Celebratory Giveaway!!!

I'm having a rather overdue celebration on the blog today. Before we get drawn into the giveaway details, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Kepanie over at Knitspiring Odyssey, who was ever so kind to award me this yesterday:

Thank you so much for the recognition and for the lovely things you had to say about me and my blog! It really is very much appreciated.

Now, on to the giveaway! I've hit and passed several blogging milestones in the last couple of months, and threatened you all with a giveaway a couple of times. The most recent three milestones have been getting over 100 followers (I love you all!), writing over 300 posts and garnering over 30,000 pageviews. I even managed to catch this snapshot showing me hitting two out of the three back in May

On to the prizes then... up first is a brand spanking new ball of Zauberball sock yarn in a fabulous blue-black colourway.

For some reason my phone uploaded it sideways!

I had a bit of a tired brain moment, and managed to order myself a colour I already had! So rather than return it I thought I'd spread the love and offer it up for a prize!

Because I'm celebrating so many milestones, I thought more than one prize was in order. So here's prize number two!

Two skeins of Knit Picks Shadow Tonal laceweight yarn. I originally bought this yarn way back at the start of the first Year of Projects, but after struggling to knit my Easy Lace Stole out of it all year, I finally bit the bullet and frogged the project. The yarn was soaked and reskeined, albeit in two separate hanks. So now it looks like this:

Colour far more accurate in the first photo

So it's one whole, untouched skein (50g) and two half-skeins (approx 25g each).

Now for the rules.

I am going to run two separate draws, one for each yarn. So there'll be two winners. I will leave the contest open until the 30th August 2012, and will post the winners on Friday 31st August. Any comments left as entries after midnight (GMT) on 30th August will not be counted.

I am willing to post internationally, so anyone can enter. I know quite a few of my readers live on the other side of the pond and I don't want to leave you guys out!

To enter, please leave a comment stating which yarn you would like to win (feel free to enter both draws!), where in the world you are (no need to be more specific than country) and how I can contact you should you win (e.g. rav name or blog address).

Good luck!

Year of Projects update - 24th June

Next week is the final Sunday of the Year of Projects. In a way, I shall be sad when it is over, but I am already looking forward to Year Two!

As next week's post will be saved for a run down of everything I made this year, I thought I'd use today's post to talk about my plans for next year.

I have been thinking about this for some time, and have created a new list and a new page for Year two, which you can find here. I've dug out all of the lovely yarn in my stash that I'd like to use in the next year, and started pairing it to patterns. So far, nine pattern/yarn combinations have been decided on, and I have ten yarns left to assign patterns to. I'm not going to rush into that, as I'm sure I will change my mind multiple times before I cast on! There is also one pattern I would love to knit that I don't have the yarn in my stash for, so I will need to make at least one yarn purchase this year.

In addition to the projects on the list, I will be working on my long term projects: sofa bed afghan, poncho resurrection, the daffodil filet crochet which is currently in hibernation, and the work I started last year when watching Game of Thrones first season, designing and crocheting a blanket based on the books. (I did just hunt back through the blog to find the last time I posted about it, but it's been so long I cant find it!).

In other news, I've hit another couple of awesome blogging milestones... this is my 300th post, and just recently I skipped past 30,000 page views. Both of these are pretty amazing, although the spike in views is entirely down to my crocheted uterus pattern, which is still driving most of the traffic to the site!

I will be organising some sort of giveaway in the next couple of weeks as a thank you to all my lovely readers, when I eventually get some time to myself again!

How Time Flies!

I just don't know where the time is going at the moment. This week has absolutely flown by! Lots of exciting things going on though, so I'll do a quick round up.

Hypernova is finally being blocked! I soaked and pinned it out yesterday evening, and it is now sat out in the sun on the decking to finish drying. I'm hoping it will be dry before the sun goes away completely, so I can take some proper beauty shots of it in the natural light. Here's a sneak peek:

Finishing Hypernova meant freeing up my 3.5mm needles for Eleonora. I knit a swatch, and decided I could get away with the 3.5mm. However, I then realised I didn't have DPNs in that size, so had to wait two more days before I could cast on, while I waited for my new needles to arrive!

I love the yarn I'm using. It's Rowan Wool Cotton and it is wonderfully smooth. It slides beautifully over my bamboo needles. I'm almost done with the first cuff, maybe three or four more repeats to go, and then we're into a lovely long stretch of plain stocking stitch. I'm quite looking forward to it.

In non-knitting news, there have been plenty of exciting developments this week. Firstly, we started letting the cat out into the garden without his lead, which was pretty nerve-wracking at first because we had no idea if he would behave himself, or if he'd just run away. Luckily, Fidget is a professional cat, and managed to stay fairly close to the house, investigating the neighbouring gardens but not attempting to get any further away from the house.

Our living room is now finally complete, as our new sofa was delivered on Thursday.

We did quite well in finding a sofa to match our existing sofa, and one that was exactly the right size for the space we had. 

And finally, some very exciting news. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you'll have already seen this, but I wanted to share it with you all today now I've had a chance to sleep on it and get used to the idea!

Jamie and I got engaged yesterday!

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

Today is my first blogiversary! I can't believe it's been a whole year since my first post. I've had so much fun writing the blog and I've discovered so many fabulous people out there in the crafting blog community.

I've written over 200 posts, and had nearly 13,500 pageviews over the last year. My most popular post of the year has been, surprisingly, the post announcing my free crocheted uterus pattern! It will come as no surprise to learn that Ravelry has been the main source of my blog traffic - I love that you can link your projects back to the blog posts they feature in. Second behind Ravelry, and only by a small margin, is the wonderful Tami's Amis and Other Creations, the blog that inspired me to start blogging myself.

I had originally intended to start my blog on the 1st January, but I was too excited about it to wait, so I've ended up with a blogiversary on a very awkward day. I expect a fair number of my usual readers are busy off doing Christmassy things with their families, so I am going to wait until the new year before holding my celebratory giveaway. So come back next week to get all the details for that!

Another blogging milestone reached!

Earlier in the year I celebrated my 100th post with a blog award. A few days ago, I noticed I was getting very close to reaching another blogging milestone - 10,000 pageviews! I was fairly sure that with another post this morning, I would hit that quite easily, and I was right.

Not only did I reach the milestone, I managed to open my Blogger
dashboard at the moment I did!

A celebration is in order then. I had considered some sort of giveaway, but as my one year "blogiversary" is fast approaching, and I'm in the middle of arranging a secret swap package, I will hold off on that one until after Christmas (for my blogiversary is on Boxing Day!).

Instead, I am going to vicariously steal a blog post idea from the lovely Natalie over at Misadventures in Craft, as she did a great post on Monday analysing her blogger stats. I wouldn't have got to 10,000 page views without you, my lovely readers, so lets find out a little bit about where you come from, and how you find your way here.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of my visitors are from the United States of America (4,510 pageviews) closely followed by my British readers (3,323 pageviews). Canada (519), Germany (260) and Australia (145) make up the top five, with the rest spread across the world, as far away as Russia, Israel and Latvia!

I've written 179 post so far, so the average view-per-post is sitting at around 56 views. However, some posts are more popular than others; the most viewed post is an FO post from February, which featured several small projects including my elephant amigurumis for my work colleague's baby boy. I'm not surprised this post is the most visited, considering my most popular Google search term is elmer the elephant. There is a picture of Elmer on that post, you see, so I imagine it comes up in Google image searches a fair bit.

Speaking of search terms, my most popular ones seem to be fairly sensible and mostly knit/crochet related. I want to make a bag with hello kitty face on it unsurprisingly brings up hits on my page about my Hello Kitty bag, and tree of life crochet will take you to updates on the progress of the Tree of Life cushion I made for another little baby boy. Most of my bizarre search terms I can't see from the basic Blogger stats now, because they've only been used once or twice. My favourite search term used so far though, is still Ye Liveliest Awefulness. I smile to imagine someone searching for info on the Lovecraft stories being somewhat confused at clicking through to my blog, to be confronted with a shot of Jamie wearing his Cthulhu beard hat.

Google isn't my main traffic source though. That's Ravelry. Between the Year of Projects post threads, and the WIP Wednesday/FO Friday post threads in the Blog Hub group, Ravelry accounts for 1,249 direct links. Tami's is a close second, with 1,128; hardly surprising when she hosts the WIP Wednesday and FO Friday Mr Linky! Also, I think, the main reason why I have more American readers than British ones.

There you have it then, a snapshot of my blog's viewing stats to celebrate my 10,000th page view! Only 69 days to go till my Blogiversary! Reckon I'll hit 200 posts before that!

100th Post - Stylish Blogger Award

Wow, I didn't think I'd get to my first milestone this quickly! I've only been writing this blog since the end of December last year, so in six months I've racked up 100 posts and over 60 followers! Thank you all for reading!

In celebration of 100 posts, I have something a little different for you this afternoon.

Say what you like about the origins of this sort of viral blog-listings (I've read several posts/articles in previous months about how evil they supposedly are), but wherever they started, what they are now are a great way of paying a lovely compliment to fellow bloggers, and inviting our readers to check out other blogs they may not have seen before.

Imagine my surprise, then, when not six months into my blogging journey, and I have been awarded the Stylish Blogger Award by Kristine over at Ambassador Crochet.

I'm flattered that my small corner of blogland could be considered stylish, and am going to do my best to find seven equally stylish blogs to nominate!

I believe I am also supposed to share seven facts about myself, but since I'm in the middle of a 30 day blogging challenge with the chosen subject of "Me", I don't think I'm going to bother with the seven facts. Just click on the A to Z icon in the sidebar to bring up all my A to Z challenge posts and read through those!

So on to my nominations then. Seven Stylish Blogs from my blogroll...

1. Stitched Together - Chrissy's was one of the first blogs I started reading last year. I love reading her posts, her projects are beautiful and with her recent blog re-naming, I think she definately qualifies as a stylish blogger.

2. Mixed Martial Arts and Crafts - Vanessa's blog is great! Colourful and fun. I love reading her interviews with other crafters and designers.

3. Gingerbread Girl - Carole's blog is definately stylish. Lovely projects, great photos and I just adore her header.

4. Mooncalf Makes - sewing, cross-stitch and some lovely knitting. Mooncalf's writing is great too!

5. Susie F. Handmade - Susie's blog never fails to put a smile on my face. And after following her for a while, I am now determined to give making my own soap a try!

6. Useless Beauty Designs - love this blog. Worth it for Susie's Mum's guest blog alone.

7. Misadventures In Craft - another great blog from another lovely lady. I think I am drawn to this one because the author is the same age as me, lives nearby and we seem to have very similar tastes!