I’ve had a couple of items featured on the front page before, but I’ve never actually caught them myself–usually I find out later via convos or the freakish jump of views on one particular piece. Tonight, though, I got such a shock when I looked at the front page!

Yep, that’s me in the top right! Forgive the size of the screenshot; I haven’t figured out how to take a capture of the entire screen, so it’s cut off in the middle.

I’ve known how to crochet for a while; my aunt taught me the chain stitch when I was, oh, 8 or 9, and I loved it. I could sit in a chair and just knit a chain for an hour or two to see how long I could make it, and then–I got to rip it out! That was my favorite part. Frogging crocheted work is so easy; you just pull on the yarn until you’ve ripped out as many stitches as you require. Easy, easy, easy.

Not so with knitting. With knitting you drop stitches, you curse at your needles and your splitty yarn, you put the sock down for a while, have some lemon tart, pick up the sock, sigh at it, and decide that you can’t look at it for a while. Eventually, you come to the realization (well, you already knew, you were just in denial) that that your mistakes are not the fault of the needles, and that your yarn is wonderful and smooshy and would, in fact, not split at all if you were a competent knitter.

Why? Why is it so hard to frog knitting? Every time I frog even one stitch, I’m terrified that I’ll drop the stitch afterward and have to go fumbling after it with a crochet hook. Except, you know, I can’t find my small crochet hook and so I’ve been using pieces of wire that I’m curling with my round nose pliers. Wire + yarn, in case you were wondering, do not play well together.

Have ripped back the entire heel on the Froot Loop socks after noticing that I dropped a stitch on the first row of the heel, and just generally goofed it up big-time. Never again will I say, whisper, or think that my knitting is going well–I will just assume that as long as it’s going, I’m good.

And they are actually working! Of course, I haven’t gotten to the ‘turning the heel’ point, so I still love them and they are easy. We’ll see how I feel about them in, oh, a couple of inches.

I knitted my first hat, out of a gorgeous handspun yarn from spinswim at Etsy. My first project with handspun, and my first hat–I’m very happy with it.

Last weekend, my husband and I went to the Renaissance Faire in Raleigh. Despite the rain that poured on us the entire time, we had a blast. I have absolutely no desire to sit down and write the whole thing up, though, so I’ll just show you what it was like–maybe a picture a day.

This guy? He swallowed swords, did some very uncomfortable things on a bed of nails, and is seen here about to eat three flaming batons. At least, I’m calling them batons. I have no clue of their technical name.

So, in the last week, I have had to replace my laptop, lost the USB cord to my digital camera, misplaced my iPod headphones, had 48 songs on iTunes refuse to live on my iPod because I had to transfer the old hard drive from my laptop into a new laptop, and sneezed. A lot.

But–I have found the USB cord and the headphones, I have Benadryl, and I have a new laptop with Picassa.

To celebrate, have a picture of a sunflower!

So, I’m still trying to knit these socks.

My first setback was, well, still in the development phase: I couldn’t find the correct size needles. I checked every yarn store within, oh, about a twenty mile radius, and came up empty. After ordering them online, I got to wait patiently for them to arrive, and now that they’re finally here, I should be able to get this on the road, right?

Wrong, unfortunately. I knew that this pattern was difficult–especially for a crocheter who, to date, has only knitted one mitten and a bag that is still in pieces–but holy crap. I’ve decided to just jump right on in with two colors, working on two circular needles at once (!!). If I don’t throw this whole mess against the wall before I’m done, it’ll be a miracle.

Pictures later, if I can manage to get, oh, three or so rows in.

Little goals. That’s the way you do it, right?

For any people who have blogs or websites, and might like a button to display, I made a couple. They’re not gorgeous, but they get the job done. I was just trying to figure out how I could help spread the word, and I thought of a linked image–I went ahead and put one up on my blog to make sure that it works. The image links back to http://mailpen.net.

Please, if you use these, save them to your computer and upload them to your own flickr/photobucket/similar account–I’m not sure how much strain hotlinking would put on my flickr account, and I’d rather not see the images get pulled because of this.

For a 150×150 clickable image, use this image:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2252/2272408221_6a318617df_o.jpg

and this html:
<a href=”http://mailpen.net”>
<img border=”0″ src=”YOUR-IMAGE-LINK-GOES-HERE” width=”150″ height=”150″>

</a>

For a 75×75 clickable image, use this image:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2169/2273202044_7fd917d157_o.jpg

and this html:
<a href=”http://mailpen.net”>
<img border=”0″ src=”YOUR-IMAGE-LINK-GOES-HERE” width=”75″ height=”75″>

</a>

Replace YOUR-IMAGE-LINK-GOES-HERE with the specific link your flickr/photobucket account gives you for the image you’ve uploaded. I would replace the text with the links I’ve provided, but again, please don’t hotlink if you can avoid it.

Etsy’s own rinnovidbodyspa is undergoing the worst kind of family emergency–her husband has been missing since February 13th.

Please, if you live in the Seattle area, help join the search. Spread the word.

Here’s a website dedicated to finding the missing man–Nicholas Francisco–complete with updates: http://mailpen.net/

And a link to the thread on the Etsy forums: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5472516&page=1

Please, if you can, spread the word.