Yeccchhhh!

So, I've been gone for 10 days (from blogging, anyway). Did you miss me? Probably not. I've been hit with one thing after another lately - first a stomach bug and now a nasty spring cold that has me constantly feeling like I'm going to sneeze. Even when I finally do squeeze a sneeze out, that tickle immediately comes back. No fun. The good news is that all of this down time has gotten me a lot of knitting time. I've been spending the last 10 days knitting and watching loads of junk TV. I'm now completely obsessed with both Celebrity Fit Club and The Real Housewives of New York City. Sadly, The Real Housewives just ended but there's at least one more episode of Celebrity Fat-I-mean-Fit Club.

While I sit on the sofa and watch people working out, Bill was busy actually working out - he ran the Boston Marathon on Monday morning. He finished in 4:37:26, which he wasn't overly happy with (he was on track for a 4-hour finish at the half-marathon point but had to walk much of the last bit due to various muscular issues). He also forgot to put on his sunscreen and ended up with a horrible sunburn on the top of his shaved head and his shoulders. Poor baby! Not to mention he's been fighting my same cold. It doesn't help that it seems like spring will never come to Portland - we're still getting hail on almost a daily basis and it's in the 40s every morning when I get up.

All this illness meant that I missed the premier event of Portland's knitting social scene - the Yarn Harlot's reading at the World Forestry Center last night. I'd even switched my work schedule so that I had the night off to go see her, but I ended up dragging my sorry carcass home early and going to bed. It's a bummer, especially now that fellow Portlanders are starting to blog about how much fun they had (sorry to flake out on you Amanda, but I'm glad you still made it!). Don't you feel bad for me?

I'm now going to continue feeling sorry for myself, turn up the heat, brew some Throat Comfort tea and watch the rest of the new episode of Work Out. Did I mention how much I love to sit on the couch and knit while watching OTHER PEOPLE exercise?

Three years!

My baby boy turned 3 on Friday! Wow! I can't believe that the past three years have gone by so quickly. We had a little family-only party on Friday night. See if you can figure out the theme...





Bill had control of the camera most of the night. I'm not sure what was up with this picture, which I just discovered when downloading the pics onto my laptop...



On Saturday afternoon, we finally got around to having Sydney's birthday party. It was a joint Sydney/Owen party, really, but since Owen doesn't really have any friends that aren't younger siblings of Sydney's friends, he was the only boy amongst a sea of little girls. He didn't mind at all.



We even managed to get through the day without any injuries! I was worried that balls would get dropped on toes, but all the kids were pretty good about it. Even this one...



Sydney even managed to get a couple of strikes (and so did I)! We might have to go bowling more often.

Back in the real world, another free-pattern-disappearance debacle has hit the online knitting world. This time, it looks like Interweave has pulled a bunch of free patterns from its website. It's citing the new contract that it has with its designers, which specifically covers digital rights (rights to publish our patterns on their website for free or for paid download), but from looking at my own particular contract, I think that might be oversimplification (since from my extremely legally-inept reading of the contract, they retained whatever rights they had previously if they decide to exercise them). Of course, I can only speak for my own contract and I have no idea what other designers have negotiated.

I love Interweave, I'll say that loud and up-front. They're the only knitting magazine I bother to submit to anymore and the new contract is very fair and good for designers. However, the way Interweave has handled the taking down of several free patterns is quickly turning into a customer relations issue. There are apparently certain patterns that were listed in the magazine's table of contents but were not included in the print magazine - they were web-only content. Now, due to the new contract (or so Interweave says), many of these patterns have been pulled. Subscribers to the magazine or, especially, people who bought a particular issue just to get one of those patterns (thinking, logically, that they were in the magazine since they were listed in the table of contents both in the front of the magazine and on the website) are understandably miffed.

It's unfortunate that Interweave didn't figure out a way to grandfather these particular patterns in. I don't know if the designers of these patterns insisted that they be taken off the website (it's really not fair or safe to assume either way). I do think that Interweave messed up a bit in its quest to get digital rights that it didn't have for older patterns (it seems that the new contract helped to clarify digital rights that could've been legally questionable and get the right to release earlier patterns that were under contracts that did not cover digital rights at all). In trying to get digital rights for older patterns, they may have inadvertently shot themselves in the foot with the newer patterns that they already had digital rights to. Since I don't know the specifics behind the contracts for the web-only designs (apart from my own), I can't say if the designer protested at the idea of a particular design being released for free on the Interweave website or not.

I do know that my one web-only pattern from Interweave, the Winding Cable Knee Socks, is no longer available as a free pattern from the main website (although it still remains at an old link, for the moment anyway, and that's just fine with me) even though I never said specifically to remove it. In the new contract, we were asked to list all of our patterns and say what we wanted done with them. For some reason, I assumed that since the Winding Cable socks were already a free pattern on the website they'd stay that way, so I left them off the list entirely. It looks like that resulted in them getting pulled. There's also no stipulation for an indefinite "free" term for a pattern - the contract asks for permission to release a pattern for free for one month for an additional fee. This is very fair for new patterns, but I personally wouldn't expect it to apply to patterns that were previously released as free web patterns. In my mind, anything that goes up on the web for free, I write off as an advertising expense. I'm not expecting to be able to sell that design anytime in the future.

It's all very messy, and I hope it doesn't result in Interweave being muddied too badly. They are ultimately trying to do right by their designers (at least, the people at Interweave itself are - I really have no idea about their parent company, Aspire Media). People really get up-in-arms about the disappearance of their free patterns! It's unfortunate, because the more complaining that goes on, the less likely it is that designers or publishers will offer free content. Yes, publishers are businesses, and if free patterns cause lots of grief without bringing in new customers, they won't offer them. No matter how much they love knitting. However, I do agree that it's reasonable for people to expect a pattern that is listed in a magazine's table of contents to be available to them somehow. It will be interesting to see how Interweave smooths this over.

Now, on to happier subjects, my two MagKnits refugees that will continue to be offered for free are now up over on the new online mag Knotions. Go to the patterns page and you should see them. Jody, the founder of this new and brilliant online publication, graciously offered to quickly tech edit and format these designs and host them - thank you to her! Yes, she gets some free designs out of the deal, but it also takes the heat off of me to get these available in workable format for people who are impatiently waiting to knit them. I'm more than happy to send some traffic her way in thanks for that.

I'm off to watch the end of Election and knit on the never-ending sleeve of the notorious ribbed monster. I've got to hurry up and finish it, because I've got five (yes, five!) projects that are due to various Interweave publications at the end of May. Five! I just hope my fingers are up to it...

RIP, MagKnits

Hmm, another RIP post. I hope this isn't going to be a trend! The knitting world lost one of its online mags this week - MagKnits, home to my very first published pattern, is no more. I won't get into the ugly details, but I do want to let you know what's happening with the three patterns I had published there.

My first dilemma was whether to continue offering these patterns for free, or convert them to my standard pattern format (which has added bonuses such as pretty colors and lots of text) and offer them for sale in my regular pattern line. The copyright always remained with the designers for these patterns, so that wasn't an issue. I had always written them off, though, because copyright to a design that's offered in free internet archives indefinitely is sort of tough to sell anywhere else. Now that the archives weren't an issue, I wasn't sure what to do.

There are some knitters who get really irritated at the idea of having to pay for something that once was free. They figure I got paid $50 (or yarn, or advertising) for my design - isn't that plenty? They don't realize that the pattern needs to be reformatted and re-tech edited since what we submitted was an originaly unedited document. If I wanted to offer it in my print pattern line, I'd need to charge for it to cover paper costs, etc.

Ultimately, I decided that I will be offering two of the patterns for free via Knotions, a new online knitting magazine whose editor graciously offered to format and edit all homeless MagKnits patterns and put them up on her site this weekend. If she's not completely overwhelmed, Kaibashira and Ziggy will find a new home there very soon (and I won't feel like I need to reformat them, have them edited and put them up on my website as downloads any time soon, although ultimately I would like to do so).

In case you've forgotten, Kaibashira:



and Ziggy (my very first published pattern):



I redid Ziggy's chart, since in the original version it wasn't very clear (I didn't have good charting software like I do now).

I am going to split the difference and publish the third pattern, my Vegan Suede Vest in my print line and charge for it. It wasn't overly popular, but I think I can rework it in different colors and different yarn (the original was Berroco Suede) and it will do much better. I'm currently thinking Cascade Sierra and ditching the lace-up front... We'll see when that happens!

Here's the original version of VSV:



Since this pattern was paid for with the yarn used to knit it and it took me FOREVER to grade, I don't feel bad at all about charging for this one now.

In other exciting news, the projects for Columbus are moving right along. I've got a preview page up with a few of the new designs that I've managed to photograph but we've got a bunch more in the hopper (keep checking the preview page for updates if you're impatient).

I'm also extremely excited to announce that Gardiner Yarn Works will be distributing Caffaknitted patterns by Katie Park. These are the cutest things EVER and I'm so excited to be able to give her wider distribution. I'm a little afraid of having the samples at my house, though (they're going with us to Columbus), because my kids are going to go absolutely nuts when they see them. I'm quite sure I'll be talked into making them their very own set.

Now I'm back to the never-ending pattern grading. This one isn't a raglan but has a stitch pattern (ribbing, if you can believe it) that's giving me quite the time of it. When you see the finished item, you'll see why. Even the seeming simple designs take some thought and foresight, as I found out when I joined the shoulders on this particular garment and realized that the ribbing didn't line up at all from front to back. Whoopsie!

Design #2

Can you believe it? Second week of April, 2nd design! I am on fahr! Maybe it's the release of the new book More Big Girl Knits which has two of my designs in it, looking fabulous. Not only that, but I was given props for my sock design, Twisty Stitch Socks, during Jillian's interview on the Knitgrrl Show (Shannon Okey's podcast/radio show)! I nearly fell off my chair when I listened to it today. Anyway, here's the second design idea for you:



This is a simple little shell/vest with an eyelet spiral pattern twisting around the body. The bottom has a picot hem and it would be, of course, knit in the round to the armholes. The edgings for the neck and armholes would be a simple pick up stitches around and then bind off (alternately, single crochet) so as not to add any bulk.

Here's a close-up of the swatch:



The yarn used for the swatch is Terra from The Fibre Company. It is a gorgeous, amazing yarn but I wouldn't use it for this design because it is ridiculously expensive. Great for a design in a book where the yarn gets sent to me, not so good for an individual pattern leaflet. Instead, I have a few potential subsitutes, all yarns looking for a good project:



The orangey yarn on the left is Cascade Lana de Oro, the pink in the middle is Cascade Pastazza and the yellow is Lorna's Laces Lion & Lamb. Hmm...

It's sort of strange to be putting these ideas out there with the idea of having them voted on - I love them all (which is why they're getting picked for this little exercise)! I suppose there's nothing stopping me from working them up anyway, unless y'all hate them or something.

In other news, I'm sad to report that I'm going to be leaving my lovely day job at Dublin Bay Knitting Company at the end of April. It just got to be too much and Bill finally put his foot down. Not that he has much hope that I'll stop working all them time on Gardiner Yarn Works stuff, but at least I'll be home more often and maybe a little less stressed out! I'll still be teaching some classes there, and maybe subbing when someone's out on vacation, but I won't be working there regularly anymore. It has been a great experience, but I have to admit I'll be happy to have my Saturdays back!

We're still busily searching for a preschool for Owen. I've pretty much talked myself into the benefits of sending Sydney to the neighborhood elementary school (there was some last-minute waffling and wringing of hands, but I think I'm pretty much convinced that it's the right choice). We visited a great Montessori school last week but they don't actually have any openings and for some reason, it really annoyed me that they charged a non-refundable $200 application fee (as in, if space never opened up, you still don't get your money back). Bill reminded me that it's just like your college applications - you don't expect to get that back if you don't get in, but for some reason it feels different. I don't know that we would've put Owen in that school anyway due to the fact that it's still a bit of a drive through an area that has terrible traffic in the afternoons. Next week we're visiting one that's just a few blocks away - that sounds much better to me!

I need to keep reminding myself that I'm choosing between a bunch of things that are all good options. It's not like if I make the wrong choice the kids will be resigned to going to Portland Community College and if I make the right choice they'll end up at Harvard. And, going beyond that, so what if they do end up at PCC if they're happy with it? I'd much rather these two grow up to be happy than grow up to be successful (well, I'd love it if they were both, but I'll take happiness over success any day).

I just realized I've hardly done any knitting today! I haven't picked up any of the projects sitting around except for a few rounds on a sock while at the drive-thru at Starbucks. No wonder I feel twitchy! Today was spent photographing, updating web pages, formatting ads (who knew I was going to end up doing graphic design along with everything else?), dealing with the never-ending river of e-mails, updating my profitability analysis (we're doing relatively well here - not yet profitable, but the idea of someday becoming profitable no longer sends me into fits of laughter), picking up Knitalong, More Big Girl Knits and the new Yarn Harlot book (in preparation for her visit on the 22nd) at Powell's, and squaring away our train tickets to Seattle for Sea Socks. Is that enough detail for you? And for breakfast I had a venti caramel mocha and half a cinnamon-raisin bagel with cream cheese...

Bill's distracting me with his yelling at the tv - the NCAA final game just ended in a tie, so I'm going to go join him to watch overtime and DO SOME #$@#&$^ KNITTING!

RIP, MLK

Today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, TN. I wasn't around when it happened and even though I learned all about MLK in history class, the impact of his words and life have only begun to sink in as I've gotten older and (hopefully) wiser. I feel his loss acutely this year, most likely due to the fact that it's a round anniversary and so getting a lot of media attention, but also due to the current run-up to the presidential election. This day has finally spurred me to get off the "undecided" horse and state my support for Barack Obama.

I hate being undecided. I have an opinion about everything, most of all politics. It has been an interesting spring for me while I struggled with the two Democratic candidates, trying to decide which one I favored. Since I've never lived in a state with an early primary, the decision of which candidate my party would endorse has generally been made for me. I am a lifelong, die-hard Democrat who has only voted for a different party's candidate once in my life (I voted for the Green candidate in the very strange special election for California's governor which gave us "The Governator"). In addition, all my life I have waited for the day when a woman would have a serious chance of being elected to our highest office. I've spent months unable to bring myself to discount Hillary because of that desire.

Listening to the speeches of Dr. King along with Bobby Kennedy (who announced Dr. King's death to a stunned crowd in Indianapolis that day 40 years ago), JFK and the Dalai Lama (unrelated to American politics but in the news once again as a great statesman and humanitarian) has made me realize that what we need right now is another great leader. Obama's recent speech on race proves that he has the potential to be that leader. We need someone who can speak eloquently and bring people together. Hillary doesn't have that same ease - listening to her speak is sort of stressful. She forces it. We don't need another divisive administration and I think that Hillary, despite everything good that she and Bill have done, is a polarizing figure. I'm worried about her electability. Obama seems to have the ability to inspire a good number of Republicans, something that Hillary just can't do.

Regardless, I am rather delighted that my choice in the May primary, which is looking more and more like it might actually matter, does not include a rich white man. I've been waiting a long time to make this choice, difficult as it may be.

Procrastination...

These days, procrastination is my middle name. There are so many things to be done, but instead of just getting down to business, I opt to just check into Ravelry "for a minute". I get so sucked in, I completely forget what I sat down to do! Kind of like when I go upstairs to get a pair of socks and end up coming back downstairs with a hairbrush.

My Sea Socks co-conspirator (well, co-instructor, actually), the fabulous Heather (aka the Craftlit goddess), and I have been working furiously on our instructional materials. They are due tomorrow, and I'm just now getting around to knitting the models I'm using for photography. Fortunately they're pretty small, but nothing like putting it off to the very last minute! I'm supposed to be editing Heather's stuff but I'm struggling to get my own written. How is it April already?

I've also got a bunch of new patterns that need working up in preparation for TNNA. I've got knitters waiting with bated breath for me to get their patterns graded. However, I need to be in just the right mood to do grading and it has been awhile since I was in the appropriately meditative, focused state. I'll get to it tomorrow, I swear!

It doesn't help that I've been distracted by the whole schooling dilemma. Bill very helpfully pointed out the other day, as we were driving home from our neighborhood elementary school tour, that it's great to have all these choices but it makes things so much more difficult. When we were kids (both in very small towns), there weren't any other options besides the town's elementary school. There weren't private schools, or magnet schools, or charter schools. Nobody homeschooled. When you turned five, you got on the big yellow bus and went off to school with every other kid in town (and the surrounding farmlands).

In fact, there was only one preschool in the town where I grew up, so there wasn't any choice-related drama there either. We've pretty much decided that Sydney will be just fine at the local school but now we've got to figure out what to do with Owen. Do we want to enroll him in Sydney's current school and subject ourselves to two more years of that horrendous drive? Do we put him in another Montessori school that's closer but only has full-day school? Do we try to find some other kind of non-Montessori preschool? Oh, the humanity! I'm not sure what I'm going to stew about once we get Owen squared away, but I'm sure I'll think of something...

Thanks for all your comments on my first design idea - I'll try to post them on Tuesdays so look for the next one coming up on the 8th. Actually, I might have to put it up a day early since the 8th is our 8th wedding anniversary. Hmm...it's our 8th anniversary on the 8th of April in the year 2008. The only thing that would've beat that one is if we'd been married in August!

Design #1

Wow, here it is April 1, and I'm actually doing what I said I would! Of course, I didn't have to do much work beyond photography, but these days even that's a stretch...

Without further ado, here's the first design for you to choose from (for those of you just joining us, I'm going to let my readers pick a design for me to work through with y'all - there will be three more to come throughout the month).



This design was submitted last winter to Classic Elite (it's swatched in their lovely Wool Bam Boo yarn) but didn't make the cut. I know it can use some tweaks, but I like the general idea - I just need to figure out how to make it work. Here are a couple close-ups of the stitch patterns. First, the bottom band, which would be worked horizontally:



I really love the loopy look of this butterfly cable. Next, the neckline:



This is a simple braided cable, worked perpendicular to the edge of the neckline and finished with attached i-cord along the other edge.

I came up with this sketch when working up a bunch of design ideas for the Classic Elite call for submissions in Fall 2006. I wanted to do something cabley with the Wool Bam Boo since it shows cables so well and I found the butterfly cable in the Vogue cable stitch dictionary. I did some playing around with graph paper and came up with the version that you see in the photo above. Since this is a pretty complicated band, I opted for a simple stockinette body trimmed at neck and cuffs with a small braided cable.

A few questions that we'd need to answer if we decided to go forward with this design:

1. Pullover or cardigan? I have it sketched as a raglan, but I don't necessarily love the boxy shape. It might be more flattering on more people as a more structured jacket with some waist shaping.

2. What length? The horizonal band around the bottom poses some interesting problems for those of us who have, um, wider dimensions below the waist. How can we incorporate the cabled band without making us larger gals look even bigger?

3. What yarn should we use? The Wool Bam Boo is a light dk-weight and worked wonderfully for the swatch, but I just got a bunch of lovely Lorna's Laces Green Line DK that's calling my name. I need to swatch it up and see if the slight variations in the yarn from the hand dying obscure the cables at all.



I've wanted to get this design worked up for a long time now, so maybe this is my opportunity! We'll see what you all think when you see the other three ideas.

I'm also pondering what to do with the pattern once it's done. I'm thinking I will sell it with net proceeds going to charity, like with the Karen's Sugar-Free Socks. I think that this particular design would be a great breast cancer research fundraiser (probably because I swatched it in pink) but I'll be asking for your input as to what the cause should be as well.

Now for the obligatory cute kid pictures - first is one I forgot to post after Easter of the little monsters and their haul from the Easter bunny.



The day before Easter, I asked the kids if they were going to eat candy until they barfed. After explaining to Sydney what "barf" means (I can't believe she didn't already learn that one from her little friends at school), she shrieked and said "no way"! Owen, on the other hand, seemed to take that as an endorsement of the idea. Guess who spent Monday morning spilling his guts?

Owen seems to spend most of his days spreading messes from one end of the house to the other. The other day, I was sitting at my computer in the dining room and things were unusually silent in the kitchen. I asked Owen what he was doing, and he said, very innocently, "nothing!" I didn't want to get up, so I decided to take him at his word. A few minutes later, I heard a strange squishing noise and decided I'd better go see what was happening. Here's what I found:



This is Owen, hiding under the kitchen table and emptying a jar of peanut butter by the handful. Little turkey! I had to laugh because it was either laugh or wring his little neck. He is such a troublemaker!!!