But, it’s been on my mind.  And I do want to do another Challenge.  But before I do a challenge, I really, really need to get the Free patterns/KALs squared away for the next several months.  I think I will not start the Challenge until at least February.  Things have been a bit crazier than usual around here and I remember how demanding the last Challenge was.  I certainly cannot take that on if I’m not completely ready to focus on it!  First, I need to focus on the regular stuff like Free Patterns!!

That’s where I need some help.  I have a nice idea to add a pattern for December (I know it will be late, but better late than never) and I need some ideas for the next few months.  I like to have my Free patterns try to keep with a monthly theme.  For example I’ve been trying to think of something for January that will be sort of Wintery that I haven’t done already, but between my boys being sick and the bad weather knocking my head down every few days I haven’t felt very creative.  Any ideas?

Leave me some comments and help me come up with some ideas for the year for free patterns. I always feel like I’m playing ‘catch up’ with them and would love to get them planned and out of the way before I try to do anything else.  February will also be tricky because I have tons of heart related patterns and I’ve already tried unsuccessfully to do a groundhog.  I’m running out of ideas to keep the patterns to a monthly theme.  They may just have to start being random pictures which I suppose will be fine, but a bit….random!

In other chatty news, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.  I had a great knitting related Christmas.  Between my hubby and my mother I am now outfitted with some very cool new needles and gadgets and lots and lots of miscellaneous knitting notions.

My hubby got me the Harmony interchangeable needle set from Knitpicks that I’ve been drooling over for a while.  i can’t wait to try them out.  I actually haven’t done any knitting since Christmas!  My mom got me a ball winder and a scale.  I spent an entire afternoon winding up all the half knit balls of yarn I could find and weighing them.  I found 39 half balls of dishcloth yarn that had knit one dishcloth out of and then left lying around at the bottom of my knitting basket.  I rewound them all and refastened the label so everything is nice and neat.  I’ll be able to get another dishcloth out of each one of those, so I’m all set for a while.  Plus all the new balls of dishcloth yarn that I keep buying because I’m never sure of what I have.  Because I use small needles (size 5 or 6) and because my cloths are on the smaller side (cast on 37 stitches) I can very easily get two cloths out of each regular 2.5 oz ball. 

Did anyone else get cool knitting stuff over the holidays? 

I’ll post again in a few days about my progress with planning for the KALs/Free Patterns for the next few months.

We’ve had round after round of illness over here at my house.  Between bronchitis and pneumonia, the kids and I kept getting knocked down.  My two year old got pneumonia so bad around Thanksgiving he was in the hospital for almost a week.  But we are all finally on the upswing and healthy, just in time for Christmas.

I’ve also been working hard for the last month (when I’ve been feeling well enough) to redo a lot of “behind the scenes” stuff on the main part of the Designs by Emily website.  I’ve not been very happy with the download software that I purchased in the spring.  It always worked ‘ok’ but never ‘great’.  I wanted something to work GREAT!  I had decided to switch over to a shopping cart format.  And I wanted visitors to the site really not to notice too much difference if at all possible.

Finally after about two weeks of frustration of trying to do it on my own, I found a great shopping cart software (dlGuard) that I purchased for a very reasonable price, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks customizing it and setting it up.  I think it looks great.  The only two differences are that I had to move the menu over to the right side and the layout of the patterns.  But other than that, the site looks basically the same.  Purchases are still through PayPal and downloading the patterns are much, much easier.  I’m very happy.

That’s what I’ve been up to instead of knitting.  But now I can get back to it all.  I have a great free pattern that I want to put out for Christmas.  And I have to think of something for the December KAL.  I am going to delay that by a few days because starting a KAL on Christmas Eve really doesn’t make much sense.  And I know that I do still owe all my cheerleaders their participation patterns from the big Challenge.  I’m just so far behind on things!!  I will get caught up! 

And I just thought of something…January is fast approaching.  Didn’t I say something about starting another Challenge in January?  Oh boy!  I better start thinking about that too! LOL  Stay tuned for details on the January Challenge.  That will be here before I know it (and before I’m ready)!

So, without any delay…… week three’s winner is…… Helen Ensor!!!!!!!  Congratulations Helen!  I’ll be emailing you all the patterns from this week in a little while.  Thank you to everyone who cheered me on these past three weeks.  This challenge has been a lot of fun and has motivated me to add so many new patterns to the website.  I’m looking forward to running this challenge again in a couple of months, although I think I will have to modify the rules slightly to say something like 5 patterns in 7 days, or something like that.

I also drew out the 5 names for the end of the challenge winners.  Since the challenge lasted 3 weeks the 5 winners will each win 6 patterns of their choice picked from any of the patterns on my entire website.  The lucky winners are:  Debby C., Lynne, Laurie, Cheryl, and Pat! Congratulations to all five winners!  I’ll be emailing you about choosing your patterns. Pat cheered me on almost every day and also won the first weekly challenge.  Several of you cheered me on each day and I appreciate it so much.  I’m working on a couple of patterns for all of my cheerleaders — a couple of celebration themed patterns.  I was going to do a cheerleader pattern but I figured that not everyone has a reason to knit a cheerleader cloth.  The ones that I’m working on I hope will come in handy for you.  I’ll still need some time to get them ready though.

I think that’s all the news in closing out the Challenge.  I hope you all will still check in on the blog from time to time.  I’ll still be posting (although maybe not every day) about my knitting and projects that I’m working on.  I also do several other crafts that I may sneak in every so often.  You never know what you might find here!

On the upside, that means I have some drawings to do and some prizes to give away!!  I’ll be organizing all that tomorrow.  Since I lasted three weeks, I’ll be giving away 6 patterns (of their choice) to 5 lucky winners.  I also promised a free pattern to everyone who cheered me along on this challenge.  I’ve already been thinking about what would be a good design for that and I have a couple of ideas sketched out.

This challenge was a lot of fun and I’m already thinking that I’m going to do it again after the holidays.  Mid-January might be a good time to start.  I’ll have had enough time to recover from all the Christmas craziness, and I’ll need something to keep me going so I don’t slide into a winter slump.

Now that I’m in the habit of blogging, I’ll be blogging a little more often than I was in the past.  I’ve got a few new things that I’m going to be working on.  One that I started today, I’m super excited about and I can see that it could possibly lead to a great new addition to the website.  I don’t want to give away too much before it’s ready, but let’s say it’s a little larger than a dishcloth. 

The other idea I’ve been working on since this summer I’m also very excited about, is something completely unique.  I’ve spent many hours searching high and low all over the internet for patterns for this and I can’t find one.  So I’m staying completely quiet until I get more of it finished.  I’m really hoping that people will like this pattern because it is different.  Although it defininely will appeal only to a certain group of people.  Now if that isn’t vague enough to confuse the heck out of you, then I don’t know what!

Well, this could be it.  I don’t have a cloth ready.  It’s 8:30 at night and I don’t have one knitted, or even half knitted.  It is cast on with two rows done though.

I really don’t want to stop the challenge!!  But I don’t think I can keep up.

I really wanted to make it for at least 4 weeks.  But this is looking pretty bad because I ran out of anything and everything that was half prepared and I spent quite a while last night sketching out new designs and I don’t do too well with that part when I’m trying to rush it.

I’m going to give myself one day to see if I can get caught up for tomorrow.  But it’s going to be a rough day tomorrow.  The kids are off from school.

I know I still have to do the Weekly Drawing for last week.  I’ll have the kids home and they can help me tomorrow with the cutting and folding and picking out of the winner.

I’m sooooo sorry!!  I feel like I’m letting you all down!!!!

Thanks to everyone for the kind words about my headaches.  I’ve had migraines since childhood, I believe, but they weren’t diagnosed until I was in college.  I take a couple of medications for a couple of things with my head and recently I suggested to my doctor that maybe I could try a lower dose on one of them.  Well, that wasn’t one of my more brilliant ideas.  I was hoping to get off the the medicine but it looks like I won’t be and I have to go back to my regular dose.  So, that’s the story of why I’ve been feeling so awful lately.  I’ll get back to normal soon!

Here is the picture of the cloth that I added today:

A simple pattern of a pair of cherries still on the stem with a leaf attached.  I thought it would be good for a kitchen.  I’m going to try to get some more fruit and vegetable patterns done, but they are actually pretty difficult.  They generally end up looking like roundish lumps.  Maybe now that I have my seed stitch trick down, I can work out some better designs.

I’m off to bed.  I’m tired tonight because I was up early with my little guy and then we spent the morning at the soccer fields for the last games for my older two boys.  I’m so glad soccer is done!  We have a few weeks of breathing room before basketball starts up.  Just tonight I was working on trying to sketch out both a basketball and a soccer ball.  Much harder than I thought it would be!  We’ll see if I can get it to look the way I want it to.

Good night everyone!  Check back tomorrow for the Weekly Drawing to see who wins the patterns for the week.

I won’t go into a whole lot of details why, but I’ve been having a lot of troubles over the last several days with my headaches and so that has really put a crimp in my knitting plans.  I managed to finish the cloth today near dinnertime and was waiting impatiently all evening for it to finish drying after I blocked it.  I was very close to getting out the hair dryer but I really didn’t want to risk waking up the boys.  It finally dried enough to scan it without it looking blotchy.

I’ve had this idea for this cloth for a while.  It was either April of this year or last year that I thought of it, but I just never did anything about it.  I don’t know if anyone will actually like it well enough to purchase it, but I think it came out really nicely.  I’m very pleased with how it looks and I like it.  I was going to call it April Showers, but I thought a more general name of Rainy Day was better.

The Rainy Day pattern is available for purchase for $1.49 and can be found on the “New” page.  I suppose I should be saying it can be found there ‘for now’ or ‘for a while’, because if anyone stumbles upon this post in a couple of months, I will have moved it off of the New page and onto some more permanent spot.  Oh well, I’ll deal with that later.

I’m off to bed so I’ll be rested for more knitting tomorrow!!

Wow!  I really can’t believe that I’ve been at this for 19 days.  I know that some of you are probably wondering how long I intend to keep this up. I had always hoped to keep it going for 4 weeks.  I figured that would be a respectable length of time.  If I could last that long, then I thought I could bow out anytime after that.  Now I think that if I can go for 5 or even 6 weeks (ack! did I just type that?) that would be awesome.  If I can last 6 weeks, that will mean I’ve added 42 new patterns to my site! Forty-two!  That would increase the number of patterns that I have by almost 50%.  We’ll just see if I can make it that long.  This week was rough.  I don’t know if I can last another three weeks if they are all going to be day-to-day like this week.

This is the pattern that I added today.  It’s just a cute, whimsical cloth.  I had thought of the idea last year when the movie ‘Sex and the City’ was coming out.  And then I thought I would have it ready last month when the movie came out on DVD.  At least it’s finally ready now.

It’s just a cute strappy sandal.  Actually ‘strappy sandal’ probably would have been a better name than the cumbersome one that I came up with.  I’m really bad at naming my patterns.  My pattern names are strictly functional.  I always think of the cute ones later on after I’ve put them ‘out there’.  Oh well.  I suppose it makes it easier for people to find them.  This pattern is available for purchase for $1.49 and can be found on the “New” page.

I’ve got to get back to my knitting now, so I don’t fall behind!  Don’t forget to leave your comments to get entered into the weekly drawing.  You can comment once on each daily post to be entered each day.  Commenting every day increases your chances of winning.  Thanks to all my cheerleaders who are keeping me going!  I love reading your comments and I don’t want to fall behind because I feel like I would be letting you down.  Thanks!!

If I type fast, I just might squeeze this post in before noon, which will be a major accomplishment given that I’ve been posting near 11:00 pm the last several nights.

Here’s a picture of the pattern I just added to the website:

It’s a Christmas Stocking and the cloth that I was referring to in yesterday’s post.  It’s the last Holiday themed pattern that I have for now, although it’s always possible that I can design more.  Right now I have a bunch of just regular patterns planned; they don’t go along with any sort of holiday or seasonal theme.  I’m hoping to get a couple of them knitted up today so I can get back to having several patterns in reserve.  This working day-to-day is a little stressful!  As always, the Christmas Stocking pattern is available for purchase for $1.49 and can be found on the “New” page.

I’ve been knitting whenever I can and I managed to get about a cloth and a half knit today.  So I have a new one to add for today, one all set for tomorrow and I’m halfway finished knitting another cloth.  I’ve got a little breathing room for a couple of days at least.

Since I managed to get a cloth knit, blocked, dried, scanned and completely ready, I decided to give you a break from the Christmas theme for a day (we’ll be back to the Christmas theme tomorrow most likely) and I added a sports themed cloth today.  Here’s a picture:

Around our house we don’t do a whole lot of bowling, but when we do go, the boys have a blast.  Of course we have the buddy bumpers rolled into place and so we all get a little boost to our scores.  The pattern is available for purchase for $1.49 and can be be found on the “New” page.

Now that I’m a little caught up, I’m hoping to have tomorrow’s pattern added a little earlier in the day. Let’s hope that during tomorrow’s naptime I can get a pattern uploaded so I can get back to knitting!