And the winner is...

Jeanne from Life in Cleveland!

She has been notified by email, and will receive her gift certificate to wherever she wants.

Thanks for playing, everyone! I got a ton of great patterns!

Spring goals

I've been getting awesome baby pattern suggestions for my contest -- keep 'em coming, guys! You still have a week left! Some of your suggestions have already made their way into my Ravelry queue.

Speaking of contests, Ali is having one of her world-famous goals contests. So in an effort to get organized, I figured I'd enter and post my goals here for all to see. Maybe that'll keep me motivated?

As far as knitting goes, I need to:

1. Finish Burridge by April 5th for my BIL's birthday
2. Finish the pajama teddy (even if it's without a robe for the time being) by March 30th
3. Knit my mom's jacket by Mother's Day
4. Knit something for Warm Woolies, because I can, and because I can't stand the fact that there are freezing children out there when I have tubs full of wool
5. Write up patterns for the green striped sweater and Ricky's sweater (I have to write up this one, because L will kill me otherwise)
6. Knit up a super-secret project!
7. Finish an outstanding UFO -- Lucky, maybe? Or maybe Mystery stole?

It doesn't sound like alot, does it? Well, consider my real-life goals:

1. Finish my dissertation by April 4th
2. Have a committee meeting to decide what's wrong with my dissertation
3. Defend my dissertation by the end of April
4. Correct and submit my dissertation by May 9th
5. Finish experiments and submit my paper
6. Find and interview for jobs
7. Pack up the house
8. Find a place to live
9. Move
10. Go visit my family sometime in there
11. Spend as much time with my Chicago friends as I can before I leave

What are your goals like? Better yet, don't tell me here -- go enter in the contest!

Contest!!!

Nearly two years ago, my blog was born. To celebrate, I'm having my first-ever contest!

Getting straight to business:

What you have to do:

I don't know if you've noticed, but it's been a while since I knit any baby or kids items. And by "a while," I mean, of course, three months. So, my wish for you, dear readers is to suggest for me my next baby/kid knitting project in the comments to this post. Easy, right?

It really is. But read the details below, please.

-I will choose the winner by random draw. That means that I do NOT have to pick the pattern you suggested for my next project. So you don't have to be a psychic :)

-Any pattern, for anything for a baby/toddler/child, aged 0-14 years, and either boy or girl, is fine by me. For some reason, there are tons of kids in my life at all times.

-Sweaters, pants, dresses, socks, mittens, toys, blankets, etc. are all welcome. What I do NOT want is hats. I don't like hats. Hats bore me, both to look at and to make. Please don't suggest hats. Literally everything else is fine.

-No hats.

-The pattern can be available online or in print, free or not. I prefer that the pattern were NOT out of a magazine, though, because back issues are a pain to track down, and please no patterns that are not available without a kit.

-In your comment, please provide a link to the pattern. Either a link directly to the pattern (if it's online) or to its Ravelry page is ok. If the pattern is from a book and, thus, has no direct link, and you do not have a Ravelry account, please provide as much information as possible about the pattern so I can look it up on Ravelry.

-If you've been a regular commenter on my blog (i.e., I've seen you comment before), I'll enter your name into the contest twice. Because I love you :)

-If I absolutely LOVE your pattern and add it to my to-make-in-the-near-future list, I'll enter your name into the contest twice, too (if you're a regular reader, you get yet another extra entry).

-You MUST leave some sort of way for me to contact you. Email, a link to your blog where I can post a comment for you, Ravelry name, something. If I have no way of contacting you right away, I'll pick another winner. Because I'm mean like that.

Deadline: You have until 11:59pm on March 26th to get your entry in. I'll announce the winner on my blogaversary, March 27th.

How the winner is chosen:

I'll determine the winner by random draw. I'll toss everyone's names into a hat and pick (or have one of my nieces pick). I'll notify the winner and post her/his name here on that day, barring some sort of disaster.

The prize!

This is what you really want to hear about, isn't it? Well, I thought long and hard about what my prize should be. I, personally, prefer prizes of yarn. But what kind of yarn? The stuff I have on hand...well, most of you wouldn't want it. Buying a prize yarn involves going to the LYS, which isn't feasible with my always-hectic schedule (and is dangerous, anyway). Plus, not everyone will like the same yarn, and I want everyone to be thrilled with their prize.

So, instead of having a regular prize, I decided to give away a $25 gift certificate to the yarn store of your choosing (provided that I can purchase the cert online). So Knitpicks, Elann, WEBS, Kpixie, or your favorite LYS-with-a-website is fair game. I'll even get you a card for eBay or Amazon.com, if you'd prefer.

So, go ye forth and find me your favorite kid patterns. Enjoy!

Duplicate duplicate stitch stitch

That's what's been consuming my life.

Having finished and seamed together the big panels of Burridge Lake, I realized that, hey, I still have a bit of time left for this one. I also realized that, hey, my best friend's birthday is coming up, at right around the same time as it happened last year (funny how that works, right?). And I still hadn't finished her teddy bear that I started last year at around this time.

Bad, bad Dove.

So I dug up the pieces of the teddy bear's pajamas, and saw that I actually finished knitting both the top and the bottom to the PJs, except the little pockets. So I seamed them up and started on the duplicate stitch on the pants -- they're plaid PJs, see.

And I spent days on this. Each stripe would take me about 30 minutes to do. But I finally did them all. Only to realize I wasn't happy with them, at all.

So I ripped one stripe out, and tried crocheting a line instead, poking the hook down into the underside of the fabric to bring up the yarn and pass it through the loop. Muuuch better! Slimmer, neater, quicker lines.



The bottom stripe is duplicate; the top two are crocheted. Big difference, right?

So now I'm busy ripping alllll those stripes out. Every. Single. One. Because even though I'm not at all a perfectionist, I just couldn't live with this thing.

Fortunately, the crocheting goes aloooot faster.

I still have to knit the fronts of the robe. And then all those ends to weave it.