Behind the scenes stuff

This blog is currently hosted on wordpress.com, though I’ve got my own URL on top of it so you don’t see that part. Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll be moving the whole thing to Dreamhost so I have more control over the backend (for good or ill).

If you have an email or RSS subscription, or if you use the WordPress reader, I don’t know what’s going to change; I need to look into that. I’ll post about how to get new blog post notifications when I know more, but before I move the blog.

If you visit this blog from links starting with gannetdesigns.com (for instance, if you follow my twitter account or come here from Stitch-Maps.com), nothing should change for you because I’ll be moving the URL to the new blog as well as the posts.

Either way, I’ve enjoyed the last dozen years of blogging, and am looking forward to what’s next!

Administrative update

My patterns are no longer available for sale on Ravelry, but they can be purchased on either Payhip or Gumroad. This page on my blog has a complete list.

One of my next projects is to use the tutorials that Sarah Bradberry posted to make the CSS on my Payhip shop as much more accessible as possible for the moment. Furthermore, she’s asked them to make the site more accessible and they were quite positive in their reply. That’s good news!

More later!

Accessibility considerations

The whole debacle around the increased inaccessibility of the new Ravelry site design has been a reminder to me to make sure my blog and patterns are as accessible as I can make them.

So here’s what I have been doing already and will be doing to make my work more accessible.

Patterns available on Gumroad

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here, but I’m pretty disappointed in the way the Ravelry team has handled the recent redesign. I’ve copied the patterns I’m currently selling over to Gumroad. (You can still buy them on Ravelry if you want.)

Here they are!

Added bonus: Gumroad lets me set a minimum price and a suggested price for a pattern, but you can choose how much to pay (so long as the minimum is met).

Blog slowdown

I find myself with a lot of writing and design projects I want to finish quickly, so I’m going to take the next month or so easy as far as blog posts, aside from my Patreon stitch patterns.

One of the design projects is a fundraiser shawl, and I think I’ll try to share my progress with that on a weekly basis, as there’s no reason to keep it secret. Here’s how things are going so far!

Yarn is BC Garn Bio Shetland.

Mosaic stitch pattern is Help, encoded.

The fundraiser might change in the future, but for the foreseeable future, money will be split between RAICES and a local immigrant justice group (I need to do the research on that one).

About my stitches based on words

I am sometimes asked how to see the words in my stitches. The answer is that they aren’t directly visible, because of how my design process works. My goal is not to make something that looks like the original word; rather, it is to make a stitch pattern I enjoy looking at.

Two things: another texture post and a Patreon thing

I’ve been watching the numbers on my next Patreon goal with excitement – if I can get up to $75 a month income, I’m going to start making a second stitch pattern from my Patreon words each month. If you can support me at a dollar a month, you can help make this happen! Only thirteen dollars to go. (And I have some ideas percolating for some new goals after that which I think you’ll like.) Here is my Patreon page.

I talked a couple of weeks ago about wanting to share more swatches of the kinds of stitch patterns my needlework charts can be turned into. The swatch I’ve posted today is the result of taking the Mountain needlework chart, turning it sideways, and making a k/p stitch pattern from it. Each black square is purled on the right side and knit on the wrong side, and each white square is knit on the right side and purled on the wrong side.

Open thread

Right, I think it’s time to admit that I’m at a loss for ideas for what to blog about outside of my monthly Patreon stitch and one or maybe two other stitch patterns a month. I can’t do more free stitch patterns than that or it cuts into the work I’m trying to get done to sell. The frustrating thing is that I like blogging weekly; it usually helps me keep moving.

This week I’m going to open up the floor for questions – what would you like to see me blog about? (No guarantees that I will…) Are there any of my blog posts I should expand upon or explain further?

…I need to finish up the secret code rewrite, I know.

Six years and counting

The other day, WordPress reminded me that I’ve been using their blog service for six years now, and so I decided that I’d look back and take a rough inventory of what I’ve done here. While I’ve been doing casual yarn-and-art related blogging since then, I’ve really only been blogging on a regular basis for four and a half years, and most of that time has been spent on knit-blogging.

I have published sixteen patterns in those six years, most of which still make me happy. I’ve usually written at least one blog post in a week since 2013; more than fifty of those are about knitting and design techniques, some of which I’ve come up with on my own (though I’m sure other knitters have come up with at least some of them independently). I’ve talked a lot about my secret code methods, and I’ve posted more than 120 original stitch patterns. That’s… kind of a lot.

I started a Patreon three years ago, and it’s been growing slowly but surely—thank you! I’ve also added a tip jar, and am more grateful than I can say that people have used it. I didn’t know what to expect in that regard, really, but it seemed worth trying.

My blog readership has grown a lot. I never thought I’d see this many visitors in a year! I’m really gratified by how many people are interested in my work these days, and it encourages me to keep going.

There are some interesting things in the works around here, and I hope they’ll make you as happy as they do me.

Thank you for a good six years, and I hope to see you around here for many more!

Catching up

I just wanted to let you know that my Post Index is up to date for the first time in a while. Huzzah!