fun with ravelry

I love ravelry. Almost obsessively, really. Which is what I hear most knitters say, at least, those who have gotten their invites. Those who haven't grumble whenever they hear me gush over it.

One of the cool things is that it gives me a great forum to share my designs with other knitters. I have 3 free designs so far (all of which can be accessed in the side bar of my blog, whether you are a ravelrer or not) available as a free pdf download through ravelry. They host and deliver the pdfs for me (and all designers, obviously!). I look forward to the day that they are ready to hold pdfs for sale too... it means no more worrying if I go away for a day or two, someone is angry at me 'cause I haven't sent them the pdf yet once they've bought it on etsy. (Don't get me wrong, etsy is also a great forum, but they don't take care of the shipping/emailing, whereas ravelry does.)

I can also see all kinds of cool stats about my designs. People can leave me little hearts if they like them, or comments, and I can see how many people have "queued" my project for the future. (Personally my queue is like 5 pages long and I probably won't get to half of them anytime soon... but still, it's nice to see people like something that I designed enough to say "if I had time in the future, this is something I would make"...) And, as demonstrated below, the great Code Monkey of ravelry has set up a page where I can view how many times my patterns in a day:



This is just a shot of the last 3 days, since I uploaded my socks on fire pattern. The orange shows how many Cindy Lou Who Mitten patterns have been download, the lighter yellowy green is for my Lacey Rib Anklets and the teal is for the Socks on Fire! pattern. I'm super psyched about how popular the socks on fire! are, probably in part due to Project Spectrum: Elements.

In other news, I finished up the Cinnabar Scarf and it just needs some light blocking and the ends woven in. Hopefully I'll be able to take some nice FO pics soon... and I'm going to need all the scarves I can get if this cold snap continues... does it freak anyone else out that it was 21C/72F a week ago and now it's well below freezing?? I also finished up a hat to go with the booties and will take pictures in the light tomorrow (assuming there's some good light that is...).