5-year draw results!

Hello all: thanks very much to all 24 people who commented on the 5-year-anniversary entry! So good to read all the positive things people have done and made, particularly at a time of year where it's easy to be dull and gloomy

And sorry for being a very crap blogger over the last couple of weeks. Work has been really busy, I've been knitting away like mad over a Christmas present which is routinely kicking my arse (can't show you as the recipient reads this), and on the rare occasions I've been home it's been much more tempting to curl up in front of the wood stove in the dining room with knitting and a good book than venture out to the living room to blog...

Some knitting has been done though - and it's been received so I can show you. These are for Baby Eliza (I blogged about hearing about her arrival while SusieH and I were in Norwich Cathedral).



One baby blanket (the Chalice pattern by Lykkefanten) in James Brett Marble. E's big brother got the "heirloom" type one so this time I was going for washable, practical, soft and likely to get used over the winter. And the same consideration came into play with these three burp/dribble-cloths. No point in not having pretty ones, though!



OK - back to the comments draw.

The winner in the random number generator is Comment #11 by wuthering_alice (AKA Steph - you can't fool me with your clever Victorian wiles, my dear...) Congrats, Steph! PM me on Ravelry with your address, or use the link in my profile to send me an e-mail, and a packet of goodies will be winging its way to you in the next few days.

The winner in the completely non-impartial "comment I liked" is Valerie, who pointed out very sensibly that it's better to make as much time as you can for an activity rather than whining that you haven't time; but accept you're never going to do everything you want to all at once! I might know you in real life, Valerie (and your freeform stuff sounds very intriguing) but I don't think I know how to contact you online. If you're on Ravelry, I'm greensideknits - drop me a PM with your postal address - and if not, my e-mail address is in my profile (button on the top right of the blog).

I've foolishly signed up for NaBloPoMo again this November, so will definitely get round to telling you about my personal bests then.

Five; and a giveaway...

Well, it's five years today since I opened my Blogger account, and 505 posts down the road, here I still am. I didn't put up my first post for a few days, so it's not quite my full five-year anniversary, but I'm at home today on a day's holiday so I thought I'd celebrate early, having spent the morning fiddling with the template.

I thought the blog needed a bit of a freshen-up for its birthday though - so I've stripped the Victorian wallpaper and gone for a cleaner look. Let me know if you like it!

I've done some stuff I never thought I would over the last five years; I've gained friends, and even family (3 little ones to knit for this Christmas!). I've met some wonderful knitters both online and in real life, gone to some excellent and/or interesting events, visited Venice, and Canada, and Vienna (which weirdly, I really didn't blog despite taking huge numbers of photos - here's the Flickr set though!).

I've also changed jobs for one which is both much more fun and much more structured, and where I'm finally using my qualifications fully; I've become a commuter, and Establishment, and have surprisingly found I enjoy both of those things. I've overhauled my garden (the back bedroom is next on the list) and learned to spin yarn which is actually knittable (more on that later, I hope).

Anyway, five years is a long time; and as with all these things, deserves some sort of contest/giveaway thing, to thank you for reading, and for continuing to read, particularly when I'm just maundering on about my garden, or showing you the next foot of unblocked lace in a big heap with a cat sitting on top of it.

So, please add a comment to this post before the end of October 30, telling me about the best thing you've made in the last five years. It might be a sweater, a baby, a pie, a decision... I'll use the random number generator to choose one prize, and give the other one to my personal favourite comment. The prizes are secret (largely because I don't know what they are yet) but will be yarn-related and fun.

Over the next few days I'll blog about two or three of the best things I've made over that time, too.

BEST foot forward - competition results

Thanks to the 8 people who put in estimates/guesstimates for the end-of-year competition; there was a good span of guesses, none of which were wildly off! I do really appreciate people putting in their entries, and commenting, and generally making me feel as if I'm not wittering madly into a void. And I've been stash-diving and am reluctantly parting with a couple of prize items...

On the number of projects knitted:
Actual number: 50
Best guess: 51, by Yvonne. Well done! I'll wait until I see you at IKL sometime - Thursday, maybe?


For anyone interested, and because I hadn't worked this out before, this breaks down as :
8 lace shawls/stoles/scarves
7 children's garments
7 pairs of socks
5 cowls
5 sweaters/cardigans
4 non-lace scarves
3 potholders (crochet!!)
3 washcloths
2 hats
1 baby blanket
1 bag
1 Christmas stocking
1 cushion
1 pair of mittens
1 tea cosy
and 0 partridges in pear trees, although I'm sure the extraordinarily clever Alan Dart has a pattern in development...

Yvonne wins two skeins of CTH Potluck Worsted (4 oz and 280 yards per skein; you'll have to work out what that is in British) in colour scheme Water.






On the metreage knitted up:
Actual figure: 21,120
Best guess: well, actually Yvonne got this one closest too with 21,000m (I'm beginning to think she's slipped some sort of monitoring apparatus into my knitting bag at some stage... that's only one ball of DK out, which is frankly just frightening).

However, I think she's the sort of nice, lovely, public-spirited person who would put her second winning raffle ticket back in the pot, so next closest is anonymous (and first) poster Rachel with 20,513m! I don't have a way to contact you, Rachel - so I'm hoping you're a regular reader. Please e-mail me at liz AT lizmarley DOT co DOT uk and send me your snail-mail address so I can get your prize to you.

For anyone interested; this averages out at 1760m/month; which is, according to Google (and don't you just love that you can put "1760m in miles" into Google and get an instant calculation?) 1.094 miles. I had a vague target for myself of a mile a month, because I was pretty close last year, but didn't calculate whether I'd reached it until the end of the year. My "worst" month was June with 845m and my "best" December with 2945m, but that's because I only count projects once they're finished, so it's all a bit random...

Rachel wins a scarf kit: 3 balls of Schoeller and Stahl's lovely Limbo in the blue/green colourway


and a PDF of my Helter Skelter scarf pattern (which isn't linked on Ravelry yet because I have yet to figure out the becoming-a-designer thing, but is proving very popular at I Knit London, who have been selling them pretty steadily for the last six months or so - I keep seeing people working on them and wearing them when I go to knit there, and it's lovely!).

And the other vital statistic for 2009:

Yarn knitted up this year: 7,659 grammes (equivalent of 153 50g balls; which is only 21g a day, but I'd refer you to the 8 lace shawls/scarves/stoles...).

I started counting up yarn acquired in the course of the year and gave up in mid-February.

However, with UK Knit Camp looming this year, I need to cut down, so I'm going to be counting yarn in as well as yarn out this year. Gifts and purchases will count as yarn in; but destashing and knitting up of yarn will count as yarn out... And I'm probably going to embarrass myself by posting a monthly total here... I shall, as ever, not be counting needles/magazines/books in that total, so IKL shouldn't suffer too badly...

And tomorrow, I vow to start blogging the Christmas Knitting (both given and received).

Ah well... and competition reminder.

NaBloPoMo isn't really working for this month. Partly it's the freezing temperatures; mostly it's spending 6+ hours each day just ploughing back and forth to work.... I shall keep trying. It's not as if knitting isn't being done...

And if everyone can Think Good Thoughts to prevent trains hitting people in my local area, that would be good too. I've no idea whether this was suicide or an accident (although I understand you would have to try very hard to end up on the line accidentally at that particular point); but please, let's just hope people stop doing that.

On a more cheerful note, my brother sent me a YouTube clip of Gypsy Girl by Cruella De Ville. At the time, we thought this was a really good video. How times change... In return, I sent him a YouTube clip of possibly the most absurd Christmas recording ever.

And I realised I never gave an end-date for the annual competition. Let's say Sandi-o'clock on Friday (i.e. 6:30pm GMT this Friday, January 15). I'm hoping I'll be enjoying a drink with colleagues at that point, but it's as good a time as any...

BEST wishes for the New Year, and a competition...

Happy New Year! 2009 was a reasonable one for me - no major changes, no terrible events for me personally although several friends went through the mill this year; lots of knitting and many things I'm grateful for.

I've signed up to NaBloPoMo again - a few people have commented to me over the holidays that they liked the daily blogging, and actually I quite liked doing it too. Sometimes the theme for the month doesn't grab me (and I know you're not required to follow it anyway), but this month's theme is "BEST", and we all really need something to celebrate in January...

I had a very good Christmas - the best one for a while. Here are some of my fambly - Dad, SIL, Mam and Nephew - opening presents on Christmas Day.

I was allowed to cook Christmas dinner, and it seemed to go well...

OK; the competition. I will be doing 2 prizes this year, and simplifying it a bit. There are only 2 questions:

1. How many finished objects did I produce this year (NB this blog is not an accurate guide and nor is Ravelry - you probably just need to make a guess)?

2. How many metres of yarn did I knit this year (NB for visitors from North America, add approx 10% to a yardage estimate...)?

For some sort of idea - this was the roundup of last year's stats...

Happy competitioning... I won't bother doing an anonymous e-maily thing this year, just leave answers in the comments if you're so inclined!

Last call...

I've been completely shattered the last couple of days - lots of people evidently came back to work last Monday feeling Keen and Brisk, and determined to kick off new projects. Which is great because some of them are really interesting; but exhausting...

I'm hoping to post again later this evening, but just a reminder that the competition finishes at midnight my time tonight (7pm EST) - so if you were thinking of entering, please go ahead!

Socks Show

Thanks for comments, and competition entries, on yesterday's post. It really wasn't meant to be a maths thing; although I enjoyed working out the sums. Maths was possibly my worst subject at school. Apart from Art. Which was sad, as they were two of the subjects I enjoyed most and have used most.

Still time to have a wild guess - original post here...

But, this post is about socks; and specifically Socks that Rock from last year's club. First of all - I Knitted All the Yarns Within A Year. I think that deserves recognition... I didn't knit all of them to the designated pattern though... But here they are....

So, top to bottom and left to right;

• Yarn called "Dragon Dance", and pattern called Serendipity, by Adrienne Fong (with club);
• Yarn called "Lucky", didn't go with the suggested Leafling pattern by BMFA because I'd been looking for a long time for a leafy green yarn for the Embossed Leaves pattern by Mona Schmidt...;
• Yarn called "the incredible shrinking violet"; didn't go with the Cleopatra pattern by Yarnissima because I'd been looking for a while for a yarn to go with her "Firestarter"
• Yarn called "Goody Goody"; pattern called "Gumdrops" by JC Briar (with club). This was both the nicest and the worst package of the club; up to then I'd reconciled myself to having to sign off Ravelry for a couple of weeks after the packages were mailed out - this time I was spoiled the day after US mailing, ON the club blog, BY the DESIGNER!. And that was sad, because they are gorgeous socks... But that was the point at which I thought, no, this really isn't worth the money if they can't be bothered even getting confidentiality from their designers.. .
• Yarn called "Tide Pooling" - lovely stuff. Pattern also excellent, by Team Blue Moon (with club)... Lightweight again; I think that's 4 Lightweight, 1 Mediumweight and nothing else...
• Yarn called "Muddy Autumn Rainbow". Pattern "Holidazed" by Anne Hanson. That and "Tide Pooling" definitely my favourite colourways of the year, and this one's Mediumweight, but not enough to get me to sign up again...

I love these socks; but I'm looking forward to the Socktopus club this year!

A competition for the new year

In 2008, I started off with the idea of calculating metres and grammes of yarn in and out of my stash. In the event, I gave up on "metres in" quite quickly in the new year (basically, once I started going to I Knit on a regular basis); but I kept on with the calculation of metres and grammes knitted. And about a couple of weeks in, I thought this would make a nice end of year competition for the blog so I didn't tell anyone the totals.

There will be prizes; nice prizes. There will be handpainted yarns (of various weights), and handmade silk viscose knitting accessory thingies, and stitch-marker-and-notebook sets. If a non-knitter gets a best-guess, we can negotiate.

OK: I'd like best-guess answers to the following questions

1. How many metres of yarn did I knit up this year?

2. How many grammes of yarn did I knit up this year?

3. What was my best month (grammes)?

4. What was my best month (metres)?

5. What was my least stash-reductive month (grammes)?

6. What was my least stash-reductive month (metres)?

7. What was the longest-metreage project I knitted up this year, and how many metres of yarn did it take?

8. What was the heaviest project this year, and how much did it weigh?

A bit of background information:

• I only log metres/grammes if I finish an item. Therefore 500g/850m of the She Gansey from No Sheep for You, and 600g/however many metres that is, 1500m? of Tahoe from Knitty will not count as they're heading for the frog-pond having been tried on and found wanting.
• I only log metres/grammes when I finish an item. This seriously skews totals...
• I finished no adult sweaters or other adult-garments-you-put-on-over-your-head in 2008.
• Any WIPs at the end of the year don't count, however near completion they are...
• Not everything I've knitted this year has been blogged; however both of the 'largest items' are there. I did have a question about a "smallest item", a tiny beaded Victorian purse, but removed it, having found I didn't actually ever blog the thing because it was so difficult to photograph (and because although the knitting is done, the finishing isn't - I need some dove-grey silk taffeta...)
• You don't have to answer all the questions - just put the number in front and I'll know what you've chosen to answer...

On sending in your answers (sorry, short librarian-type essay here, skip to the next bolded bit if you really don't care):

There are two phenomena which were discussed by several speakers at Online Information last month, one called the wisdom of crowds, which says that if you ask a large number of people a question, and then average out all the guesses, you'll get a much better result than by asking a small number of experts. Which is why asking the audience in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire often works better than phoning a friend for some questions...

There's then the one called the madness of crowds which says that if you ask a large number of people a question, and the first three come up with the same answer or sets of answers, the likelihood is that nearly all the subsequent people will agree with that, regardless of what their own personal answer would have been... Google relies on this 'popularity' phenomenon for some of its results weightings. It's the same sort of thing that causes runs on banks and occasional flocks of sheep tripping gaily and unexpectedly off cliffs in mountainous areas.

The crucial difference is that in the first method, nobody knows what anyone else has guessed...


So on that basis and just for this post, I'm going to shut down comments and ask you to mail me at a new e-mail address: competition@lizmarley.co.uk. (This also gives me the advantage of having your e-mail in case you won anything, so you don't have to keep checking back). I will e-mail back to anyone who enters, to let you know I have received your entry. (I will not use your e-mail address for any other purpose).

In the event of a tie in any question, I'll get someone at the KTog on January 17th to draw names out of a hat.

The closing date is midnight UK time (7pm EST) on Friday 16th January 2009.

Good luck!

We have a winner...

The name out of the brown paper lunch sack this morning is...

Sue, let me know if you'd like something already in the shop, or what colours you'd like in a custom dye job!

Thanks to everyone who commented - it was really interesting following links to blogs, too, some of them familiar and some not!

To answer some questions:

I'm very unlikely to make it to Stitch 'n Bitch Day - I'll have done my first week's long-distance commuting just before then, so I imagine I'll be asleep!

Likewise, I don't think I'll get to Harrogate this year... I'm hoping that by Christmas I'll be more used to the new rhythm of life and will feel like doing things; but I'm anticipating being pretty wiped out for the first couple of months!

And also - the bus company finally reunited me with my purse!!! the driver who'd been handed it was then on holiday for a week, so I only got it back on Tuesday... but I'm very glad to see it!

Right. Need to buy something smartish to wear to meet my new boss on Tuesday, and then there's a KTog this afternoon... I'll try and remember to take the camera!