Yay!

We did it!  There's now 50 official followers!
When I first started this blog, I thought I'd have a few readers, local friends and family, some fellow knitters from about.com's knitting forum.  This was in the pre-Ravelry and pre-Facebook days.  I used the blog as a way to journal my family's life, alongside my love of knitting.  Mainly, I was going insane looking after three young kids, two with special needs, while trying to maintain a little piece of my original self.  I always loved to journal, and to write, and to photograph, so a blog seemed like a good idea.

Over the past couple of years, I've wondered where my readers are.  Did I still have readers?  When Blogger introduced the Stats info, it was re-assuring to know that indeed, people were reading my posts, but how many were regular readers, and how many came just because they had googled something?  Comments have been WAY down in the past couple years.  It's like, now that there are the Stats, and the Followers lists, people don't feel the need to make their presence known through the comments.  But without feedback, it gets very lonely here.  I know I've got a good number of visitors, but how many of you visit with me on a regular basis? 

For the give away, let me know how you found yourself here!  Do you have a favourite post?  Is there something you'd like to see more of?  I'll make the random draw on Friday.

My most popular post is the one on the machine knit baby cocoon.  It's had over 2300 visits (and yes, I suppose some of those were from me when I'd look up the post so I could give the link to someone else LOL).  The next most popular one is about learning the ribber on the Singer 327.  Machine knitting blogs are not very popular, and I love being one of the few regular posters about MKing.  I'll never come close to Diana Sullivan's expertise, but I enjoy sharing my experiences as a new MKer, and letting others know that it is totally normal to have one session be awesome and inspiring, and the next session involves getting your face whipped with the antennae, yarn wrapped around the brushes, and the whole work falling off.  LOL.

And for today's new content: 

These are MK hats, my "I Love This Hat" pattern (don't go looking for it today, I'm re-writing the instructions, but if you really want it this week, leave me a comment).  I was going to supply the MK group with the pattern and help anyone who wanted to work on it.  So, I needed to work the pattern again, to see if it needed improving.  First thing I did was sit down at the LK150 and read tension T4* or T4** for a larger size.  I thought, that's dumb, there is no ** on the LK150, just whole numbers and the *.  As soon as I started, I thought, there's no way I knit this at T4, that's way too tight.  At some point, I realized that I wrote the instructions for the SK155; a bulky gauge.  Well, despite getting the same gauge, this hat (the green one on the left) is like a pre-schooler's size.  It's in Patons Decor, and used 104gr--but only one ball, despite the balls being 100gr!

I remembered I had a ball of Bernat Mosaics in my stash.  I had picked it up at Value Village and knew from the weight of it that there'd be A knot, somewhere.  Well.  There was way more than A knot :(  For this hat, I short rowed down to 8 sts on one side and 9 on the other side, to add one more row per wedge.  This also meant each wedge started at opposite sides.  I'm not sure if that would work with two colours.  However, I think I prefer this hat in the self striping yarn rather than two colours.  This one is a smidge big on me.  I think if I had knit it at T6 instead of T6* that it would fit well.  I love that yarn.  It weighs 130grams.

I think I'll leave fessing up to buying yarn till the next post.  It's already rainy and a Monday, LOL.

Yarn In:  17 741gr
Yarn Out:  104gr + 130gr + 14 340gr = 14 574gr
Balance:  3167 more yarn brought IN than used up
Costs:  $420.20/309 days= $1.36/day