Cross Promotion (& Life in General)

It's about time! 
cross pro·mo·tion (noun) the cooperative marketing by two or more companies of one another's products.

I just checked, and it was way back in late August that I received a lovely personal message from Claudine at Classic Elite Yarns. She congratulated me on the publication of my Rosebud Hat and she went on to add:

 "I am writing a post about the hat for our blog, most likely [it] will be published the first week of Sept. I mention in my post how knitting fair Isle in the round with 2 hands is the most efficient method. I googled 2 handed Fair Isle to see if there were any great posts about how to do it…only to find your blog was one of the top hits. I would love to link to that post on our blog. Please let me know if this is ok.

I will let you know once the post is live, so you can cross promote it if you would like."

Of course, I said "Yes (please!)".  And I told her how much I loved working with the Fresco yarn by Classic Elite. Good stuff, that Fresco!

Claudine forgot to let me know when the post went live (entirely understandable) and I forgot to look for it until near the end of September.  At the time, I was right in the middle of my own (self-promotional) series of posts on my Playground Shawls and I could not work in a cross promotion.

High time for it now!  Please visit the post by Claudine at CEY.  She describes my hat far better than I could myself and she features another very cool colowork project, Grapevine Hat by Amy Loberg.  (It is a free CEY web letter pattern.)  And, (Thanks, Claudine!) at the end of her post she does have a link to my extremely popular Colorwork Tutorial.

But Claudine is not the only one writing about me!  In my last post I mentioned how the organizers of the Ravelry 2014 Gift-A-Long have been doing a phenomenal job.  There are volunteer designers assigned to all these different jobs and some worked on things like advertising, and social media promotion.  All of the designers who blog (including me) were assigned other designers to interview.

I was SO VERY lucky to have Arlette designated to interview me!  Please go here to read the interview!  She works by day as a web developer, and is a great photographer as well.  It shows at her blog!

(The designer I was assigned to interview has not replied to my request to send interview questions to her by email.  It's entirely OK.  It's a busy time of year and she may have faced some obstacles similar to my own.)

Lucky for you and for me, Arlette also agreed to be interviewed by me (it was my own idea, because I like her blog and her designs) and I have her answers, and that will be my very next post!
 
(In case you have noticed that I have been absent for a while... I had an important magazine design due this Friday, and I can report that I have just completed the work on time.  As the deadline approached, I was delayed due to a death in my family.  God bless my Aunt F.) 
       

On the Blog

Today is the third anniversary of this blog.  Here is the very first photo from my very first post three years ago.

I took the photo while on a special vacation trip to Bermuda in 2007.  It shows a flowerbed at the pink "Princess Hotel" (the Fairmont Southampton).

On the first anniversary of this blog, I was vacationing at St Thomas, USVI, and I was proud to have posted about my first Blogiversary while being so far from home.  (I was anxious to keep up with the blog while one of my first knit designs was just out out in a magazine.)

Here is a photo from that trip in 2012.

The photo is of a tree branch at Lindquist Beach.  I was happy that I caught just enough of the sun through the branch in my photo.  I was laying on a chair on the beach under the tree.  Loved that. 

Last year I forgot about it being my Blogiversary (or, I think that I remembered it, but I also thought that self-congratulations would be a boring topic).  I did post a Colorwork Meditation (#7, no less, my favorite number) on the day.  That post contained this photo (not by me) of Josef Albers, Homage to Square, collection.  Love it.

Photo credit: http://igetitart.com/tag/josef-albers/

Today, then, begins the fourth year of the blog.

I was thinking that I might briefly share some of my blogging experience.

There are spammers, and worse, "referer" spammers, who have caused me grief... but that has mostly died down.

I (once, not long ago) had a vacation post with a good number of links that I believe was being used by someone for advertising purposes.  It was getting a crazily growing number of page views each hour over several days.  It made me nervous.  I deleted it, but then I re-posted it without the links.  I was not able to preserve the comments or page view numbers, but at least what I wrote and all of the photos are there.  (Last I checked, it still had zero views.)

I do enjoy going to my blogger stats page.  I like to see all the page views that my tutorials (especially my colorwork one) get everyday and from all around the world.

Is it funny that I have no worries about readers (who I imagine to be knitters) from India or Argentina or Korea viewing my blog in good number, but I do worry about unknowns (who seemed to be "storming" the old there)?

Lastly, thanks to my new blogging friends!  You know who you are.  You blog.  I blog.  You comment.  I comment.  I love that you are there! 

Just a Few and Just a Bit

I took just a few photos at Rhinebeck yesterday.

These are the ones I like best.

 

I bought just a bit of yarn.

The four small skeins are Bartlett Yarns sport weight.  They came as a "Swirls" color pack with four 1 ounce skeins.  The larger skein is worsted wool from Hope Spinnery in Hope, Maine.  It was unlabeled, and on sale.

It was a beautiful day at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, New York.  As I said in a blog post last year, "It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday with some of my knitting friends and many thousands of like minded individuals."

This morning I decided to find the yarn in my stash from my last two trips to Rhinebeck.  I was pleased to find that because I have been a regular enough blogger for over two years now, I was able to find photos of my past Rhinebeck purchases in my archives.

2012
Yesterday Was...
(Lots of photos in that post.)

 

2011
Photos Not from Rhinebeck
(No Rhinebeck photos in that one.)

Would you believe that I have not yet knit with any of the yarns I purchased at Rhinebeck in my last three trips there?  I hope to use some very soon!

 

Super Sweet Blogger Award

I often feel like blogging is just a job that I must do.  As an aspiring knitwear designer, I feel that I must have at least this little bit of a presence (my own little corner) on the world wide web.  At other times, when I write a post that I am happy about, I have to admit that I do really enjoy it... blogging can be a very rewarding activity.  The second anniversary of my humble little blog is now approaching, and for the very first time I have been nominated for a blogger award.  I was very surprised to be nominated for something called the "Super Sweet Blogger Award" in a recent post by Linda Marveng.

Linda Marveng is an extremely talented and accomplished Norwegian knitwear designer.  (My link here is to her Ravelry designer page which is in English.  Please go see it!)  Her knitting book, To rett en vrang. Designstrikk, was published in January 2012, and is currently available only in Norwegian.  If I remember correctly, Linda and I first became acquainted, not so very long ago, when I favorited or commented on this design from her book.

© Kim Müller, from
To rett en vrang. Designstrikk

 I do very much love this design, Morbearsilkejakke,

 and I do hope to see it in English one day.

On being nominated, my thoughts were... what do I do now?  I know that I can answer the five questions, but I also know that I cannot, at this time, nominate twelve other blogs.  I regularly read many more than twelve blogs, but not so very many bloggers read mine.

I began by reading some of the blogs of the other nominees.  Some were in Norwegian (or other languages).  Most of the English language ones, even now, have not responded to being nominated.  But one blog in particular, "My Retiring Life", not only responded, but amazed me, with this post: "Everything goes so quickly for us..."  She, Tracy, included a complete description of the Grandfather Knitting Clock from a recent post by Linda Marveng.

To repeat, my Two (New) Great Blog recomendations:
Linda Marveng
My Retiring Life

Now onto the five questions.  Let me be brief.

1.  Cookies or cake?  I really do not eat very much of either.  But when I am at a wedding, a baptism or first communion celebration, a graduation, or even a birthday party, I always eat a couple bites of the cake.  I feel like it is just good manners.  Cake it is.
2.  Chocolate or vanilla?  Chocolate!
3.  Favorite sweet treat?  I do eat chocolate.  My current favorites are Ghirardelli Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree Bar (with sea salt and roasted almonds) and Lindt Excellence A Touch of Sea Salt Dark Chocolate Bar.
4.  When do you get hit with cravings?  Mid to late afternoon.
5.  Sweet nickname?  I do not have one.  My father had the nickname "Sweets" at work, so I guess I am "Sweets' Daughter".

Tracy, of My Retiring Life, nominated only four blogs.  She said that she had the option of nominating up to a baker's dozen.  I was glad that I read that, because I knew that I could not nominate twelve.

I will nominate six.  I enjoy reading them all.  I know that only some of these bloggers read my blog.  I do hope that anyone I nominate will participate only if they really want to!

Black Bunny Fibers

Blue Peninsula

My Next 20 Years of Living

Spinning First

Swatch Diaries

The Rainey Sisters

A Bit of a Disappointment

I believe that this has become the longest break in my blogging history.  Having posted only three times in November, I am going to see if I can kind of "catch up" for the month.

The real reason that I have not been posting is due to my sad, sad knitting.  I count on my knitting to make me happy... it usually cheers me daily.  This has not been the case in November... in fact my knitting has been making me sad. 

In September I made a commitment to a yarn company to complete a pattern and a sample for a sweater vest.  I experienced many difficulties with this particular project.  The proposed vest had large all-over cables with a central eyelet double-cable.  I did not appreciate how difficult it would be to size (or 'grade') a design with all-over 12 stitch wide x 28 row cables, and a 30 stitch wide x 56 row central cable.  I spent many hours knitting and revising and pattern writing and re-writing.

As the proposed completion date approached, I knew that I might be able to finish, but only if I grouped the sizes like: XS/S, M/L and XL/XXL.  But what was becoming gradually more and more apparent was that much of the sections involving shaping had to be written out row-by-row.  Even worse, I knew that with every re-write there was added potential for pattern errors.  I knew that this would never be a pattern that I would be happy to put out there with my name on it.

I emailed the yarn company last week, explaining not only my difficulties, but also how much I had learned in the process.  I now have permission to redesign the vest with an extended timeline.  I am determined to see this through.  It has been a disappointment, but I am now relieved and grateful for a second chance.  (When this project is finally on track, I will let you know more.)
          

Juxtapose

jux-ta-pose verb to place close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.

My vacation week was a juxtaposition-ing for me.

There I was during the first week of June with two magazines on a sales rack having my first two published patterns in them.  I purchased several copies of each.  I was working on a new design submission, and I was blogging about my knitting patterns.  My family, close friends and knitting acquaintances were all congratulating me.  I was really pleased with what I had accomplished.  It was all good.

Then, during the second week of June, there I was on a tropical island where nobody (I know of) knits.  We have been visiting St Thomas for many years now, and we even have friends who live there, but no one was interested in my knitting.  It was in the upper 80's each day and humid.  When we went boating, even I must admit, I could not bring knitting on board.  But I did knit in the morning and at bedtime.  I did a bit of knitting at beach and poolside.  (It was, after all, World Wide Knit In Public Day/Week.)  I found that the more that I knit, the more I felt like myself.  It really was necessary, if you know what I mean.

Also, I asked ahead about WiFi, and I brought my faithful laptop in order to keep up with my blogging, and to reply to comments here and at Ravelry.  The internet was spotty at times.  But I did manged to publish my previously written "Now, How did that happen?" post on that first weekend, as planned.  I actually wrote my "First Blogiversary!" post, and my "Midweek Meditation" post (with a photo at Lindquist Beach, which was where I KIP'ed, or Knitted-In-Public).  And, it was while I was on vacation, that I saw that link to "Now, How did that happen?" made by Amy Palmer on the Interweave blog, knitttingdaily.  Like, wow, that would not have happened if I did not bring my laptop!  I was then able to quickly post "Thanks, Amy!".  It was all good.

In conclusion, I am so grateful that I brought my laptop on vacation.  I am grateful that I had WiFi.  It felt strange that no one I was with knew, or cared to know, about my knit designs.  But, vacationing was, in itself, a blast... Did I spend long days boating and on beaches and visiting all of these tropical non-knitting friends?  Yes!  Did I meet some new island people and hear some new island stories?  Yes!  Was it all that a vacation should be?  Yes, yes! ... and I even came back with a suntan!

I am also glad to be back here blogging and knitting and designing in my own home.  It has been a juxtaposition-ing, I tell ya!

It is all good!