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)!

First, I finished the January mid-month KAL. I ran out of yarn about 4 rows from the end and had in my stash another ball of the same color but a different dye lot. It looked the same to me (and since it’s only a dishcloth) I figured it wouldn’t matter.

Well, it does.

A lot.

You can’t tell so much in this picture (if you look really closely you can somewhat tell that the top rows are different), but when I dampened the cloth for a light blocking, it was glaringly apparent. Thank goodness it’s just a dishcloth for me and not a gift to give away.

I was a bit disappointed by this cloth. I was super excited to try out a cable pattern — my first ever. After I got a few rows into it, I realized it wasn’t a “traditional” cable pattern. One side of each cable is done in a garter stitich while the other side is stockinette. It really doesn’t make the cables “pop” too well.

So, I took it upon myself to try again. I designed this cloth and knit it up today. It’s just a simple three cable design like the KAL, but without the garter stitch. And I changed the width of the cables. I felt that crossing over four stitches was pulling at the cotton too hard. So I dropped it down to three. I just finished it tonight and didn’t even block it a bit, but it still looks pretty good.

Not too bad for my first attempt at “real” cables and I didn’t even have a pattern. I’m really pleased and I love how easy cables are. It makes me feel like an experienced knitter.

The next two pictures are my latest patterns that I’ve finished for Designs by Emily. I meant to upload them the other day but I forgot. In keeping with the “Winter Theme” they are a pair of mittens and a winter hat.