This and that

Trying to play a little catch-up! Finally. :)

One of the coolest things that happened while I was incognito is that the amount donated to Doctors without Borders from Brandywine pattern sales has reached :drumroll: $19,000!!! Isn't that amazing?! Knitters are completely and totally awesome! And for Sakaki, funds donated to Direct Relief International and earmarked for Japan (from pattern sales through May 31, 2011) were $2,705! (For pattern sales in June of 2011 and forward, $5 of each will be donated to Doctors without Borders and will not be earmarked.) I got little thank you letters, and you were all such a part of it, that I wanted to pass on the thanks to you!

Mail has been unusual of late. About a month ago, I got a very interesting post card.

At first, I couldn't figure out who I know that might be traveling to Pakistan, and this card was not signed. Then I started reading the front of the card.

"Postcards from Pakistan. Saving our image one postcard at a time." And then, of course, I went to the website. So very amazing to be randomly touched by another part of the world. I haven't yet catalogued my card, but I am looking forward to uploading it.

Hmmmmmmmm. What else has happened? .......

I have signed on with Deep South Fibers to wholesale my patterns, and have begun reformatting my patterns for them to print. So far, only a few are available, but I'm working on it!

And then there's my Live Oak Shawlette in the fall Knitscene. I love that magazine! Lisa Shroyer (the editor) is a complete genius.

For Live Oak, I used some gorgeous Madeline Tosh sock yarn in Glazed Pecan. I love one skein shawls using sock yarn. They're like little knitted bonbons: bite sized, relaxing and satisfying. Lisa let me go on this one and I hope I made her feel good about her trust in me! I had had another idea in mind, but when she sent the Glazed Pecan color, it reminded me of the ground cover of leaves around the base of Live Oak trees. Even though the trees are evergreen, they shed their leaves throughout the year, and the dead leaves are incredibly close to this color. The shawl takes one skein, but you can easily make it larger.

I had a few good mail days, and this is the lovely Road to China Light that came my way for a secret project.

I sent off pins and lace club July packages. I will show you the goodies soon. :)

I know you all want to hear about the Muses! And hear you shall. And see, as well. Coming up next post!

tap tap tap

Is this thing on? I can't believe how long it's been since I've written!

I guess I should start at the beginning, eh? When I returned from Stitches West, I had four days to get ready to fly off to Maryland and the Indie Artist Celebration at Eleganza Yarns in Frederick. I was the featured artist. How cool is that?! I felt very very honored.

The four days were and whirlwind and off to Maryland I went! By way of Charlotte. I know! It was a long day of traveling. (But isn't this row of rocking chairs at the Charlotte airport fabulous?)

The trip, though long, was absolutely worth it. Look at this adorable little shop!

Paul, who owns Eleganza Yarns with Kristi, told me that a family used to live here, and that their ancestors come back and visit as part of a family reunion. It's a log cabin! Now, being a Californian who did not grow up around this type of history, I was completely taken by the story. The history in Frederick is just awe inspiring to me, and I was lucky that Paul is a history buff and was able to tell me all sorts of little factoids while driving around. So cool.

Here's Kristi, sorting patterns.

She doesn't like to have her picture taken, so I had to catch her unawares. (She said it was ok, though!) Isn't her hair gorgeous? I've always envied red heads.

I had two days of classes, but I only took pictures the first day in my Shapely Shawls class. I plead brain death. But I did get some good pics. Here is Brandy, who is one of the moderators on my Ravelry forum. She's wearing Sevillano and that's Elektra and Celaeno on her chair.

She is completely and totally awesome. I just wanted to get that on record. And, apparently, so is her boyfriend. He baked these cookies for me! And they're my very very favorite: oatmeal/chocolate chip. Let's just say that, although I knew Brandy was fabulous, I did not know the extent of her fabulosity.

Here's Brandy with Cindy from my forum. Note the gorgeous Brandywine that Cindy is sporting! I got to knit a row on Cindy's Rayonnant sweater. Is that not cool?!

And while we're talking about Brandywine...today's donation brings me to $17,000 total donated to Doctors without Borders! Thank you knitters!!!

Here's a snap of everyone concentrating. (I've only given names where I am pretty sure people don't mind having them splashed around on my blog - from here on out, name tags are blurred if need be and names are not mentioned.)

Note the lovely Celaeno! It's so much fun seeing these in person after admiring them on Ravelry!

My class was filled with wonderful and friendly people.

I loved the way people were helping each other and we all had a great dialogue going on. I think this is my favorite class to teach! I so enjoy the different shapes that are possible with shawls; it's one of the most interesting things about designing them.

Tomorrow: pics of the yarnz and the celebration! (I really do mean it; I'm going to blog tomorrow too!) :)

:sigh:

This week I bought a mini laptop for travel (including swim meets!) and I think my Mac mini was upset. It must have been the way I went on about how cute the new computer is, and the color (red), and the mini mouse I got for it. I shouldn't have purchased a Toshiba using my Mac, because my Mac had the last word. The problem I had before came back. Ack!

So instead of the new printer I had been saving for, I ended up replacing my mini, because I just couldn't be down for as long as I was last time.

Ouch.

I ask you: is this not the cutest computer ever? (It's safe to say that now since I'm not using my Mac to post this).

And it's difficult to tell, but this mouse is dinky and completely adorable.

Unfortunately, my laptop is not here. I have my mouse and my external dvd, but Toshiba hasn't even shipped the computer yet. So for now, I am computer-less and depending on my husband's largesse.

In other and better news, the wonderful Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden created a little video to show the bind off for my Brandywine Shawl!



Thank you, Roxanne!

And the latest total, you ask? Thanks to all of you, I have been able to send $8,000 to Doctors without Borders from Brandywine sales! I'm still working on $50,000 (10,000 patterns sold), and I'm just going to keep donating until I reach my goal! Many many thanks to all of you who have mentioned Brandywine on your blogs and in podcasts: Steph, anne, Wendy, Kat, David, Jasmin, Beth, Helen, and many others. You've helped so much to get the word out! Please don't stop now. I still need all the help I can get! :)

This n That

Whew. That week flew by! The Bear's birthday was a great one - thanks to all of you for the happy birthday wishes! We had cupcakes from Bear's special cake recipe

and lots of fun.

Bear said that since he was an old man now, he needed a beard. :)

I know I'm totally behind on posting about Stitches West. I had a big deadline right afterwards, and now I'm working on another. But I thought I'd pop some eye candy in here! I'm starting with the greens and yellows. Next will come the purples and burgundies. My stash grew along strict color themes this year!

First from Karen at the Royale Hare, some amazing orangey-greeny-goldy yarn. Yum!

From Miss Babs (who is totally adorable!), this one is called Moss.

From Wabi Sabi - this color is electric in person!

And from Didi - I love this sunny color.

Yes - sock yarn. But it's all for new shawl designs. Small shawls, to be exact. :)

Speaking of small shawls, Brandywine is doing very very well!

So far, I've been able to donate $7,500 to Doctors without Borders (MSF). Knitters are totally the best! I'm just going to keep on donating until I reach my goal of 10,000 patterns sold ($50,000 to MSF), however long that takes! So - many thanks to everyone who has bought the pattern! You've all made a huge difference. :) You can purchase Brandywine on my site or on Ravelry.

Monday's Musing

"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

Another quote from one of my very favorite sources!

Many thanks to all of you who have purchased my Brandywine Shawl pattern. Because of you, I'm about to send off another $500 to Doctors without Borders/Medicins sans Frontieres to bring the total donated up to $4,000! Wow. We have a great start on my goal of 10,000 patterns sold. It's still a long road ahead, but as you know:

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step. " - Chinese proverb :)

Have a fabulous week, everyone!

dropping in

I know. I dropped off the face of the Earth. Sorry! I have been having terrible computer troubles ever since I visited the NBC Olympics website (and no, I'm not linking there!) the other day. My screen - an Apple cinema display - began having intermittent seizures. I'm not sure how to describe them, except that there were geometric patterns, lines, colors...chaos. It began in my browser window while I was in Firefox and I quickly shut the browser down and restarted. It was ok for awhile, but then got bad enough that I called the Apple Store and set up an appointment with a "Genius." Note: I'm fairly sure the designation has nothing to do with their IQs. :P While I was waiting at the store, some poor guy who had a power supply replaced on his iMac 4 months ago was back in for another $178 replacement, and the "Genius" said too bad. It was a month out of warranty. Nonplussed, I asked if he really wasn't going to help the poor guy. He said he couldn't if it was out of warranty. This is not actually true, as I found out later talking with the manager. Apple techs have "a lot of grey area - it's on a case by case basis." Hmmm.

Well, my turn came and I whipped out my monitor and my (PPC) Mac mini. The "Genius" couldn't find anything wrong by plugging in the monitor to his computer. This was good. He said that it could be the video card. This was bad, because the video card is soldered to the motherboard and is almost as expensive to replace as buying a new computer. So I left my life in his hands overnight so that a diagnostic could be run, and said I'd be back at 8 when the store opened. The next morning, a different "Genius" was there. A really nice sales guy tried to get the "Genius" interested in me, but it was some time before either of us could get him to actually go and take a look at my computer in the back, because it wasn't in the system yet. (!) When he came back with my computer, he said, among other things, that there was nothing wrong with it and the website was probably too graphics intensive for such an old computer, and I should buy a new one. Hello! This computer is 5 years old. Perhaps it's not the latest, but I have another Mac, this one 13 years old, running beautifully, thenkyewverymuch. I noted that I am on way more graphics intensive websites all the time and it's never ever done this. Well, says "Genius" man, "you should take it to someone on the street." Someone on the street? Yes, because "if you were going to get hip surgery, you'd want a second opinion, right?" Hip surgery?!

So I took it home and plugged it in. Same problem they were not able to replicate. And then it dawned on me. They didn't actually run the computer with the monitor plugged in. Because they were so sure that it wasn't what I suggested it might be: a software incompatibility. So I set to work tracking down whatever it was that might have been downloaded from the NBC site and then I threw it all out. All better. Then I called the manager at the Apple Store. I might have gloated a little. She apologized for the "Genius"'s behavior. Profusely.

Sadly, the gloating did turn out to be a bit premature (although enjoyable). I went online again and it seems there's something out there that isn't compatible with my system. I think it's something to do with Flash and Firefox. And since then, I've been running the computer off a "safe boot" which only allows Apple installed system software to load. This works for awhile and then I have to reboot. Meanwhile, I've been purging everything having been downloaded into my system in the past couple of days. Note that Firefox is supposed to ask permission to download anything, but it doesn't, and it also upgrades itself - grrrrr. After the last purge, I've been up and running for several hours, and have even been able to go back online (using Safari). I'm really hoping I've purged the bug finally.

So now back to your regularly schedule programming. Here's a lovely finished Brandywine by Helen. And another being knit by Therese. So far, I've sent $3,500 to Doctors without Borders, all thanks to generous knitters like you! Thank you!!! $5 of each Brandywine Shawl pattern purchase goes to Doctors without Borders (MSF) for their work in Haiti. There's a long way to go to reach my goal of 10,000 patterns sold, but I know we can do it together!

Have a great weekend! I'll be trying to get over the bug the kids shared with me before heading off to Stitches West next week.

Valentine's Day round-up

Happy V Day, everyone! Don't forget my sale. :)

I have sort of a thing for hearts. Which is kind of odd, since I've never been very girly in other ways. This heart is a painting from my days as an illustrator.

I haven't had time to paint for a long long time and I miss it. There's something about the paint and dirty hands that really appeals to me! :)

Yesterday, I got to spend time with my knit group (yay - no swim meet!), and almost everyone was knitting Brandywine. My group has been so amazing and supportive; between them, they bought over 20 patterns! Here are a few of us.

It's difficult to see, but there are several Brandywines on the table in different stages of completion. Overall, I've sold almost 500 patterns, and sent off $2,000 to Doctors Without Borders. When I hit 500 sales, another $500 will go to them! Brandywine is currently number 8 in the new and popular patterns on Ravelry.



Thank you all so much for your help. Knitters are the best!

I knit almost all day yesterday, which is unusual for me since I get really fidgety sitting still. This year, I'm participating in the Knitting Olympics, but I'm not really sure why I signed up since my Olympic project is a secret. Duh! That will make for some scintillating blog posts, no? But I absolutely have to get this project finished by the time I head off for Stitches West, and I'm hoping this will give me the needed push. The challenge will be getting all the shawl pins for Stitches made and the knitting finished in time. I'm kinda freaking out about it, actually. I'm taking lots of deep breaths. And still freaking. Off to knit some more!

Valentine's Sale

To celebrate Valentine's Day, Designs by Romi is having a sale!!! Through Tuesday, February 16, take 20% off your full order over $10 by entering coupon code BEMINE at checkout (patterns excluded). I have lots to tempt you, including hearts

and yarn ball earrings!

So please stop by and take advantage! :)

In other news, sales of my Brandywine Shawl pattern are great, thanks to all of you wonderful knitters out there! After releasing the pattern last Saturday night, I have been able to donate $2,000 to Doctors without Borders ($5 per pattern) and am halfway to another $500!

It's also number 8 on the Ravelry new and popular pattern list, and all because of you! Thank you all so very much for all of your purchases and kind notes to me. Knitters are the best. :)

harbinger of spring

It happened all of a sudden.

The sky is still grey and rainy.

But spring is coming!

In other news, did you hear the latest Knitmore Girls' latest podcast? Jasmin is knitting my Brandywine shawl! Go have a listen. The Girls are awesome as always. :) And how is Brandywine doing, you might ask? So far, with the help of all of you wonderful knitters out there, I'm at 266 patterns sold ($5 from each pattern goes to Haiti) and I've sent off $1,000 to Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)! I'm going in $500 increments so that I can keep track of everything more easily. My goal is still to sell 10,000 patterns, and if you can help, please blog, plurk, tweet or...whatever! Thank you! :) You can buy my shawl here on Ravelry, or if you're not a Ravelry member, you can purchase it here on my site.

Off to do a bit of knitting on my silk/cashmere....

help for Haiti

It's up! My Brandywine Shawl pattern for Haiti relief is here, thanks to my wonderful wonderful test knitters!

The pattern is knit using Tactile Fiber Arts sock yarn in colorway Tangerine (which name I suspect has been changed to Bark, but not sure), a simply gorgeous color, and perfect in the pattern. It was an inspiration. :)

I loaded the pattern into Ravelry on Saturday night, about 11 pm PST. And you know what? At this writing, I have sold 137 patterns! Knitters are just amazing and truly wonderful people. I am blown away by how cool everyone has been on Ravelry, passing on the word to people about the pattern and encouraging others to help out.

The pattern is priced at $6.50, with $5 going to Haiti. I've decided to send off donations $500 at a time, so this evening, I sent my first one to Doctors Without Borders! My goal is to sell 10,000 patterns. And I want to respectfully ask everyone's help to get the word out! The response so far has been so warm, that I am sure it can be done. Reach for the stars, I always say. :)






Statistics:

Yarn: 437 yard skein of fingering weight sock yarn from Tactile Fiber Arts
Needles: US 6 for body and US 8 to bind off
Construction: Knit from bottom tip to top, so it's very easy to change the size smaller or larger
Price: $6.50, $5 of which goes to Haiti relief
Where to purchase: On Ravelry or Designs by Romi
Goal: Sell 10,000 patterns!
Favorite geeky detail: The bind off used is a reverse stockinette i-cord that looks like the body of the shawl but creates a nice firm tube that you can thread blocking wires through for a perfectly straight edge.


Love the way that worked out. :)