So much to celebrate!

Three months ago today, I took the plunge and decided to start blogging. Imagine my surprise when I logged back in to find that someone I didn't know had actually read it.  And made a comment.  And decided to follow it (Hi, Beth!).  Beth had way more faith than I did at that point, but it was fun, so I kept coming back.

Let's take a quick look back at the last 90 days...

344 different folks have stopped by,
from 18 different countries,
in 1,129 visits.
They left 138 comments (Yay!).
20 of them even liked it enough to delare their follower-ship (-ness?)!

Really, I'm overwhelmed by all of it.  Thanks, guys!  You've made this journey really fun so far and I'm excited about carrying on and ramping up over the next few months.  I've learned more about my family in the last 3 months than in the last 30 years.  Tons about knitting, too.  Who knew?

And now, the moment we've all been waiting for...  (drum roll, please)... Avast is all knitted up.  And seamed.  And end-woven.  And gently soaking in a warm bath as we speak (we should all be so lucky!).  I'm still waiting for the zipper to arrive, since I needed a custom length.  Did you know that zipperstop will sell you any of their zippers in exactly the length you want for just $1 extra?  How awesome is that?  We put Mr. Right into his sweater and measured it that way, per Grumperina's very sensible instructions, and determined that a 27" zipper would be perfect.  It should be here early next week, in time to participate in FO Friday.

With all this free time, I was able to pick up my lovely lace vest again to find that I'd made some sort of epic mistake in the lace pattern.  I frogged it back to the ribbing and started over, and things are going much more swimmingly this time.  Here's what it looks like now:

And here's an even closer close up...



Not much, I admit, but the size 10.5 needles combined with no sleeves should make it go pretty quickly.  I hope.  Famous last words, right?

In honor of my 3-month-blog-iversary, and the fact that I've FINALLY finished knitting on Avast (!!), I'm proud to announce KnitandSeek's very first giveaway.  What might I be giving away, you ask?  Yarn, of course!  I have 2 skeins of soft and squishy, terra cotta-colored Pingoin Ligne Noir Angora, which is apparently discontinued.  It's lovely stuff and the color is awesome.  It's been carefully stored in my stash and is in pretty perfect shape.



Just leave a comment on this entry and one week from today I'll randomly pick a winner next Wednesday at WIPW v.15.  Easy peasy, right?  So go comment your little fingers off, and I'll happily ship this yummy yarn off, anywhere in the world, at the end of next week.

Anyway, hop over to Tami's blog and check out all of the other really amazing yarn art that's happening over there, and I'll see y'all on Friday.

Cheers!

Bird is the Word

I like Halloween a whole bunch.  Don't get me wrong, it doesn't hold a candle to Christmas as far as I'm concerned, but it's still a lot of fun.  This neighborhood we live in is totally packed with small children.  And every year, legions of them knock on our doors and demand candy (very politely).  They're so cute that it's hard not to oblige them.

Since Mr. Right and I live in the same neighborhood, but not the same house, we bounce back and forth from year to year.  This year we did his house, and left a sign on my door that said:

We're at (Mr. Right's address)
Come over and say the Secret Password
For an extra treat.
The password is...
BOOGER!

I can't tell you how much fun it is to answer the door and have cutely costumed little kids yelling, "Booger!" at you.  Pretty awesome, that.  And special thanks to our friend A for coming up with the password on the fly. 

For several years now, I've had a copy of Martha Stewart's Halloween magazine (I think it might be from 2005) that featured these really cool backlit bird silhouettes as window decorations.  I had all of the required materials, but was really intimidated by the instructions, so much so that every year I'd haul it out, look at all of it and put it away.  But this year, we finally took the plunge.

The instructions have a grid (about 2" x 3") with a bird design printed in the magazine.  The idea is for you to recreate the grid at a much larger scale, then draw the design one block at a time.  Right.  I am a lousy drawer (one who draws, not what you pull out of your dresser... is that even a word?), so this part left me kind of skeptical.  But I figured now or never, so we pressed on.

I enlisted Mr. Right and A to make 6" x 6" grid patterns on black weed blocker material (they're engineers -- this is their wheelhouse), while I knelt on the kitchen floor and drew birds.  For 2 1/2 hours.  On hardwood.  Owwie.  I'm sporting some serious bruises on my knee bones, but it was totally worth it.

We didn't finish until about 6 o'clock, but I'm super happy with the way it turned out.  We also scanned, enlarged and printed and cut out giant bird footprints which we glued to the driveway and porch leading up to the window.

In all the crafty frenzy, we totally forgot to carve our pumpkins. Talk about lame.  Fortunately, I had a couple of fake, plug-in jack-o-lanterns that did the trick.  And now we have pumpkins for Thanksgiving decorations.  Bonus!

In addition to candy, we handed out trick-or-treat packs of play-doh that were a huge hit with the neighborhood kids.  Parents thought they were pretty cool, too.  And it turns out that Mr. Right is also a fan of the play-doh.  Who knew he was such an artiste!

And now, I'm headed off to ice my knees...

I'm a cover girl!

If you don't know me in real life, you probably don't know that I'm a children's book editor.  I used to work on staff developing and writing books for a pretty big publisher.  I loved it.  Now I work on staff editing and writing picture books for a small publisher.  I love that too.

In the course of my job, I've written about a dozen books.  Some of them have sold a zillion copies and done really well.  Others, not so much.  All of them have one thing in common:  They either have someone else's name on the cover, or no name on the cover.  Until now...

Coming this Fall to a bookstore near you!  How cool is this?  No links for you though, since no one at work knows I blog and I'm not overly anxious to advertise it.  But, you can click on over to Amazon and type in the title (use my name or the illustrator's name along with it, otherwise you'll get some eye-opening results), you can see it in all its pre-order-able glory. 

Really, I can't take much credit for this, since the super-cool concept and the amazing artwork both belong to the illustrator.  The words definitely take a backseat in this book, and that's fine by me.  I'm just excited to finally see my name in lights!

Happy Friday, everyone!