Ganiggle Knits

Since yesterday there has been some good storm action here.

This was the sky over my house yesterday after the biggest part of the storm had passed :

It’s been awesome, we’ve had loonie sized hail, high winds up to 100 km/h and a LOT of rain.

Revisiting Eden is underway and should be ready for testing within 2 weeks time. A lovely group of ladies on Ravelry is going to be testing the pattern for me, and if they can finish within a certain time frame they’ll get a free set of stitch markers of their choice from the store. It should be a very exciting next few weeks. I’ll post pictures of Revisiting as soon as I have it finished

I got some good mail today! I won a contest that Cdaniele on Ravelry did and received my prize today! She sent me two bags of pistachio’s and a DPN project holder. I’m very happy!

I also got some more beads in today! So more stitch markers will be on their way!

I’ve been having some more problems with the site. It’s okay now but for a while I was unable to log in because of an error in one of the files in the shopping cart Everything is okay now though, so I can log in!

The other day I took a picture of my entire stash. And after being able to fit all my yarn in the frame, I’ve realized that I dont have enough yarn!

I also realized that almost 100% of my yarn is Knit Picks! The very bottom row is the new Knit Picks Essential kettle dyed. It’s absolutely beautiful. My favourite is the Ivy colorway, it’s stunning!

So, the old store that I had was absolutely terrible and wouldn’t work (wasn’t calculating shipping properly) so I have a new one now, which is fully integrated with the blog. There are two sidebars, the one on the left is all blog related, and the one on the right is all store related. Feel free to look around!

I made 7 new pairs of stitch markers the other day. I have 5 colours of the “Tea Time” stitch markers which I think are adorable, and then I have some others including “Under The Rose” which I made to match the pattern design.

I have an ad on Ravelry! I made a few banner ads (one for patterns, one for stitch markers) and they’re popping up on a few select groups which is very exciting! It’s so cool posting and then seeing your ad there on the bottom of the screen

Ok so everything is awesome, I may post again after work so that I can actually have pictures in my post. I have some pictures of the city I live in on Canada Day so I’ll probably get those up

I have a lot to do lately. I’ve been working hard on my stitch markers, an important project, the store (which is completely broken right now), plus I’m conjuring up ideas in my head for my next design which will be called Revisiting Eden.

I guess it doesn’t look like so much when I type it out like that. Maybe I’m just lazy? I’m still really liking the new site setup but now I have to re-do all my business cards! I think these next ones I make will be what… version 7.0? I’ve made way too many business cards. I may work on them tomorrow (Wednesday) because I have the day off since I worked on Sunday.

I’m thinking of having a contest for Revisiting Eden. I have 2 ideas:

Contest Idea 1: Whoever buys a pair of stitch markers (once I get my new beads in) will be put into a draw to receive a Revisiting Eden kit (yarn + pattern) and I may have a few smaller prizes of just the PDF pattern.

Contest Idea 2: (After Revisiting Eden is released) Whoever buys a copy of Revisiting Eden will be entered into a draw to receive a custom painted (to your specifications) set of 5 stitch markers!

I’m not sure which one I want to go with yet but I’m kind of leaning towards the first one. I’d love to hear anybodys comments about each idea. Which would you prefer? Which one would appeal to you more?

The contest probably wont be for a month or so because I have to finish the project I’m working on now, and do up a bunch of stitch markers. So I’m aiming to start it around possibly the middle of July, and have it run for a month or so before the draw.

I’m really excited about the new beads I ordered. So stay tuned for new stitch markers, hopefully by next week. I have SO MANY beads coming, and they’re all super-awesome. I’ll tell you a bit about what’s coming. I’ve got some beautiful pearl beads, charms, glass beads, and so much more.

I’m also thinking about lowering some of the prices on the stitch markers that I have on Etsy right now. I lowered the cost of one of them down to $10 from $12 so I’ll have to see how that goes.

Until next time!

As many of you probably already know, I just finished a huge move from blogger to a self-hosted Wordpress setup. After a few days of bickering with my server, and getting everything set up under my new domain ganiggle.com, I think I’ve finally won the battle. On top of having my own domain now, I also have my own shop! You can view it at www.ganiggle.com/shop or you can click on “shop” at the top of the blog.

My store has my two patterns that are currently available, as well as hand painted stitch markers that I’ve recently started making!

Thank you to everyone’s patience in this move, and I should be getting back to my regular blogging shortly.

Hey everyone! Under the Rose is now available! I took some pictures of it yesterday for you all to see. It was tough because my original picture idea didn’t work so I had to improvise with these shots. I think they turned out well:

The pattern is selling for $4.50, same as Eden. Within the next day or so, I’m going to start making Eden’s sister so stay tuned. Under The Rose can be purchased Here I’ll also add it to the side bar.

I’m also thinking of revamping the blog’s colours so that might happen within the next few days if I get time.

Today was quite the eventful day for me. Every year the city I live in holds a 3 day long culture festival called Mosaic. There are pavilions set up around the city for different cultures, where anyone can go in and experience the food, music, crafts, and dance of that culture. It’s amazingly fun and I go every year. Each pavilion is so much fun that it’s almost impossible to get to all 18 of them. This year I ended up making it to 8: Chinese, Philippine, Kyiv Ukranian, Hellenic Greek, Italian, German, Ethiopian, and India. (The one I most wanted to go to was the Scottish pavilion, but more on that later)

Basically what happens is, the first pavilion you go to you buy a “passport” with a page for each pavilion and a map so you know where each one is. At each pavilion you go to, the page for that culture gets stamped. Almost like a cultural scavenger hunt. I was able to take some pictures, but they were with the camera on my phone so please excuse the quality.

Here we were at the Italian pavilion. I ate some great pizza, and watched some fantastic dancers. these ladies were incredibly talented. The music was great!

Here’s another one of some other dancers at the Italian pavilion

Here’s a shot of the outside of the Chinese pavilion. The hosts here were super friendly and I bought a beautiful Chinese beaded bracelet, a beaded coin purse, and a little satin bound notebook which is beautiful! The prices were great too! Chinese culture has always fascinated me.

Here were some of the Chinese dancers, they were great too!

This was the Ethiopian pavilion, they were doing a pretty cool looking tribal dance.

The last pavilion we went to was the India pavilion where we dined on curry chicken (yumm) and rice. They also had the most amazing mango ice cream I’ve ever tasted (topped with mango sauce)

Now… the pavilion I wanted to go to the most was the Scottish pavilion. I’m half Scottish myself, and love bagpipes so I thought it would be sweet. Well… apparently that’s what everyone else thought too. It was raining cats and dogs today and the line up just to get into the Scottish pavilion was around the block. We decided to pass on it this year. I really wanted haggis too…

After Mosaic was over we got to go to a private movie screening! I was so excited, I’d never been to one before. Dave’s brother’s girlfriend works at one of the movie theaters here, and every time there is a private screening of a movie they’re allowed to bring 2 guests. So me and Dave went and saw a private screening of You Dont Mess With The Zohan. It was hilarious, Adam Sandler is awesome. Plus it’s pretty much brand new in theaters and we got to see it free, and without the crowd. It was great, and I hope to do it again!

When we left the theater (2:45am) a large amount of fog had come over the city. We could barely see across the street. I snapped a few shots with my crappy phone camera:

That last picture was of the Casino here. it was all lit up with purple lights and I thought it looked cool, especially with the fog!

In knitting news, my newest design Under The Rose is currently being tested by some lovely people on Ravelry. At the rate they’re going, it shouldn’t be long before I can release it

Alright so now that Eden is good and done and uploaded all over the place I had some extra time a few nights ago so I figured I’d finally design my business card, so here it is! The picture of the yarn in the bottom right hand corner I took myself. I set up a fancy white sheet and arranged the yarn all pretty then took the picture. It took some photoshopping to make it look good but it’s finally there! It matches perfectly with the image I had in my head for my business card. So if anybody wants one of my business cards, or a few to hand out to other knitter friends send me an email at ganiggle@hotmail.com with your mailing address and I’ll send you some

On Saturday I went shopping! Chapters was having double discounts for irewards members. Me and Dave took off early Saturday so I could take advantage of the sale. I got a few books that I’ve been wanting for a while, but were too expensive to justify buying. I think these are the last knitting books I need (heh, yeah right!) I got Stitchionary 1, 2, and 3 as well as the Knitters Book of Yarn. I’m really impressed with the book of yarn. It has so much useful information about where different types of yarn come from, how it’s manufactured, and what it’s good for. I’m really enjoying it so far. My original though about this book would be that it would be a great tool for designing, and so far I was absolutely right!

Since Eden is done now, I had to start something new. This time I’m going to try even harder to keep it very very secretive. We’ll see how long that lasts, but for now I’m keeping the secret. The only thing I’m sharing is the yarn I’m using… I swear.

Knit Picks Palette! The red didn’t turn out all that well, but it’s Garnet Heather. Not some weirdo pinky looking colour like the picture would have you believe. The other one is black. Soon these two balls are going to be mysteriously transformed into another pair of fingerless gloves. I’m not saying anything else.

Just in case anyone was curious, this is where I work on my designs/Ravelry/Blogging. As you can see, I’m not a very neat-and-tidy person. I like to spread out all my stuff so I can find it easily. Don’t look at me like that… it’s true. I have a steady stream of Pepsi on my end table and if you look close you can see some yarn on the floor. My tape measure on the arm of the couch and most obviously my computer. What you cant see is my newest project, because I made sure that it was on the other side of the couch when I took the picture

After a lot of work, and some fabulous testers over at Ravelry finding the mistakes in the pattern it is finally ready for release! I took some new pictures of it today with the help of my boyfriend Dave.

You can view the full description of the pattern here on Ravelry.

I’m really excited about this pattern and have gotten great feedback so far. If you’re interested in purchasing this pattern all you need to do is click on “Eden” on the right hand side of the blog under Patterns. It will take you through Paypal and then provide a link to download the PDF. The price is $4.50 USD . The pattern includes both written instructions plus charts for those who prefer them.

Here’s a close-up of the leaf edging.

I’ve already started planning out my next pattern which is going to be another pair of fingerless gloves. I’m not 100% sure what it’s going to look like yet but I’m anxious to start a new pair

I only have this picture for now, but I finished these on Friday. I decided on the name Eden for these. They are knit in an easy all over lace pattern with a twelve stitch cable running down the middle. My favorite part of them is the leaf edging.

Right now they are in the beginning of the testing phase. I’ve got 5 lovely ladies on ravelry testing them for me and once they’re done and all the kinks are worked out the pattern will be available for download (on ravelry as well as this blog) for probably $4. The pattern includes written as well as chart instructions. They’re worked in the round on DPN’s.

I’ll need to take a better picture of them but right now it’s been cloudy and gloomy the last 2 days so once the sun shines again I’ll get a better outdoor picture so I can show the detail as I’d like to.