Helping Haiti: Proud to be LSG

I don't think a soul on this Earth hasn't been touched by the tragedy that has recently befallen the beautiful land and people of Haiti. Outpouring of support has come from so many people and places, and I'm proud this moment to be a knitter, a Ravelry member, and specifically a member of a particular group on Ravelry called Lazy, Stupid, and Godless.



LSG to some may sound like a group to be ashamed that you're a part of. But LSG, despite the name, is full of hardworking, incredibly intelligent, occasionally spiritual, and (more now than ever) the most compassionate and generous people that I have ever had the pleasure to call my friends.

From nearly the moment the Earth started to shake under Haiti, the ladies and gentlemen of LSG mobilized. They set up a goal and goal counter and urged their members to give until it hurt. And give they did. By day one the $5,000 goal had been obliterated. Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and many other organizations were all targeted, and the outflow of cash from these men and women, some of whom have been laid off recently or had other family or financial tragedies in recent times just kept coming.

The bar was raised, and $10,000 was the new goal. Of the over 5,000 current members of LSG, some of those who run Etsy shops, businesses, or sell patterns started pledging large chunks of their profits to the cause. Those totals haven't even been tallied yet, as purchases are still being made by generous folks of LSG, Ravelry at large, and even those outside the knitting community. The group made quick work of breaking through the $10,000 mark. Members posted on their blogs, websites, and other outlets to keep urging each other to give. The bar was yet again raised, and $15,000 was the new goal this fantastic group set forth to demolish.

This one small group has banded together to show the people of Haiti we care, and to show the world that you don't have to be a multi-million dollar corporation to make a huge difference in the suffering of fellow members of the largest group of all- mankind.

So now, I, a PROUD member of a group that may be potty-mouthed and dirty-minded at times, and with tears of pride and heartbreak for Haiti in my eyes, urge you to give. Help as you would want to be helped. Below are links that I truly wish you'll take a look at. The links lead to blogs of fellow LSGers with links to patterns and items for sale that have pledged profits, and to lists of organizations I hope you'll give to.

Ravelry members can visit the LSG-A-Thon for Haiti thread here. You'll find the counter for the current $15,000 goal (we're at over $12,000 so far!), and links to many organizations providing relief, as well as links to patterns and items for sale that have pledged profits to the cause.

A fantastic designer, LSG member, and all around incredible woman named Kristen Rengren has a blog post here with the most comprehensive listing and links to patterns and items for sale that have pledged profits (including her two latest (fabulous) patterns, Bob the Dog and Harlow, which she's pledging 50% of sales in January, and my Pinwheel Ruffles Hat, which I've pledged to donate $2.00 for every pattern sold in January and can also be bought in my Etsy shop, as well as from the 'Buy Now' button below the photo of the hat in my 'Without Further Ado' post).

Shameless Holiday Self-Promotion

I know I promised the new pattern by now, but life just sneaks up on me sometimes. It's coming, and soon!

For now though, I have a quick and dirty shameless plug for my Etsy shop (all stitch markers on sale!) and my Ravelry pattern (also available on my Etsy)! The Pinwheel Ruffles Hat I've been going on and on about is a fast knit, and perfect for the holidays when done in appropriate colors. See? (I'll get a modeled shot soon, I swear!)

And now I'm off to finish decorating the house for the holidays. I promise some photos of this year's holiday crafts, including the precious gingerbread house my son and niece created!

Without further ado....

I present my newest pattern!





This is the Pinwheel Ruffles Hat. I had much internal struggling over whether or not to charge for this pattern, but in the end I decided that I had put a lot of work into designing this particular hat and even more work into designing the PDF pattern, and that with all the hard work of the pattern testers who helped me edit this pattern and make sure it was clear, easy to read, and error-free that at this time a (relatively small) price tag was the way to go. I was given lots of great advice, and it all pointed to this hat being worth the price, and I really hope you'll all agree!

The sizes included for this hat are 6 - 18 months, 2T - 4T, and 4T+. The pattern comes with an additional page of embellishment options and sizing information. I'm very excited about the whole thing, and I hope you all are too! It was extremely fun to design this hat, and all accounts are that it's just as fun to knit!

The pattern is available for purchase on Ravelry as well as in my Etsy shop.

And just to show you all that I still believe in sharing patterns with you all for free, coming soon to my blog will be a new FREE pattern!

So all that said, I only have one final thing to share with you. Aren't my son and niece adorable? :D

The streak continues

In yet another surprising turn of events, I actually managed to accomplish more off of my 'to do soon' list! You'll recall I hinted before about another pattern to offer, and I've finally completed it. It's in testing right now, but will be polished up and available sometime in the very near future. Chances are it will be available in my Etsy shop as well as on Ravelry.

As a bit of a tease, here is a photo of the completed Pinwheel Ruffles Hat. I'd love to know what you all think! Drop me a comment and let me know!




I'm desperately looking forward to the upcoming season and holidays, as well. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for upcoming posts on all the autumn and Halloween goodness, including a recipe for a to-die-for dessert I've stumbled upon and many other surprises!

Accomplishments!

Yeah, okay, not really. But I have managed to accomplish a few things recently. After a bit of a learning curve, I managed to post my first few lots of stitch markers on Etsy. This is essentially the biggest leap ahead I've taken in months, so it truly is something I'm proud of, and would love some feedback.









My shop is here, so go ahead and take a peek and tell me what you think! I've only got a few things listed, but if all goes well I'll have some more soon, including some earrings and other jewelry I've managed to complete but still need to photograph.

Another recent accomplishment is the near completion of the second free pattern I've been promising for a few posts now. I'm just getting some modeled shots and finishing up the PDF to be edited, and I'll post it as soon as I get that done.

Ooh, Shiny!

So I'm still on this whole 'actually getting things done' streak. (gasp! shock!) As you can tell, I finally got around to figuring out how to make the blog more how I wanted it and less pepto bismol. Hopefully you all like the new look! I may still tinker with a few things here and there, and I'm open for constructive criticism and suggestions.

On the pattern front, I'm thrilled that so many people have already downloaded the Bow-utiful Baby Headband pattern! I can't wait to see what you all make with it, and please send me any pictures of your finished headbands and I'll put them on the blog if you'd like. Just attach a note as to whether or not you want the photo published, and a name you would like the photo credited to.

I'm about halfway done with the second free pattern I have to offer you, and I can't wait to see your reactions to that when it's done. I should have that up possibly by the end of the week!

Warm Weather and a Free Pattern!

Welcome to day two of what appears to be an actual productivity streak. (gasp!)

Today the weather is so nice that I can't justify sitting here at the desk for too long, but I was just too excited to get my very first pattern up on the blog. So for those in the U.S., I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day, and for everyone, enjoy the free pattern! I hope you love it as much as I do, and of course if anyone has a problem or spots an error, please feel free to drop me a comment or a message on Ravelry. The pdf pattern includes modifications to make any size, including adult. And please excuse the rather awful photos, as I will be replacing them with much nicer ones soon!




Without further ado, the Bow-utiful Baby Headband!

Is it Summer already?

Time simply keeps flying past at a rate I can't seem to keep up with. The Christmas decor is barely put away, and yet it's already time to start dragging the kiddie pool out. I have been slacking in more departments than just updating the blog, and hopefully the warmer weather will propel me into this 'productivity' thing I hear so much about.

In the coming days I'll have the first of hopefully many of my own knitting designs available for free right here on the blog, so at least that's something to look forward to and keep me moving in the right direction. I'm also very excited to be participating in my first ever group event on my favorite website, Ravelry coming this July! The event is a 'WIP Wrestling' contest, wherein teams compete to complete as many 'works in progress' (WIPs) as possible in the month of July. I can tell already that it's going to be a blast, and those of you knitters and crocheters out there that haven't checked out Ravelry yet, there's still plenty of time to head over and get signed up for both a fabulous website as well as the WIP Wrestling event.

Chocolate!

As you saw in my last post, I have been loving the contests lately! Well here's one that I've entered a couple times, and I'm in the finals for! If you go to the Chocolista's website (two girls, blogging about chocolate- how freakin' cool is that?) you'll find their recurring name-that-dessert contest. This time, my name suggestion (Raspberry Respite!) made it to the top ten and now it's time to vote! So now, for the hopeless plug for myself- please go vote for me! This seventh-edition of their contest's prizes are a gorgeous chocolate-theme necklace and some scrumptious looking choco-themed gift tags.

And now, the great part! After you get done voting for me (you know you want to! :P) you should bookmark this fab site and return when the new contest comes up to try your hand at naming yummy-looking desserts for a chance to win yourself!

If you enter and your name is chosen as top ten, post a comment and I'll do a little vote-for-my reader advertising for ya!

Jury Duty, Winning and the Art of Procrastination

Well, I'm still tinkering, as you can tell by the still-pepto blog, but I've learned quite a bit so far about this whole blogging thing, so maybe I'll have it done by this weekend (fingers crossed!) So I decided to take a break from how this thing looks and focus a little more on updates, at least for today.

I have had one of those surreal type months so far, and it's only the second! I put off a lot of things lately, but I suppose that I've always been a pretty bad procrastinator. Nothing major, luckily, just little stuff like finishing up nearly-done knitting works, cleaning out the closets and Halloween.

Yeah, Halloween was awesome. My little guy had a blast, but mommy was carving pumpkins at 6 pm ON Halloween, and was barely putting the last candle in them and stringing the last set of lights while draping the last fake spiderweb when the first candy-seeker knocked on the door. I'll post a photo as soon as I can of the pumpkins. I think you all will get a kick out of seeing how my carving abilities slowly disintegrated as hurried from one pumpkin to the next (that will teach me to let the kid talk me into getting 9 pumpkins!)

So then there's this- I've got jury duty coming up. It's my first time, so I'm absolutely, entirely, and completely clueless on how it all will work out. I figure I'll just show up and wing it from there! I'm sure it's not nearly as frightening as it sounds, but man, now I completely understand on a whole new level why some people avoid it. I'm actually sort of excited about it in a weird way and almost hope I get picked for the jury, but man it's nerve-wracking! Even just the thought of a couple lawyers bickering about whether or not I'm 'suitable' (yeah, I watch too many crime shows- I'm sure it doesn't work that way usually :P) makes my skin crawl.

In other, slightly happier news though, I've had quite a run of luck lately in the online world. A few months back I won some candy from Candy Addict (the link is in my 'favorite sites', over there -----> ) and I highly suggest you all go take a look. It's a fabulous site, and if you can't afford the calories wasted on bad candy, you can check out all their great reviews and find the perfect treat that's actually worth the extra time on the treadmill for. The candy I received was delicious and fun, and I figured that it would basically be my best winning for the year. Oh contrare! I won another box o' fun just the other day (and this one is CHOCOLATE! Woohoo!!!) and I'm happily awaiting that in the mail. Then yesterday, I won a $15 Amazon gift card from another site! Talk about making me a happy girl :D. So now I'm waiting on chocolate, my new knitting book from Amazon, and oh yeah, PAJAMAS!! Yeah, that's right... follow up the chocolate and the money for my new knitting book with my winning pajamas from another site. So very soon, I will be cuddled up in my jammies, munching on chocolate, and reading a fantastic book.

But here's the best part of the day! I just entered yet ANOTHER contest, and you should enter too! Head on over to Knitting Scholar and post a comment on their very first contest post, and you can take a crack at winning an awesome knitting book! Check out their site for reviews on all sorts of knitting books, and I'm sure you'll be as impressed as I am. They aren't stating which of the books they've reviewed that they're giving away (I love surprises!), but they say there will be two or maybe even more winners, so the odds of winning a book sure beat the odds of winning the lottery, and the odds of finding a helpful review on a knitting book you're interested in are pretty good, too.

Now if I could just find a contest where you win some slippers and some champagne, and I would be set!

So I'll post more about some exciting (for me!) knitting news soon too. Here's a sneak peek though- it involves knitting, and one of my suggestions actually being sort of helpful to one of my knitting heroes at the moment! Other than that, I'll continue tinkering and hopefully you'll continue reading!

Is it sad that this pepto-pink is starting to grow on me though?

Tinkering

As much as I want to jump in to posting a bunch of really relevant and interesting information and witty remarks, the whole layout and design of the blog is driving me a bit nutty, so I'll be tinkering with that for a bit until I get it right-ish.

I just created a new banner blog title thingy (see? up there? thoughts on it? anyone?) and I'm hoping to base the color and design on that. So I'll be updating the posts with any cool blog-designing info I stumble upon in my searches and I'll post more about knitting and crafts as soon as I tame the wild beast that is my pepto-bismol pink blog.

Almost there...

I've gotten a good chunk done of what I had hoped to accomplish over the next couple days. Of course, every thing I checked off my little list added two more things that I hadn't thought about, but once I got on a roll it wasn't too painful.

So now, here I sit with my new pattern, all done up in a pretty PDF format, complete with a couple good pictures of the finished object. But now I'm starting to doubt my decision to charge even a small amount for my pattern. Frankly, I'm worried it doesn't make sense, or at the very least, is too long.

I do wonder now though about something else. I've always considered myself a competent writer. I'm a fairly good story teller too, or so I'm told. So why is that writing this blog feels like I'm having to learn a foreign language or something? Am I over thinking it (as I do, on occasion... okay, shut up. So I do it all the time, but do you have to tattle on me?) and maybe it's just my writing style differs from other fiber blog writers? Or am I really sounding as amateur and silly as I think I'm sounding?

Who knows. My brain is about to implode as it is, so I'll leave that debate for another rant. For now, I'm going to try to post my pattern here. Who knows, maybe someday someone will actually read this blog, take a look at my pattern, and be able to tell me if it makes an ounce of sense!

Here goes nothing!

You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you aren't sure if something will be either a huge disaster or the best decision you've ever made? Yeah, I'm there. You're probably there too, if you're now reading what I should have named "Not Another Knitting Blog", but I'm sure that's already taken. So if you're wondering, yes, this is sort of another knitting blog. And sort of another crocheting blog. And sort of another DIY blog. Heck, I might even throw a curve ball once in a while and toss a recipe at you. So that's why I went with StitchSanity.

You might wonder whether StitchSanity refers to stitching keeping me sane, or whether it refers to my being an insane stitcher. Truth is, I'm not sure which. In fact, at this point, the word stitch has stopped making sense after typing it so many times and I'm having to look twice to make sure that's really how it's spelled. So I'll let you all be the judge of your own definition of StitchSanity. Sure beats me the heck out of me having to figure out what it means for myself.

I could use this first post to tell all about myself, give you all some long back story about who I am, my history or plans for the far future, but the first thing you'll learn about me here is that I don't do things the easy way, ever. I have what I sometimes think is an innate abilty to complicate what is seemingly simple. So, instead, I'm going to let you learn about me in bits and pieces over the next however long it takes me to get around to it sort of time frame, and use this first post to tell you instead my plans for the next two days.

So, as my title already described, here goes nothing!

Last week, I had a plan. Knit a pair of legwarmers for my niece. They turned out great, by the way. Then I noticed she had not a stitch of clothing to match them. Well, it would be simple enough to use up the leftover skein to whip up a matching headband, as the poor girl being barely a year old and what seems to be not ten hairs to her name has a bit of hard time being pegged as a girl at first glance. So I searched for a quick and easy pattern for said headband on my personal favorite website, Ravelry (if you're here, reading about knitting/fiber arts, and you DON'T know what Ravelry is, stop reading, open a new window, and go look it up as fast as you can... it's the single greatest addition to the knitting world since, well, interchangable needles or something. Just trust me). A quick search determined that there wasn't what I was looking for. So I made one up as I went instead, and, frankly, it turned out adorable.

Well, I thought, with it being so easy, and so cute... why not submit it as a pattern to Ravelry?

And then it all began. The first step was tricky. How do I make a PDF file, which is the preferred format for submitted patterns? A little pestering of my computer-junkie brother led me to the answer to this. So this is the first thing I have to complete in the next couple days. Type up the pattern, design the page, and get some good photos. No problem.

Now, the second part was a little trickier. Should I charge for the pattern? Or should I put it up for free? Well, my first thought was I not only wanted to put it on Ravelry, but also on Etsy (think eBay for strictly DIY items, again, if you haven't heard of it, give it a look), and I had heard that you can't offer free patterns on Etsy. So then I decided okay, I'll just make it super cheap. So next on the to-do list, right after actually create the pattern is: set a cheap price, post it for sale on eBay and Etsy, and hope people enjoy it.

Now, I'm a stay at home mom. I love to work with yarn and fabric etc., and I have a head full of ideas that I never manage to actually put into print, or at least on paper. So I figured, if people like the first pattern, maybe I'll actually be motivated to set aside some 'me' time to write down some of my other projects. So I decided the next thing on my list was: delve head first into the world of fiber blogging so perhaps I would have someplace to put finger to keyboard on some of those ideas and projects and see if anyone else out there in cyberland, who isn't already sick to death of the almighty, and abundant, fiber blog, enjoys my patterns and ideas or is inspired by either.

So there you have it. Plan for the next few days is go from barely competant computer user and knitter, to pattern-designing blogger.

It sounds so simple. So, why that feeling in my stomach again?