Happy New Year!!!

Here it is, the last day of 2006 already. This has been quite the year! Last new year's, I was waiting anxiously for my first publication (Ziggy, in Mag Knits) to come out and submitting like crazy, hoping for a few acceptances. Now, I've got more design work than I can handle! I put up my website, started working with three great fiber artists on handpainted yarn for sock kits, and got elected (well, volunteered and got elected since nobody was running against me) newsletter editor of the Tigard Knitting Guild. At the beginning of the year, I was so out of shape I got winded carrying the laundry up the stairs. Today, I'm planning to run 5.5 miles in preparation for my first 10k next weekend! I still run at a snail's pace, but I'm on my way.

This year also brought about MomMA, and my first appearance on the evening news and in The Oregonian in August, followed by footage of me and Owen participating in a nurse-in at PDX on all the Portland news stations in November. I am now a volunteer phone counselor for the Nursing Mother's Counsel of Oregon and am well into my third year of breastfeeding (when added up across both kids).

At the beginning of the year, I had this crazy little idea to host a Sock-A-Month knitalong. Little did I know it would cover the entire year, be participated in by 150+ people each time whose participants would knit hundreds and hundreds of socks of all different shapes, sizes, colors and fiber contents. I didn't realize the extent to which SAM and SAM2 would take over my life, but I'm still trying to figure out a way to continue which will work for everyone involved. Are y'all up for SAM3? Are you happy with the Flickr group or would you prefer a group blog?

In conclusion, I've accomplished more than I ever thought possible this year. I want to thank all of you who've read the blog and commented over the past year - I treasure each and every comment I get. I never imagined when I started this blog in August '05 that it would turn into such an important part of my life. I don't get to update as often as I'd like these days, but I hope to get back to my old prolific self once Owen gets over his anti-mommy-on-the-computer phase that he's in right now...

Here's to big ambitions and dreams for 2007. My advice to all of you - take a deep breath and just go for it! My crowning glory for this past year - I finally knitted Bill a pair of socks.



They are truly the world's longest socks (at least it seems like that to me), but I made them in worsted-weight yarn so they came off the needles pretty quickly. No more excuses that I can't knit him socks because his feet are too big! The pattern is called "Hubby's First Socks" and will be available on the website by the end of January at the latest.

Have a safe, happy and fun end to '06, and I'll see you in the '07!

Merry Xmas!

Happy holidays to everyone, and for those who celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a good one - we sure did!

Stupidly, I forgot to take a single picture. I was too busy enjoying the moment! That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I have a few things I want to show you, but you'll have to wait for me to get off my sorry butt and take pictures of them. Somehow it's hard to get the motivation to do anything when it's dark before 5 pm and pouring rain outside.

One thing I can show you, however, is a nice little sweater that I designed last summer for Y2Knit. I have great memories of knitting this on our summer road trip (along with the socks I designed for Big Girl Knits 2). I finished it up at our cabin in Itasca State Park and I remember trying it on and totally being wowed by it. The sample I knit was a small (and I'm an XL-kinda girl), but it fit me. The cable pattern has a lot of the same properties of ribbing, and when paired with the stretchy Cascade 220 Superwash, it clung to all my curves and looked fantastic. I didn't want to take it off! Sadly, it lives with the Y2Knit ladies now, but if I ever find time to knit for myself, I'm going to make one. I know I would wear it all the time.

Anyway, the Wolcott sisters who are the brainpowers behind Y2Knit are doing a knit-along for the sweater in January. You can see some of the details here along with a pic of the sweater. But, let me tell you, the picture doesn't do it justice. You have to put that sucker on to really appreciate it. It is awesome! And I'm not just saying this because I designed it (does it sound like I'm a total narcisist?) - I'd love this sweater regardless. I will say that one of the great benefits of designing is that you can make things exactly how you like it. Some times it turns out better than others, and this is one of those times. Y2Knit is also offering a discount on some specially selected colors for the knit-along.

My peaceful babysitter time is about to come to an end, so I'm going to wrap this up before I have two kids clamoring for my attention. They are strangely obsessed with me! One of the benefits of being Mom, I guess. Have a happy and safe New Year if I don't get back here before then!

Yeah, baby!

I am in the holiday spirit, big time! In fact, I'm feeling very jolly, so I'm offering y'all, my fabulous blog readers, a 15% discount on anything in my store through Jan 3rd. Just use the coupon code HOLIDAY06. Yee-haw!

I finished the family holiday letter yesterday, which is mainly just an excuse to show cute pictures of the kids. I think I've posted all of them here already, so you guys aren't missing much. I am just so amazed that I actually got organized enough to do it! People probably won't actually get their cards before Christmas, but hopefully before New Year's. The next big hurdle is finding all the addresses and sitting down to write out the envelopes...

To top it all off, I got a big box in the mail from my Sockret Pal! Ho, ho, ho, indeed! Once again, she totally hit the nail on the head with the gifts she sent me. And everything was wrapped up in this gorgeous Santa bag, which is perfect for us and our obsession with reusable objects! We're trying to use fabric bags instead of wrapping paper as much as possible this year...



Inside were all these little goodies:



So awesome! Ghirardelli chocolates, Starbucks Xmas Blend and some holiday-flavored syrups (now I can make my peppermint mochas and vanilla lattes at home!), a big ball of dishcloth cotton, some lip stuff (which is already being put to use on my horribly chapped lips - love that cold weather!), and the Knit Picks bug finger puppet pattern booklet! Perfect, since I have that big bag of Palette sitting in my stash, waiting to be used. And then there was the item sure to be a huge hit with the kids - the Baa Humbug Grumpy Party Pooper. Owen immediately demanded it as soon as he laid eyes on it...



He's using it to beat his sister with right now! Oh, wait, actually he's using the can opener. Don't ask how he got his hands on that! And no, that's not poo on the carpet behind him - he got ahold of an empty mocha cup and spilled the chocolate dregs. Since the carpet is so disgusting anyway I didn't bother to clean it up. Once the kids are a little older and less messy, we're going to rip it all up anyway. I cannot wait for that day! I'm going to have a little party when it's time for that stuff to go.

But wait...I saved the best for last. She sent me my socks! Yahoo!



Aren't they gorgeous? They fit like a dream and are so soft and comfy. Love them!

Okay, my peaceful computer time has come to an end - time to deal with the screaming urchin trying to worm his way up onto my lap. As I've said many times before, if he wasn't so cute, he'd be a goner!

Your daily dose of randomness...

I've been thinking of all the things I need to blog about over the past few days, but I haven't had time to sit down and do it (rather, the boy hasn't allowed me to sit down and do it). Right now my only distraction is a cat desperately trying to lick the entire surface area of both of my hands... She is a total nut.

Of course, now that I actually have time to sit down and blog, I can't remember any of it. It doesn't help that I'm in a total food coma. We just had our knitting mommies group holiday party, which included dinner at Papa Haydn. I had some incredible scallops with black truffle risotto (it was even better than it sounds) and this Mayan chocolate cake that was just out of this world. I can die happy having tasted it - it was that good. It didn't do much for my diet, but whatever. It's the holidays, darn it!

On Saturday, Chris and I took our girls to see a production of The Nutcracker put on by a dance school in Vancouver called Columbia Dance. It's a very kid-friendly performance and it was so much fun watching Sydney & Annabel experience a real-live ballet for the very first time. It was a little bit long for them, but we were sitting in the very front row and the girls danced along with the music in the space between the seats and the stage for most of the second half. I'm sure they were annoying someone, but I thought they were pretty darn cute.

The production was great - the students danced beautifully, the costumes were fantastic, and they even had a couple professionals in the cast to give everyone a little thrill. It brought back all the memories of when I was a kid and wanted to be a ballerina. I just love those pointe shoes! I know they're torture to wear, but they are gorgeous! On the drive home, Chris and I were plotting about how to get the girls into the school so they can be in next year's production. I mean, isn't that one of the reasons why you have kids - so you can live vicariously through them when your own dreams don't pan out?

Stupidly, I didn't bring the camera, so I'll instead post this random picture of me with Owen (who's looking adorable as usual), just so this post isn't totally boring and photo-less...



Okay, now for some sad news. SAMer Tonia's great-grandmother passed away last week. Go over and give her some love - it's always hard to lose a loved one, especially so close to the holidays. And closer to home, the body of one of the missing climbers on Mt. Hood was found yesterday. I am so sad for his family, and for the families of the two men who are still missing. Between this and the snowing-in of the Kim family, it's a rough time to be vacationing in Oregon right now. Here's to everyone staying safe and warm over the holidays!

Finally, I've drawn the name for the November sock prize. Congratulations to Bettina! Send me your address to claim your prize. And to Sonya, who is still waiting patiently, I will get your October prize to you one of these days. I am absolutely pathetic.

Ho, ho, ho

I got a great box in the mail yesterday from my Coffee Swap pal Shelby:



It was all I could do to rip these things from my children's hands long enough to photograph them. She also sent some gorgeous little blue beaded stitch markers that didn't make the picture, so here they are all on their own!



Since I was in picture-taking mode, I photographed the remnants of my Sockret Pal gift (as in, these are the things that are not currently in active use by me or the children and I could still locate them within a reasonable amount of time):



This makes the package look much smaller than it actually was. One of the hits of the box was a pack of construction paper and markers that she threw in for the kids. Sydney has had such great fun making cute little art projects like this one:



(Lest you think she's overly advanced for a 3-year-old, she did have help from her aunt Katie with that one.)

There was also a great little notebook that I was planning to use for design notes but which Sydney has squirreled away as a personal artwork journal. She is such an incredible drawer, I can't be too upset by that.

We are busily getting ready for the holidays. I had a little bit of a reprieve in the driving-to-school department this morning since school was delayed for two hours (and since Sydney's only there for three, that means a weather day for her). The weather is fine right now, but there were ridiculous high winds last night and tons of power lines and trees down (thankfully none near us). We have a big blow-up snowman decoration on our front porch that had to be unplugged for the night after he made a run for the neighbor's yard!

I am trying to get my act together enough to send out all of the swap packages that I owe. I have everything pretty much ready but just need to find the time to sit down and pack the boxes. I was all prepared to do everything the other night only to discover that we were completely out of packing tape. D'oh! I am determined to get boxes off to my Harvest Sock Party pal, my Coffee Swap pal, my Secret Pal and my Sockret Pal. Whew! Talk about swap madness!

We also put up our tree last weekend. I call it our "Charlie Brown tree" since it has a huge chunk taken out of the back.



Bill picked this one out while I chased the children around the tree lot, but we both love it - it smells wonderful and fits right into this household of wild children, poor housekeeping and crazy cat. I need to take another picture of it decorated, since that is pretty haphazard as well (it's impossible to keep anything on the lower branches due to said wild children and crazy cat, so it's looking rather top-heavy).

I'll leave you with my lovely daughter modeling my shirt from last weekend's race (yes, it was the Red Nose Run Deer). Bill and I watched the Hawaiian Ironman coverage last night and noticed that the average age of participants was rather high. Will that be my next goal, after I conquer the marathon? Hmm...a 2.5 mile swim, 100 mile bike ride and a full marathon, all in a row in ridiculously hot, windy conditions. Doesn't that sound like fun?

5k, baby!

I ran a 5k this morning, and I managed to run the whole entire way - 3.1 miles! I was soooo proud of myself. The last 5k that I tried to run, three years ago, was not a good time and I ended up walking most of the way (although the free admission to Magic Mountain that went along with the race made it all worthwhile). Today, I was on fire! Okay, not exactly on fire, but I was totally the tortoise of tortoise-and-hare fame. Slow and steady, baby! I finished in 43 minutes (which was just two minutes faster than Bill's time in the 10k, but hey - he's got longer legs than I do). Portland Marathon, here I come!

Thanks for all the words of wisdom about the website and stuff. I think mainly I just need to be patient - something I'm not particularly good at. I always expect things to happen right away, which isn't all that realistic. I just need to think back on how hard it was to get my first patterns accepted for publication (and that it took a good six months from my first design to my first acceptance), and now I have more work than I can handle! I'm sure more diversity of patterns would also help, so I'm going to keep on truckin'. I really appreciate all your words of encouragement, though - it really helps!

Okay, time to go eat some turkey - my in-laws cooked one up for dinner tonight. Yum!

Swatch, swatch, swatch

I am in a big old giant swatch-o-rama these days. It seems like every single magazine on the planet has a call out for submissions right now, and being the opportunist that I am, I seem to need to submit to every single one of them. Never mind that I have about six projects that I should be finishing up instead...I just can't resist the siren song of "submissions wanted".

I had a huge swelling of pride the other day when Sydney came up to me and said "That's a beautiful 'watch, Mommy!" I mean, how many 3-year-olds know about swatches? I can't wait until she's old enough to knit herself. Although the real question won't be when is she old enough to knit, but when will I find myself with enough patience to sit down and teach her...

The whole published-by-others knit design thing is going very well these days. I've got enough work to keep myself and my trusty sample knitter Lisa very busy. However, the self-publishing is not going so hot. I'm still not getting many orders (I've gotten all of one, from the darling Erica, since I put the new cart in). I have a question for all of you, if you're willing to help me out a bit. Namely, what could I do to make you unable to resist my patterns? Is the photography lame? Are the designs to complex (or too simple)? Are the names stupid? Is the cart hard to navigate? And the sock kits, which I thought would be flying out the door, are just sitting there. What's the story? If you could leave a comment or e-mail me directly (if you don't want to comment), that would be fantastic. I really want your opinions! I'm thinking maybe I need to just focus on publishing with other people rather than trying to market my own designs. I know that it takes time to get a business up and running, but I can't keep pouring time and money into something that isn't going to be worth it!

Anyway, thanks as always for letting me vent and for sharing all of your thoughts with me. You guys are the best!

Yeouch!

Whew! I finally feel like I can get back to blogging about regular things now. Like my moment of horror last night as I saw Owen running into the dining room with a loop of sock yarn wrapped around his ankle. With the sock attached. But without any needles in the sock any longer.

I've been working up a little sample sock to submit to Interweave (still deciding if it should go to Winter Knits or to Holiday Knits), and I'd just finished up the toe while watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I did a star toe, so I had like 6 stitches left with just a couple on each needle. I needed to find a yarn needle and some scissors so I could polish it off but got distracted by Sydney's bedtime and whatever else was going on at the time. Stupidly, I left my poor little sock on the couch, unattended.

The next thing I know, Owen's running around with yarn trailing behind him, and my sock no longer has a toe. D'oh! Fortunately, there was still one round left between the toe and the body of the sock, which is stranded colorwork. It could've been a lot worse, let me tell you! So I get ready to put the sock back on its needles, but I can't find the needles anywhere. I look under the couch, no needles. In the toy bins next to the couch, no needles. I'm frantically digging through toys and books, flinging pillows out of the way, trying to find the stupid needles. I had no idea where he could've stashed tham. I'd given up and flopped down on the floor next to the couch when I felt something strange in the spot where I'd been sitting...

Turns out Owen had taken each of the needles and stuck them through the cover of the futon (it's kind of a woven damask-type fabric that isn't totally impervious, but it's not like it's full of holes, either!). I had to feel around, find each one, and poke it back through. Fortunately I hadn't broken any of them by sitting on them! That boy is growing up to be a real handful.

I recovered nicely, and the sockette is waiting to be blocked and mailed off for Interweave to reject. I shouldn't say that - after all, they have accepted two of my designs. It's just that the percentage of rejections to acceptances is high enough that I'd prefer to assume that everything will be rejected, and then when it's accepted it's a nice surprise. I find that to be much more easy-to-take than getting really upset every time something's rejected.

Time for lunch! I get to eat a turkey and swiss sandwich in front of the TV. Guess what I'll be watching - Wonderpets! Yahoo.

SAM2 letter updates

Okay, I think I've gotten through all of the SAM2 letter updates. Please check your name in the sidebar and make sure it's correct. I'll do the drawing for November this weekend. I have to say, it was SO much easier going through 100 update e-mails knowing that I wouldn't have to link to them all! I'm sad that things are changing, but it's also a huge relief.

Just a reminder as to how things will now work - you'll still send me e-mails to let me know that you've finished socks. This is how you'll get your letters in the sidebar. Then, if you want (this is not a requirement), you can post pics to the Flickr group. Bettina posted this nice little tutorial on how to put pictures in the group:

Log in, then choose groups in the flickr menu bar at the top. Search for SAM2. Once it is listed, click on it to open. Then click on "join this group". Reconfirm this on the next page.

Once you have this, then go back to the photo(s) you want to upload. Click the individual photo and once it has loaded, click on the tiny menu bar item "send to group" it will then give you a box listing all the groups you are a member of. Click on "SAM2" and confirm.

I'd also like to thank all of you who sent me positive e-mails/comments about the change. I really wish things could've kept on as they were until the end, but y'all are just too darn prolific!

I'm a loser, baby!

...but I'd really rather you didn't kill me...

I have come to the conclusion that I just can't keep up anymore. I haven't been on Bloglines in weeks, except to check on Katrina since the loss of her brother. I obviously haven't been doing the sock updates justice. I've been avoiding the blog because I figure if I'm blogging, I should be doing sock updates. And each time that I look in the sock update folder of my e-mail, I stare at the screen in a bit of a stupor for a few minutes and then decide I'll just "do it later". I've officially been flummoxed by socks.

In order to make life livable again, I'm going to change SAM2 a little bit. I've created a Flickr group for you to put your socks up in so that everyone can admire them without sending me over the edge. I'll keep your letters updated in my sidebar, so you should still e-mail updates to me, and I'll definitely be doing the drawings. I just can't handle the huge update process anymore! Owen is in this phase where he'll only let me work on the computer when I'm in the office with the door closed, which greatly cuts down on my computer time during the day (I'm only able to post this now because my sister-in-law is babysitting so I can get some work done). Plus he's down to a single nap which he generally takes in the car while we're picking Sydney up from school. And I've got a gazillion submission deadlines to meet along with all the usual holiday craziness. I know, don't you all just feel horribly sorry for me?

Anyway, I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging now that I've got the SAM2 monkey somewhat off my back. I almost made it - if two of the last three months weren't holidays (and also the busiest months as far as magazine submissions go), I might've been able to do it!

In other news, sock kits are here!!! I got a huge bag of yarn in the mail from Mama-E and the pattern is being finalized as soon as I'm done with this post. I've got two different colorways which are both incredible - Autumn Harvest and Indian Corn. Indian Corn is a little lighter in color and subtler, but they're both awesome.

The pattern will also be available for sale individually, and I suppose there's no time like the present to unveil it:





This is Autumn in Oregon, inspired by the falling leaves and rain we're innundated with this time of year. The sample sock is knit in the Autumn Harvest colorway (the middle picture is almost spot-on as far as colors go). Gorgeous, isn't it? I've only got 12 kits in each colorway, so get yours before they're gone!

I've also got yarn coming in very soon from Chewy Spaghetti and Lavender Sheep's Fiber Garden (two of our fellow SAM2-ers), and Mama-E dyed up a fabulous Gardiner Yarn Works colorway that I can't wait to get my hands on. You can sign up for my newsletter when you create an account on the website and be the first to know when new sock kits are up for grabs.

Okay, shameless plug over - time to get back to work!