I am so excited to be able to present my baby Alisa to you. She has come along way from an idea that I created for a secret pal way back in SP10. She is now a full fledged pattern ready to be knit by all.

Many of you are probably here to find out about Alisa. Sadly, I feel I need to delay release. The three smallest sizes work, but the largest two sizes are having problems. My test knitter Erica is on it. So I guess this is a WIP. Erica talks about it over on her blog. The new date is only a few days away. Since a few of you probably will wait to purchase when the contest ends, the new release date is Saturday May 3rd. So sorry everyone. I want this pattern to fit everyone right so please be patient.

My monkeys are flying along. These socks are turning out to be more of a winter weight pair of socks than summer socks. Since my pal lives in the Northern half of the US, I hope that it is all ok.

I just received another present. I won a blog contest and I was allowed to choose from a list of books. Since I missed the Yarn Harlot’s visit to town, I requested her new book. Churchable and I will enjoy reading it.

Have a great day and I hope your week has been good. Our little pocket of Washington has been enjoying clear sunny skies.

So today is my 29th birthday for the first time. No silliness here about 29th for the 29th time or anything like that. I am almost ready to release Alisa.

I thought I would share a few pics here on anticipation of the release. I hope that you are not too overwhelmed. We did take 84 pictures and still need to do another photo shoot since churchable did not get a great picture of the whole sweater so that people would get a good impression of the overall look.

Don’t worry I don’t have that many photos to show ya’ll. Just enough to wet your love of this simple summer sweater.

At this moment Alisa has been perfected through bust size 38″. The two largest sizes need the shoulder shaping reworked so hopefully they will be all nice and ready for the 30th.

Now this last photo, tis rather good. It was on flickr for a matter of minutes and already had several views. I took it because I wanted to show that it is long enough to be worn as a beach cover-up.

So it is my birthday today and that means I want to have a contest. There are several prizes. Everyone should find something they like. If you prefer not to win one of the prizes, let me know and I will take you off that list.

Contest:

1. leave a comment with your name and your email in the email spot (I will be the only person to see that part) and if you participate in the posting bit then leave the link in the post for extra points.
2. tell me what makes you happy. Pictures are great. I would love if you blogged about it or you could post a pic in flickr and leave a comment in the description about why this makes you happy. You don’t have to post outside the comments about your happy thing but you will get added to the drawing a second time if you do post about it.
3. tell others about the contest. Yes this is just my way of getting more people here. I want to see my blog feed have 100 or more subscribers. I have between 75 & 80 right now. This will also get you another spot in the drawing.

Now you are all wondering about the prizes. Well since Alisa is coming out now, I will be giving out a free pattern to 2 lucky people. Details about Alisa here and ravelry. The other prizes are yarn.

Butternut Woolen sock yarn (local blogger and dyer)

Black Malabrigo Merino Worsted

This is the mystery laceweight yarn. I don’t know what it is. My stash has an unhealthy amount of unmarked laceweight and I don’t knit lace. I am sure this was recent addition to the stash, say last 5 years. For those of you who would like a better description, here is a close up pic.

I took this picture without the flash because it has a shiny fiber in it that washes out easily.

So read that folks, 5 prizes to be won. Any questions about Alisa, can be directed below and I will have a blog post up later with answers to those questions. If I get enough entries there might be more goodies appearing. I have been blessed lately by yarn and other goodies.

Thanks and have a great day. Oh and you have a week to enter the contest. Next Saturday at 11:59 PM PST is the end.

PS: those of you posting to the contest. This blog has moderated comments so you only need to press publish once, a notice will be sent to me and I will agree to publish. All multiple comments have been left unpublished. Typically I get comments up within 24 hours or less. Anything left on a Tuesday goes unverified till Wednesday since I take a day where I don’t turn on the computer all day so that I can focus on designing and other important facts.

PSS: Thanks for all the interest and participation. IF we keep this up, I will have a post with the most comments ever and the highest commented month.

Alisa is chugging along. Not too fast but at least I am making progress and I still have a week and a half before my must be done or panic date. There will be preview pictures of Alisa posted on my birthday April 26th. I am sure I will be done before next week starts since I will be at a retreat all weekend and what do you do at a retreat but listen to people talk and knit while listening. It is such a nice relaxing activity. Can you get a sense of the beauty that Alisa will be? Knittymuggins who just finished testing it, fell in love with it when she tried it on. I can’t wait to show ya’ll the perfect spring top. Ok well maybe not perfect but comfy and cool top.

I seem to have a new sock sitting here in the dirt. Might it mean that I am done with a certain troublesome sock?!?! Well you will have to wait till Friday to check out the FOs that have climbed off my needles. The new sock is being a bit shy. First it made me think that it would knit up nicely on 2.5mm sock needles. Well maybe a st st sock, but not a fancy monkey in need of flexibility to do its monkey antics. So I switched it up to a 2.75mm DPN set. Hopefully this size works out better. Right now the lovely wool of Butternut woolens is not so nice here in the heat of Houston. I kind of need the cool Washington weather to knit on these. For a moment I thought I had grabbed some strange acrylic sock yarn to knit with, which I knew was false but man does the humidity get me here. I feel sorry for Texas knitters.

I have now cast-on for Alisa. I need one that matches the pattern now that it has become a fully polished pattern. My prototype sadly is not exactly like the Alisa. I am loving the knitting. It is going so smoothly and I can’t wait to wear it. I am pushing for a finish while I am in Texas. Maybe I can get some shots on the beach to add to the pattern pages. The colors kind of go with this segment of PS3: Earth. The linen color is a browny white so Brown it is.

The second sock is chugging along. The goal is to be done on Friday or before so I guess my needles need to click along for the next two days.

Well I am in the midst of packing, I already packed for my retreat weekend. I drop that off last night at my meeting. Once I leave for Texas, I don’t come back home till after David even though I leave Texas a good 12 hours earlier. I am headed to a retreat with a group of women that I lead. I am not the only knitter but I am a bit of an oddity because I don’t care if people see me knitting. I have had so many women ask if they can sit with me and knit because they don’t feel weird since someone else is doing it.

I have several bloggers that I will get to meet up with while I am in Texas. Plans are finalizing because I don’t want to fill my time with knitter meet-ups all the time, but I would love to. Now what knitting to pack to impress the other knitter’s. What kind of knitting impresses another knitter? What kind of knitting impresses you? Do you even care?

Look for a new weekly post tomorrow.