I’ve gotten all the data entry done and the shopping cart is all set up. I just need to do a few final tests and then comes the scary part.

I’m going to migrate all the WordPress files out of the sub-directory they currently are in and into the root directory. The website and shopping cart will be run entirely by WordPress.

I just hope that in the process of uninstalling/reinstalling/moving files I don’t completely crash the site. I have a feeling that this will be the temporary outcome. I’ll be crossing all my fingers and toes when I actually do it because I really, really do not want to set this whole thing up again. And I do not know how it all will work even if I have backed up every file and database.

Ugh. I’m getting squeamish just thinking about it.

But, it’s been on my mind.  And I do want to do another Challenge.  But before I do a challenge, I really, really need to get the Free patterns/KALs squared away for the next several months.  I think I will not start the Challenge until at least February.  Things have been a bit crazier than usual around here and I remember how demanding the last Challenge was.  I certainly cannot take that on if I’m not completely ready to focus on it!  First, I need to focus on the regular stuff like Free Patterns!!

That’s where I need some help.  I have a nice idea to add a pattern for December (I know it will be late, but better late than never) and I need some ideas for the next few months.  I like to have my Free patterns try to keep with a monthly theme.  For example I’ve been trying to think of something for January that will be sort of Wintery that I haven’t done already, but between my boys being sick and the bad weather knocking my head down every few days I haven’t felt very creative.  Any ideas?

Leave me some comments and help me come up with some ideas for the year for free patterns. I always feel like I’m playing ‘catch up’ with them and would love to get them planned and out of the way before I try to do anything else.  February will also be tricky because I have tons of heart related patterns and I’ve already tried unsuccessfully to do a groundhog.  I’m running out of ideas to keep the patterns to a monthly theme.  They may just have to start being random pictures which I suppose will be fine, but a bit….random!

In other chatty news, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.  I had a great knitting related Christmas.  Between my hubby and my mother I am now outfitted with some very cool new needles and gadgets and lots and lots of miscellaneous knitting notions.

My hubby got me the Harmony interchangeable needle set from Knitpicks that I’ve been drooling over for a while.  i can’t wait to try them out.  I actually haven’t done any knitting since Christmas!  My mom got me a ball winder and a scale.  I spent an entire afternoon winding up all the half knit balls of yarn I could find and weighing them.  I found 39 half balls of dishcloth yarn that had knit one dishcloth out of and then left lying around at the bottom of my knitting basket.  I rewound them all and refastened the label so everything is nice and neat.  I’ll be able to get another dishcloth out of each one of those, so I’m all set for a while.  Plus all the new balls of dishcloth yarn that I keep buying because I’m never sure of what I have.  Because I use small needles (size 5 or 6) and because my cloths are on the smaller side (cast on 37 stitches) I can very easily get two cloths out of each regular 2.5 oz ball. 

Did anyone else get cool knitting stuff over the holidays? 

I’ll post again in a few days about my progress with planning for the KALs/Free Patterns for the next few months.

We’ve had round after round of illness over here at my house.  Between bronchitis and pneumonia, the kids and I kept getting knocked down.  My two year old got pneumonia so bad around Thanksgiving he was in the hospital for almost a week.  But we are all finally on the upswing and healthy, just in time for Christmas.

I’ve also been working hard for the last month (when I’ve been feeling well enough) to redo a lot of “behind the scenes” stuff on the main part of the Designs by Emily website.  I’ve not been very happy with the download software that I purchased in the spring.  It always worked ‘ok’ but never ‘great’.  I wanted something to work GREAT!  I had decided to switch over to a shopping cart format.  And I wanted visitors to the site really not to notice too much difference if at all possible.

Finally after about two weeks of frustration of trying to do it on my own, I found a great shopping cart software (dlGuard) that I purchased for a very reasonable price, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks customizing it and setting it up.  I think it looks great.  The only two differences are that I had to move the menu over to the right side and the layout of the patterns.  But other than that, the site looks basically the same.  Purchases are still through PayPal and downloading the patterns are much, much easier.  I’m very happy.

That’s what I’ve been up to instead of knitting.  But now I can get back to it all.  I have a great free pattern that I want to put out for Christmas.  And I have to think of something for the December KAL.  I am going to delay that by a few days because starting a KAL on Christmas Eve really doesn’t make much sense.  And I know that I do still owe all my cheerleaders their participation patterns from the big Challenge.  I’m just so far behind on things!!  I will get caught up! 

And I just thought of something…January is fast approaching.  Didn’t I say something about starting another Challenge in January?  Oh boy!  I better start thinking about that too! LOL  Stay tuned for details on the January Challenge.  That will be here before I know it (and before I’m ready)!

Just a quick post today.  I’ve been on the computer too long as it is already fighting with my download software and my eyes are going buggy.

First, a picture of the completed KAL:

I have not yet added the completed pattern to the Free page, but I will get to it ASAP.  In the meantime, all the rows for the pattern can be found over the previous 6 days in entries in this blog.

Here is a picture of the pattern that I just added to the website:

I know that it has nothing to do at all with Halloween or Autumn or any of the upcoming holidays, but I thought it was cute. And he sort of goes along with the Happy Whale from the other day.  Plus, I have another sea animal themed cloth that I’ve knitted that I’ll be putting up sometime in the upcoming few days.  You can find the Seahorse Dishcloth pattern available for purchase on the “New” page for $1.49.

Today’s pattern is a nice one for Thanksgiving.  It’s not the one I was gushing about the other day because I haven’t had a chance to scan it in yet.  I spent all last evening working on website behind the scenes stuff.  But more on that in a minute.

Here is a picture of the pattern I just added to the website:

It’s the profile of a turkey, in case you can’t figure it out.  I like it because his tail feathers are spread out and it reminds me of the wild turkeys that I see wandering around not too far from my house.  I first spotted this group (flock?) of turkeys a couple of years ago.  There are about six or seven of them and you can find them in a few different locations within about a mile radius.  I’m assuming it’s the same group of birds.  But often one of them, the male I guess, will walk around with his tail feathers spread out in all their glory.  It really is something to see.  What’s more amazing is that I live in a very suburban area.  We do have some old farmland around and apple orchards, but central Connecticut has a pretty dense population.  These birds will just hang around on someone’s front lawn, with all these cars whizzing by.

As with all the other patterns, it’s available for purchase for $1.49 and can be found on the “New” page.

As I mentioned before, I spent much of last night working to fix up some problems with the website.  Specifically, some problems related to downloading the patterns.  If you’re easily bored by tech talk, you may want to skip the rest of this post.  But if you’ve encountered problems while trying to download my patterns, or if you are interested how things work, then read on.  I will try to keep it brief.

I had purchased a software program in March to handle the automatic downloading of the patterns.  It’s actually a great program except it had a little glitch that would sometimes corrupt .pdf files when people tried to download them.  After a few months of fighting with it and lots of emails from frustrated customers, I had to zip up all the files.  So, if you made a purchase from June til now, you downloaded a zipped file.  Not too bad except sometimes people had trouble unzipping them.  But at least I got a lot fewer emails asking for help.

Finally, after months and months, the software developer released an update to the program to fix the glitch.  I had to spend quite a bit of time last night updating the files because of course it wasn’t as simple as just copying in the new files he provided, because I had customized the download area to match my website.

I have not yet switched all the files back to .pdf format because I have a lot of pattern files and I’m worried that it won’t work, so I only switched the new patterns that I’ve added in the last week.  If I start getting emails complaining about error messages again, I’m going to have to switch back to the zipped files again.  But this patch has been out for a month or so and I’ve been on the support forums and it looks like it should work.

The other issue was the password problems.  Everyone will be happy to know that now there is an option to click on a link and your username and password will automatically be filled into the form for you so there shouldn’t be anymore password problems.  I know that password issues was a big source of frustration for a lot of people.  This should basically eliminate all problems with inputting the password.

Well, I think that’s enough geekiness for now.  I need to get back to knitting since last night was spent working on the computer.  I just thought some of you might like to know about some of what it takes to keep the website going.