First post on the new site!!

By Megan Goodacre

First post on the new site!!

I am loving this new system!

This week has been Full On. Charles looked a wee bit worn out yesterday. But a little red wine, a little Downton (poor Mary, you uppity minx), and we're recharged.

Before I begin my post, a few housekeeping matters (ugh, housekeeping):

Thank you to everyone who dutifully logged in and updated their profiles, you rock. And thank you to everyone who let us know about technical glitches along the way, you also rock.

Considering that we had thousands of emails going out and thousands of members logging in and downloading patterns, the launch went incredibly smoothly. Thank you Charles.

If you are using an iPad Mini, you may have noticed that the font was a bit small. We have since bumped up the font size for small, but high resolution, screens. This should help a lot.

Are you wondering how to save a chart? Go to My Charts. Click on the chart to view it, then right click (or control click) on the chart to save the png file.

 

And now on to the fun stuff!

I hope you are enjoying the new ebooklet. After producing all that material for the Idiot's Guide to Knitting, I wanted to go beyond patterns and try combining tutorials with patterns. Knitting has become technically sophisticated: short rows, seamless knitting, lace knitting, steeking, top-down, bottom-up, inside out and backwards. I remember when knitting was cast on, knit, purl, knit 2 together, cast off. That was all I knew for a long long time. All this sophistication means that most patterns are going to challenge you, and it's nice to have a guide when you're being challenged.

I'd like to use this post to officially thank all the lovely test knitters who worked so hard with me on the booklet. They have the sharpest eyes (and needles); I couldn't have done it without them. They are: guarionex, Amycat, mizcue, bhavanastephen, hooknneedler, isa1950, relaxtricot, knitgrl, ConucopiAmy, lazylibran, momof2winsplus, Cartucha, AnnaM, earthmom23, lynx-ical, nflux888, olive2, cmuralidhara, dpecg, dashuta, BradleyAnn1, yarnedaround, mamma5, sowmyakrishna, ftmhling, and theknitmarie.

Thank you also to Knit Picks, who provided the 2 skeins of Stroll Tonal used in the samples.

And I'm going to do a draw for a small prize ($20 to a lucky tester to spend on yarn or chocolates) right here on the site.

Here we go, I'm putting them into a randomizer at www.miniwebtool.com. (You can't see me, but I actually am doing this at this very moment.)

Sound of drum roll. Or rather, sound of my clicking on "Pick a Random Name"....

And the winner is:

momof2winsplus!

Hurrah! Momof2winsplus made the black lace 100% cashmere New Oaklet, very decadent.

Let's end the post with a few project photos (and there are many more on Ravelry, all beautiful).

amycatGarterShawlmomof2winsplusOakletDetail guarionexGarterShawlAnnaMOakletShawl