I’ve been hung up for the last day or so in fixing up the “free” page where I have all the patterns available for free downloads, but I’ve gotten that completely straightened out. I’m using a great plugin called download monitor. It took me a day or so to figure out that I needed it, but once I found it, I was able to set up all the downloads in no time at all. Setting up the table on that page was a bit of a nightmare though, even though I was just copying the code from the other page.

I think I have the bones of the site set up and now I just have to spend some time on data entry. That shouldn’t take overly long. It’s just tedious. I’ve reclassified and recategorized many of the patterns to make them easier to find. The monthly system made sense before when I was releasing new patterns all the time and sticking to monthly themes. But now I’ve gotten most of the seasonal themes covered, and the new patterns I’m designing do not fit into that system. This new way will be much better.

I hope that in just another few days (or a week at most) I’ll have the whole site switched over. I’m so excited!

It’s not a mistake. I’m going to attempt a massive makeover of the entire Designs by Emily website. The first step will be getting the blog portion set up.

You will (I hope) begin to see a shopping cart set up in the blog. My goal is to integrate the entire shopping cart and blog into one site. Unfortunately, because of the way the site is set up, and because I am an amateur at web design (I barely know what I’m doing LOL), this whole thing will have to be done live. So if you keep checking back, you’ll get to see the changes to the site as they happen.

I do love the new look though! I hope you do too!

Every year for the last several years, Janet Nogle has gathered together patterns from dishcloth designers and has put together a wonderful calendar devoted mostly to dishcloths, and including other patterns for the home.

I was very pleased to contribute a pattern to this year’s calendar.  The pattern is called Diamond Panels Dishcloth and it is a bit different than anything else that I have designed before.  Here is a photo of it:

As you can see, I did not take this photo!  Anyone who knows my work, knows that I just slap the cloths on the scanner.  Janet is a complete wonder when it comes to photographing dishcloths and she did a fabulous job making my cloth look very fancy indeed!

This cloth is a little lacy, but simple.  It just has k2tog, SSK, and yo for the lace stitches.  So long as you are careful with your counting, you’ll be able to do it.  It also has a simple crochet border.

The 2010 Dishcloth Calendar is called Gifts from the Heart…Back to Basics.  It is available for purchase from this site:  www.dishclothcalendar.com.  You can purchase a digital copy to download for $16, or a printed copy to be mailed to you for $18 plus $5 shipping.

The calendar has an incredible number of patterns this year.  Many of the patterns are contained in sets, which will be perfect for gift giving. The Dishcloth Calendar this year also contains many patterns for the home besides dishcloths. There are sets with placemats and potholders, soap sacks, baby bibs and even a doggie/kitty bed!  So, head on over to www.dishclothcalendar.com and check it out!

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.

I’ve been working on designing one of my new projects and I’ve set my test knitters loose on the thing.  They are excited about it. But thank goodness for lots of testers because we’re still working out some of the important details like needle size, gauge and how much yarn.  It’s definitely different than a dishcloth so I’m not sure on some of those details.  Don’t expect to see it for a while yet though.  I’ve given them until after the holidays because it’s a bit bigger than a dishcloth and I know that we are entering into the craziest time of year!

I also need to get busy on designing a free pattern for December.  The 24th is rapidly approaching and the KAL will begin.  It would help if I had an idea!!  Don’t worry, I’ll think of something. 

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!!