Work in progress

 

I have been working on several projects at the same time.

 

I have knitted the man with the yellow hat in November 2014. It was a special request for a small boy who asked Santa to have one. Sometime in the beginning of January I rewrote the scribbles from my notebook into a coherent pattern and several wonderful ladies from all over the world worked very hard to make sure the pattern is eligible and understandable for anyone. This weekend I take their suggestions and make the final changes to the pattern and next week the pattern will be available for everyone for free. 

 

Thanks to couple unexpected snowstorms and snowdays over the past ten days I had enough time to actually finish the editing of the book project ahead of schedule and now it's at the hands of another editor and soon (next month) all of the 31 patterns created and knitted from the gorgeous yarn in this box will be available as well.

 

Also this week I have uploaded the third clue for Petal, the Mystery KAL that is happening right now on Ravelry in my group Stana's critters etc. I am looking forward to see everyone's finished Petal.

 

And for the curious, this is where I can sit and spend my time with knitting needles and yarn.

Thank you for visiting.

200th Post and The Book Project

 

 

I was thinking of creating a teddy bear with 200 on it's body like I did for my 100th teddy bear.

But I have knitted only 173 teddy bears so far, and I need to knit few more before I can do the 200th teddy bear. I actually kept the 100th teddy bear at home, unlike all of the others who are spread throughout the world hopefully bringing some smiles to its recipients.

This is my 200th blog post and to celebrate I was thinking of having another fun giveaway.  I will have one soon, I just need to get a bit organized and decide on what should be raffled off, as I have few charitable donations requests and I need to make sure I have some things for these events as well.
So don't be disappointed the gift away will be here soon, just not today.

Today I would like to talk about The Book Project, again. It has been a long process. Check out all the posts I made about The Book Projects so far. It started as a class assignment. Even though the class finished, I continued. I have sent out the proposal to various publishing companies(one at the time), and nothing happened except some rejection letters or emails. But in March 2014 I received an enormous box of yarn from Cascade Yarn company. This is what the box looked like. They believed in my capability as a designer and decided to provide yarn support for the entire book. I started from the beginning again. Everything had to be rewritten, reknitted and those that I have only as sketches needed to be turn into an actual patterns and samples. In September 2014 I started my group on Ravelry and posted a call for test knitters to work on the patterns for The Book Project. Last night I have finished the last sample and the last of the patterns.

I have knitted 109 various things for the collection of 31 patterns that will be in this collection. Unfortunately I did not find a publisher for an actual printed book, but the entire collection will be available as an e-book and each pattern will be available individually as well. In mid February you will see what I have created from the gorgeous yarn in this enormous box. And yes, there will be a gift away of the e-book, patterns and samples as well. 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for visiting.



Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!

Well, I know it is already January 2nd and the New Year Day is over, but even the second day is nice and fresh, full of promises and expectations.

As a knitter I work with numbers. I have to keep track of how many stitches and rows I have made and how many I still need to make.

As a designer, I need to make sure that all the numbers in the pattern are correct and match the original sample, so the other knitters can replicate the finished object in a way that their finished object resemble the original and fit correctly.

As a human, I am curious and interested in learning more, and sometimes that involves math and statistics.

Out of 198 blog posts that I have published during the existence of my blog, the most popular is this one: Minions. I am so looking forward to see the new movie in the summer. And yes, I have seen the Despicable Me movies more then once, twice....way too many times.

This year my blog visited people from 138 countries. The previous year my blog visited people from 141 countries. I have never travelled in my real life to that many countries, and I don't expect to ever achieve that, so to me this is amazing.

I have written and published 78 knitting patterns. A lot of them are free, and for some I charge small amount of money. It is not much, and I do not rely on it or use it to pay my bills, but it allows me to buy few skeins of yarn, which I turn into new toys, and therefore more new knitting patterns. The toys are given away: to various charities all over the world, to my local library for the summer reading program, to children, and to you, my readers, when I have random giveaways (new one is coming very soon!).

All of this happened because my grandmother was patient enough to teach me how to knit. I wish I could show her all that I have achieved with my two hands and her gift she passed onto me - love for yarn and creating something one stitch at time.

Thank you for visiting.