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What\’s on the needles?

On the needles….

I know that I\’ve been fairly quiet lately. I started a new full time job after Thanksgiving and that\’s been a bit of an adjustment. It\’s been quite a while since I\’ve been teaching full time (over 9 years actually!) but I love my new job and I\’m settling in.

I\’ve started knitting up some new  dishcloth patterns and I have a bunch that are almost ready to add to the website and a lot more that are just waiting to be knitted up. I have to block some of the dishcloths I\’ve knitted and take photos of others. I may have to resort to my old method of scanning the cloths for now, but I will take some decent pictures at some point as well.

I haven\’t done a full count, but I think I have 7 or 8 new designs about ready to add to the site. I\’ve been a little unorganized lately and I have to track them all down on the mess that my desk has become. For those that know me, you wouldn\’t recognize my desk! I\’m never as unorganized as this!

The mailing list….

For those of you who don\’t know about it, I have a new mailing list. I have signed up with MailChimp to handle my mailing list and I LOVE them! It is so easy to use and it is easy for people to subscribe or unsubscribe (I hope you don\’t want to!) at will.

You might want to sign up for the mailing list if you haven\’t. I don\’t email out very much and I\’ve been considering setting up a Spring Fever sale – I am so tired of all this snow! If I run a sale that\’s the only time I\’ll send out a few more emails than usual (a couple a week versus almost none the rest of the time). You\’ll be notified if I add any new patterns to the website, when I put patterns on sale and you\’ll get exclusive coupon codes good for the website to take additional percentages off on your purchase.

You can sign up on the mailing list to the right of this post ———–> where it says \”Newsletter Signup\”. Your email is all that is required, but if you enter in your name then your emails will come to you as Dear____ with your name filled in. 🙂 Fancy, right? I love new toys. And of course I will reassure you that I would NEVER sell, rent, share, or give away your name or email address to anyone. I hate spam just as much as you do.

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Eight new patterns plus a free one!

I promised you new patterns on June 1st and I just managed to get them all added before the end of the day here. I\’ve added eight new patterns into the store and one onto the free page.

I\’ll let you know about the Free Pattern of the Month first, since I\’m sure that\’s the one you\’re all interested in.

Here\’s a quick peek at it:

[download id=\”21\”]

This is a rather cute – I think – little snail. I thought that everyone might like him here at the beginning of the summer as you\’re getting ready to plant your gardens. We put our garden in this past weekend. Maybe knitting a snail will keep the little critters away from your garden! You can download this for Free by clicking on the picture above or by going to the Free page.

Here are some peeks at the other patterns that I added this evening. They are available to purchase for $1.49 each. You can find them all listed on the New Patterns category page.

\"\" Party Hat Dishcloth

\"\" Teapot Dishcloth

\"\" Ambulance Dishcloth

\"\" Dove #2 Dishcloth

\"\" Eighth Note Dishcloth

\"\" Sixteenth Note Dishcloth

\"\" Piano Keys #2 Dishcloth

\"\" Baritone or Tuba Dishcloth

I hope you enjoy these new patterns!

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Surprise coming along on June 1st

I\’ve been knitting like crazy for the last several days. I\’ve knit 10 new cloths in about 4 days. My fingers are tired!

But I know that you are going to love the new designs! And I have a great surprise for you. One of the new cloths will be added as the Free Pattern of the Month.

I\’m so excited to revive my tradition of giving away a new pattern each month. I know that I\’m probably setting myself up for a bit of craziness announcing it out like this, but I love being able to have the Free Pattern of the Month.

For this month, I\’m just going to post it on June 1st. Believe it or not, the pattern is actually already written and typed, tested and blocked; I just have to photograph it. I\’m just going to tease you about it for these couple of days. But my goal is to get back into doing the monthly KALs that I once did to launch the free patterns. We\’ll see if I actually make it that far. It\’s always an adventure around here!

Check back in a couple of days to find out what the free pattern will be. I think you\’ll like the picture. He\’s just a cute little guy going along on his way. No more hints though…you\’ll have to wait to find out!

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New Patterns – Finally!

I know that I\’ve been promising new patterns for quite a while, but I finally have a small handful to add to the site.

When I first started designing dishcloths, my youngest son was an infant and I had all the time in the world to knit while my older two boys were in school. Now that my youngest son is 3 1/2, designing and knitting time is rare. So I may be a lot slower than I used to be at adding patterns to the site and they may come in smaller bunches, but I\’m trying to get more patterns out there for you.

As I mentioned, I\’ve been working on a musical theme. I\’ve got four patterns ready right now and have about five more that are still being worked on. Here are some pictures of the four patterns that have just been added to the site:

\"\"Double Eighth Note Dishcloth

\"\" Trumpet Dishcloth

\"\" Piano Keys Dishcloth

\"\" Treble Clef Dishcloth

Each of these patterns are designed with a garter stitch design on a stockinette background and are 37 stitches across and 55 rows tall.  They would be wonderful for a music lover stitched together in an afghan, or gifted as a set of dishcloths.

I hope you enjoy these new patterns and I hope to have more musical patterns added soon!

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Test Knitting Craziness

The last several days have begun the test knitting craziness.

I started my test knitters on whipping up the first batch of dishcloths. And as usual, there are already mistakes to fix and designs to correct. But I think by early next week I\’ll have a nice new set of Musical themed dishcloths to add to the website.

The Spring sale that has been going on for the last month or so will be ending soon! If you\’ve been eying some of those Springy patterns that are on sale, now is the time to grab them. I\’ll run the Sale through Friday, and then the patterns will go back to regular price.

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Lots of new patterns coming soon

Today is a typing day!

I\’ve been super busy designing lots of new patterns. There will be a handful of music-themed patterns, a few more animals, and a couple of party patterns just to name some.

But when you do this much designing, eventually you have to type them up. So today I have to type up EIGHTEEN patterns!! Yes, that\’s right. Eighteen new patterns are coming. I should add a little side note — I\’ll have all of them provided they all look good once they are knitted up. You never know exactly how they are going to look until they have been knit.

This next week will be a knitting week!

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News this week

The newly designed site has been up and running for a week now and I have to say that I\’m so pleased with how things are working out. The new shopping cart is working well and I haven\’t had any complaints yet!

I\’ve been hard at work designing a big pile of new patterns. I have had a pile of designs that have been in half finished states for a long time.  Some of them have been nearly finished for over a year! One of them has been half test knitted and still on the needles for that long. I don\’t even know where it is. I\’ve spent the week sorting them out, getting them all into some state of organization and then realized I had quite a large pile of designs that were nearly done. I might need to call on some test knitters soon!

I\’ve also been spending a significant amount of time working to redesign the Dishcloth Calendar website. I not only contributed a pattern to this year\’s Calendar, but I help out Janet by maintaining the website. I love this new shopping cart that I\’m using on my website that I want to switch over the Calendar website as well. And at the same time I\’m trying to design a funky new look for it too.  We\’ll see what I can come up with. If you haven\’t checked out the Dishcloth Calendar, you might want to head over to the site and take a peek. It\’s a wonderful collection of dishcloth patterns. We\’re already beginning to think about the calendar for next year!

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On Sale!

Check out the Sale! category for the patterns currently on sale. I\’ve marked several patterns down from their usual price of $1.49 to a bargain price of $0.99. Get them while you can before the price goes back up!

Since we\’ve had so much snow lately where I am, I wanted to look forward to Spring. I\’ve put a selection of Spring related patterns on sale. I picked some flower patterns and some of my favorite Springy patterns to help banish these Winter blues.

In designing news, now that I\’ve gotten the website up and running and all the bugs worked out (fingers crossed!), I can get back to designing new patterns. I\’m currently working on a series of music related patterns. First up will be a series of music notes, followed by a series of musical instruments. It\’s been a long time since I\’ve worked on any new patterns and I\’m really enjoying it. I hope you\’ll like them once they come out.

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Welcome to the NEW Designs by Emily

Welcome to the new Designs by Emily!

I have been working on making many changes to the site for the past week or so. You will find all of my patterns here; they have been re-categorized and tagged to make them easier to find. I also have a slightly different web address: both designs-by-emily.com and designsbyemily.com will work now.

One of the biggest changes is that my blog now shows up on the front page. This way I can make announcements and show off new patterns and customers won\’t have to go digging for that information. Other new features to the shopping cart are the ability to put items on sale and a more streamlined checkout process. The download page keeps a record of all your downloads and how many times you have left available to download.

I\’m very pleased with the changes to the site and I hope you will be too!

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A New Look

You may have noticed that my blog has suddenly gotten a new look.

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!

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2010 Dishcloth Calendar

I am very excited to announce that the newest Dishcloth Calendar has been released for sale today!!

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:

\"Diamond

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!

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What's going on over here?

Well, not a lot of knitting, that\’s for sure!

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.

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Whew!

This has been one awful and crazy month for me.

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 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)!

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Now I know I promised I'd write…

But I just had to take a little break after the Challenge.  On top of all that, it took me about most the week last week to get my head under control. You all are so nice to ask about my headaches.  I\’ve finally gotten them back under control and I hope they stay that way.  I\’ve learned my lesson and I will not convince my doctor that I will be fine on a lower dose.  Really.  What was I thinking?

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. 

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The Weekly Winner…

I\’ve drawn out the name of our lucky winner for week three!  I could draw out the suspense by writing about some new cloth that I\’m working on, except that I\’ve barely been knitting for the last couple of days.  I\’ve been working on the same cloth for this whole time.  I really just needed to take a break.

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!