘04) and every once in a while if I remember that it’s there (like twice a year) I’ll mark up the bills in my wallet and add them to the site. I’d never received any Where’s George marked bills in all the time I’d known about the site. And yet in the last month I’ve had two bills find their way into my wallet. I’m not sure where I got the first one, I just noticed it as I was cleaning out my purse one day and logged it in. The second one I got last Friday in the cafeteria at work and spent again getting dinner on Sunday from a local Chinese place.

2) Those trekking socks I started last month are slowly coming along, I’m working on the second sock now. Random seemed like a good time to photo them and get the project added to Ravelry.

3) Book MeMe… Tandaina and her mom both tagged me for this one.
Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. Find Page 123. Find the first 5 sentences.Post the next three sentences:

I’m sitting next to a bookshelf full of books, so I just grabbed one at random (since it’s a random day). So, from The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank…

“Walk me to the door?” she says to me.

As soon as we’re out on the landing, she says, “Don’t tell me to go easy on him, Nina.” She looks right at me, into my eyes. “He comes flying in here like Supersperm. And we’re all supposed to congratulate him.”

LOL, apparently I chose the right book for an absurdly out of context snippet. I’m not going to tag this one as I think it’s made it’s way through the knit blog world two or three times over, but if you haven’t done it, feel free to consider yourself tagged.

4) This weekend I finished up the most embarrassingly long lingering project (I have other long lingering projects, just none that I’m as embarrassed to admit sat for so long) in my basket. I had a scrap ball-band dishcloth I started way back in July. I got it mostly finished shy of maybe 10 rows and transfered it off the needles to use them for something else. And it sat just like that until Friday night when I picked it back up and finished it. The other issue with this one, since I did each strip in a different color, there were about a million ends to weave in. I like how it came out now that it’s done, and it was a decent use of a few scraps, but that’s far too much effort for a dishcloth.

5) One thing that crossed my mind while brainstorming pattern ideas… it’s hard to come up with a good way to chart and/or dishcloth other carousel animals without it just looking like the silhouette of an impaled animal.

6) Another thing from the brainstorming, it’s also hard to think of other potential animal motifs for other possible split-palm mitten ideas without ending up with an ass in one hand.

7) That doesn’t mean I’m not trying, nor am I restricting myself with those constraints. Although, my mom wants monkey mittens now that I’ve done frogs. I have an idea, I’m just trying to figure out the best way to execute it. She also wants a hat and more doll clothes. As soon as the prospect of potentially making a little money slipped into the picture, she is all over the idea of “helping” me come up with designs now. That’s one thing we’ve always differed on… she’s always looking for a way to support her hobbies financially with the results of the hobbies, I’m a little more cautious stepping into that arena. I tend to withdraw once obligation starts to step in, however, the pattern thing is a little less hands-on and I’m hoping the “obligations” are within reason and won’t detract from the hobby itself.

8 ) I set up a separate Patterns page here and I’ve got the Carousel Horse, Coaster Rider and Inspired Scarf available in pdf form both there and on Ravelry. I still need to go back and add the pdf links to the original posts for the Carousel Horse and the Inspired Scarf though.

9) I have several more free dishcloth patterns in the works. Four of them relate to the amusement park theme of the first two and none feature impaled animals. I’m thinking I may try to work those up and release them one per week leading up to my blogiversary, but I reserve the right to change my mind if it starts feeling too workish. I have some other ideas brewing for other things as well (like those monkey mittens), but with everything getting crazy in March and April at work plus some other things brewing behind the scenes here, dishcloths seem like a safe and easy bet for now.

10) I signed up for the second year of Sock Madness… I’m not as convinced that I’ll get as far as I did last year. I think I’m overloading my March already.

Enough froggie talk for a bit. That process jump started whatever part of my brain it is that dreams some of this stuff up.  I finally figured out how I wanted to execute this particular pattern idea that I’m sure has been brewing in the back of my mind for a while now. I also had a bit of a brainstorm with a friend and came up with a nice list of other designs to attempt down the road, some of which should work up sooner than others.

So as a little work of off-season coaster geekiness, I present my Coaster Rider dishcloth. Whip one up for the enthusiast, park employee or carnie in your life. (If this doesn’t get me openly mocked on ARN&R, nothing will.)

Download the PDF here.