Move complete

Hello all, my move is now complete, with the opening of my Online Store at www.mimknits.com/shop. Please go to that site for all your pattern purchases. Also, in case you missed it before, my blog has moved to www.mimknits.com/wordpress I will be keeping this site only as an archive.

Thanks so much!
M

Pattern Sale

In honor of starting early with the Christmas knitting, I’m offering a sale on patterns. Now through Friday, August 4th, I’m offering a 15% discount on all of the patterns for sale on my site. To receive this discount, you need to enter this code “53322O73″ into the discount box. This includes

* Lightweight Mountain Peaks Shawl - was $6.50, now discounted to $5.53.
* Blessing Socks - was $6.00, now discounted to $5.10.
* Eleanora Socks - was $6.00, now discounted to $5.10.
* Original Mountain Peaks Shawl - was $6.50, now discounted to $5.53.
* Seraphim Shawl - was $6.00, now discounted to $5.10.

If you’ve been waiting until you’re ready to knit the pattern, this would be a good time to buy it. If this goes well, I may have another sale in the future, but for now, this is the only one planned.
Happy knitting!

M

p.s. if someone is willing to test this, I can refund your money, but it won’t let me “send money to myself” so I can’t test it myself.

*FINAL EDIT* It's working now, just be sure you refresh the page before you click the button.

And don't forget that my new blog is located at www.mimknits.com/wordpress. If you subscribe via Bloglines, they have already moved your subscription over to the new feed.

Movin' over

Hey everyone, the time has come, and I have moved my blog over to my own domain at www.mimknits.com. The blog's new address is http://mimknits.com/wordpress or www.mimknits.com/wordpress works too. You can update your links to that. And the RSS and ATOM feeds are working, and bloglines should be migrating subscriptions to the new feeds as soon as I can figure out the verifcation for them. I have reposted the posts from this month (July) over there, but I will leave the rest here for the time being with a link to the old blog.

Yay for the move! Let me know if anything doesn't work. And I've posted a jam tutorial with lots of pictures to celebrate :)

Miriam

Hmm....

I've had this window open for about 2 hours hoping to be inspired on what to write. I've still got nothin'. OK, I take it back. I like apricots. How's that for content?

The scarf was progressing, but I've got a shooting pain in my left elbow from a nerve issue in my neck that I can't fix until I'm done with the working day, so I don't even feel like taking out the scarf to take a picture. I'll just feel bad if I do.

I wanted to post my "M" entry for the ABC along, but I forgot to take the picture when I was at home (as I have forgotten all week long) so no go there. Similarly, I would also like to post my "N" entry, but I don't want to do that before I do "M" or I will never get back to M. The desire to do N-Z is what's keeping me motivated on M.

Thanks for all your kind words yesterday. I'm still feeling a bit whacked out, but one thing at a time, and my tomato plants are staked up now, so that precious 15 min. that I spent every day wondering if my tomatoes had fallen over, can now be spent on wondering how I'm going to get patterns printed, and how I can knit the scarf when my elbow is twinging.... Off to ice it again.

Oh, one last thing... if you live in Salt Lake City, GUARD YOUR BACON! Link via Blurbomat.

M

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Quiddity finished a modified version of the Simple trekking socks. check them out!

And Marlana finished an Icarus shawl! It's BEAUTIFUL!

I'm absolutely crazy. Thought you all should know. If you're interested in why, keep reading, I'll cover it at the end so you can skip it if you're bored.

I keep sniffing my wrists. I got some lovely perfumes from an etsy shop and then realized when the package came that the artisan was in the same city as me! Her name is Tiffany and her shop is Blackberry & Co. I got 1 Pomegranate Rosewater and one White Tea & Ginger. I love them both, but if I had to choose I'd say I like White Tea & Ginger better. It's just soothing and lovely to me.

C and I were driving through downtown yesterday and we saw this crazy truck! I had to take a picture. First the back of the truck said this:



And then it switched and said this:



WTF! Shouldn't that be illegal?! Like, distracting to drivers and all that? The whole truck was covered in these switching billboards. It was all a mobile advertisement! It was crazy!

So on to why I am insane.....I was knitting - like a maniac - on my scarf design last night. C suggested I just put it down and enjoy watching a movie with him. I said frantically "NO! I have to work on this scarf!". He asked me why and even though it sounded stupid even as I said it, I told him why. This has a deadline. Yes, it is a deadline that's 2.5 months away, but frankly, I'm nervous about it. With this scarf I have to come up with a printed pattern because the pattern will be the basis for a kit that Andie will sell at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate, England. Maybe I'm off my rocker, but I think this is a big deal. This is a whole different country where my patterns will suddenly be sold in hard copy. And along with the patterns to include in that kit, I figured I might as well start printing out patterns to try selling wholesale to yarn shops. Whoosh! Load off my back. I haven't written about that here because I was worried about jinxing it, but I feel better now that it's out there.

That's the craziness that is all surfing around in my head and making me INSANE! I feel like there are so man things all in flux right now, and I don't know where the tide will take me. And in a way this scarf is symbolizing that. I've got this irrational belief that if I finish the scarf and finish it well, then everything will sort itself out. I'm trying to take it one step at a time and figure out a business plan... decide if I want to invest in a printer and print them myself or invest in a print RUN and have a bunch printed professionally. If I want to find a distributor for paper patterns, or just distribute myself. And then yesterday this wacked out thought came to me to offer this service to other designers to print their patterns so that they can go paper without the initial investment.

There's so much to think about and so much to nail down, and right now I sort of want to go hide in a hole and knit things that other people have designed, but alas, I don't think I'll let myself start anything (Green Gable? Chuck's Cable Socks? Spearfish? I have the yarn and the patterns and the desire to be knitting any or all of those) but Damn it! I have responsibilities! I don't just NOT go to work so that I can stay home and knit all day (even though I may fantasize about it sometimes). Anyway... there it is... if any of you have a Color Laser printer sitting around that you don't need anymore, please drop me a note. I could use one right about now.

M

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Look at Tina's finished Seraphim shawl! It looks GREAT Tina!

And Monica finished her Adamas shawl! YAY! (and in the same post, check out the Blessing socks she's making! They're fabulous!

Silk and a Shitload of Stitches

On the left you have the beginnings of the scarf for Andie. I have swatched, washed and measured, and as a result I have cast on 301 stitches! That basically took my whole morning commute, but the balls are all wound, the stitches are cast on, the pattern is even charted, so all I have to do now is knit it, take copious notes as to when I change colors and which of the MANY colors I change TO.

On the right you will see some amazingly lovely SILK laceweight yarn that my sister gave me for my birthday!



This stuff is BEAUTIFUL! I could pet it all afternoon! I need to find out how many yards I have, but I plan on dying it.

In other news, my garden is growing (click those links for a couple of pictures of the wee tomatoes), and I even found a volunteer in there one day. The bell pepper plant is blooming, and keeps blooming, but I haven't seen any peppers starting and it's having ant problems.... I'll have to find some way to get rid of them.

And I thought I should draw your attention to this in case you haven't ever played this. The game is 1000 Blank White Cards and you can view the rules and guidelines here. It was the MOST fun I've had with my family in a long while. The basic premise of the game is that you draw cards. The cards can vary from loosing 6 million points if you don't cluck like a chicken to no effect at all, to ending the game. You can also draw new cards as you are playing, which makes for some interesting retaliation. We're big into history in my family and my little brothers came up with these cards.



The first was the one on the left titled "A Crusade Has Been Declared" (drawn by Daniel). It says "Fanatical warriors from a distant land have declared a holy war against you, you stinking infadel. -10000 (points)"

And then David retaliated with the "Jihad!" card you see on the right. It says "Suck it, Christians, Saladin recaptures Jerusalem! Your soci(e)ty wastes away in its E(u)ropean hell hole. -1000 points, France loses its knighthood." hahahahahahahah! Good times, good times....

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I almost forgot! Go check out Wanda's finished Seraphim Shawl! Woot! It's GREAT Wanda!

M

Still tidying :)

I've finished an update with corrections for the Blessing Socks. If you purchased the pattern, you have been sent the corrected file to the e-mail account associated with the paypal account you purchased the pattern with. If you would like to purchase the updated pattern, the new pdf is uploaded. Please be sure to refresh the post so that you see the updated date at the bottom to ensure you are purchasing the right pattern.

Also there was some confusion as to whether or not the socks said baraka (meaning blessing), and they do. I checked this with 2 native Arabic speakers. Apparently, the little dot there is very important and unless you can see it (it's hard to spot in the photos) the arabic doesn't make any sense. But it DOES indeed say what it's supposed to say.

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By way of updates, C's socks are plodding along, I've swatched and wound all the yarn for the Renaissance wool scarf, and I'll probably start it this evening after I do some charting. I've worked a few more rows on the new shawl design, but nothing really worth bothering taking pictures of.

I did manage to get my house pretty clean on Friday before I went to Logan for family stuff. It was really nice to come home to a clean house! Now if only I can get to the laundry.....

M