Well That WAS The Plan

So I was looking at the number of hits to my blog sometime last week and it was around 39,800. More or less. And I thought to myself, "Self, you haven't had a contest lately, you should have a contest for hitting 40,000." This seemed like a very fine plan because I do like to give stuff away.

Then this past Sunday and Monday I started getting blog e-mails asking me about my Eyelet Lace Beanie, which is a free pattern on Knitting Pattern Central. Oh well, maybe Venus had aligned with Mars or something. Whatever. But then tonight I was sitting at the yarn store and my friend, Singing Carol, came up to me and said, "Congratulations!" I sort of looked at her and said, "Umm, for what?" And that's how I found out that my Eyelet Lace Beanie had been the Pattern of the Day on the Daily Knitter on October 26th. Go figure. So I guess we'll have that giveaway at 45,000 cuz we've kinda passed 40.

In other knitting news, here is a No Purl Monkey in Aracaunia Ranco Multy. It's a sample for the store. I must say that that No Purl Monkey pattern kicks some serious butt. Dead easy to memorize and looks nice with variegated yarn. And no purling. HALLELUJAH. Please excuse the cat.

Last year I was quite taken with the Maine Morning Mitts pattern. In fact, I may have made more than one pair. A month or so ago, I bought some Brown Sheep Lanaloft in a very dark green color. It seemed to me that a textured stitch or cabling was going to get lost which made me think why not Maine Morning Mitts, they're simple. But the color looked more like a guy color than a girl. No problem, I would just change the pattern "a little." There didn't seem to be a lot of male fingerless mitts patterns around anyway.

Tonight I compared my pattern with the pattern for the MMM's. Well the number of stitches cast on is different. The thumb is different. The rib pattern is different. The cast off is different. I guess we'll call these the "California Morning Mitts" and go with that. These will fit up to a 9" inch hand, not including thumb. Pattern to appear soon.