The Walking Hat

That left turn I took the other day was the correct way to go.  Sort of.  The blog is not 100% fixed but it's fixed enough for now.  I'm having to use the "jeanniegrayknits.blogspot.com" address rather than my own web address but if I'm understanding all the information/problems/issues, in 90 days I can make it my own once again.  Meanwhile, none of my old pins on Pinterest work and lots of links are broken but I can blog and my Etsy shop is still linked here.  Again, it's not perfect, but it's workable.  At this point, I'm pretty happy with workable.

Meanwhile...

I've been pretty busy restocking my shop.  Sadly, I'd sort of ignored the shop for several years but Winterfest was an eye opener.  I did really well there and was quite pleased with my sales.  I left home with three giant Rubbermaid containers packed so full of knitted items their lids barely closed and came home with two empty containers and the third had so little in it, I could still see the bottom.  Dollar wise, I beat my sales goal by four times!  

Needless to say, I was very pleased with Winterfest and it really motivated me to get back to my Etsy shop.  Granted, it's much easier to sell knitted items face to face when the customer can feel the softness of the yarn and try items on but....  But if I can sell that much at one location, with a limited number of customers (granted that was a pretty large number of  customers,) there's no reason why I shouldn't expect to make the same number of sales online when I'm marketiing to the entire country. Right??  I know it will take time and lots of effort but it should work, right?

So... Pretty much all I've been doing for the last week or two has been photographing and listing items for sale in the shop.  

Meanwhile, I have been doing a little personal knitting.

I've been wanting to learn to knit and walk at the same time.  I can read and knit (knit, not purl) at the same time so walking and knitting shouldn't be that difficult, right?  I figured if I could do both at the same time, I'd (1) be more productive and (2) be more motivated to go for daily walks.  I desperately need daily walks.  So, I bought myself a walking knitting bag.  

This little bag from Knitters Pride's Mindful collection is perfect.  It's a cross body bag which is perfect for walking and knitting.  It easily holds a skein and a smallish project.   At the moment, it's holding two skiens and a few rows of hat.

I also realized I didn't need to "learn" to walk and knit, I just need to practice it.  I think I may need to wait until spring to get that practice in though.  It's been so cold, I can't feel my fingers if I don't wear gloves and I have definitely NOT mastered the art of knitting while wearing gloves.  Perhaps that's what I should be practicing.

Meanwhile, it's supposed to snow again tonight and tomorrow so I'll have plenty of indoor hat knitting time.  This winter reminds me of the winter we had 25 years ago.  It was the year Sarah was born and we had a blizzard every Thursday from early January through the end of March.  Luckily, this year we are only getting one to five inches or so each weekend rather than the foot or more each week we got 25 years ago.  As much as I love snow, a good blizzard and wild weather, that year was a little much.  I'm quite happy with this year's weekly couple of inches.  It's very wintery yet completely underwhelming.  

Happy knitting!

Going Left

 

Nothing about my domain issues is going right.  Absolutely nothing.  

Every time I think I've found a solution, I hit another roadblock.  The number of problems I've encountered are becoming comical.

And so, I'm going to go left.  It's the only thing left to try.  

I'm going to attempt to totally do away with my own domain and go back to the most basic, free blogspot site address.

And by attempt, I seriously mean attempt.  I have no idea if what I'm about to do will work or not.  No clue as to what is actually about to happen here. I'm kinda expecting flames to start shooting out of my keyboard. That wouldn't be a surprise based on the way things have been going.  But I'm tired of sitting here doing nothing except worrying about it and stress eating every single snack food I can get my hands on. So I'm going left.

Wish me luck.  Please!  If it works, the new web address will be jeanniegrayknits.blogspot.com.  If you've signed up to have my blog posts sent directly to you, I have no idea if you'll continue gettng them. I hope that you will but I really don't know what's about to happen. 

So please, say a little prayer, take a deep breath and a stiff drink with me, and help me panic.  And well, hopefully you and I will both still be here tomorrow.

Who Knows

Who knows what's about to happen to this blog.  Today is the day the domain expires and I still haven't been able to communicate with the current domain company.  

I also haven't had the time, energy or nerve to attempt to change the domain address to the new name on my own. Plus, I'm torn about changing the name.  I just handed out over 500 business cards at Winterfest with the old name and I still have 1,000 more on hand.  I hate to waste all that.

And because, as I've mentioned before, I'm lazy.  I don't look forward to the hassle of changing the name on all my social media accounts and every where else it shows up.  Heck, I don't even know the locations of all the places the blog name shows up.

But I also have never been able to figure out if I can re-purchase the old name with the new domain company the day after it expires with the old company or not.  Confused yet?  I sure am!

And then there's the fact that I've been considering changing blog hosting companies for years.  Maybe this is the push I need.  Simply shut this one down and start completely fresh with a new name and a new location.  

Who knows what I'll do.

Meanwhile, instead of thinking about/doing something about the domain name issue, I've been preparing for Valentine's Day.

Well, preparing my Etys shop for Valentine's.  I've been making these little fur faced gnomes.  I think they are adorable.

And beading Valentine's socks.

But mostly, I've been hanging out with my favorite little Valentine.

And yes, I realize January 14th is a little early to be talking Valentines but.... seeing as though this could potentially be the last post, Happy Valentines! 😍

And don't forget, if I don't show back up here, you'll be able to find me at jeanniegrayknits.com.  Eventually.

The gift that keeps on giving

I'm still not sure what's going to happen here with the blog.  The "bad" domain company's Contact Us button doesn't even work and supposedly my old domain name expires Jan. 14th but they keep sending me letters that it will be cut off on the 11th.   And since I vaguely remember having problems getting the original domain set up to coordinate the blog, Etsy and all my social media places, I'm afraid to try to change the domain by myself without my son's help.  And he's at work for 16 hours a day, every day for the next week.  How dare he have a real job (2 actually) that takes his attention when I need him!  😜

Anyway.... This post may or may not show up and it may or may not be the last for a while.  Time will tell.

And since I'm great at ignoring the things I don't want to think about/consider/do..., let's talk knitting.

One of my Christmas gifts was an Advent yarn pack and a pattern for a cowl or scarf.  I am SO excited over this gift.  I've always wanted an Advent yarn thing but I've never been able to justify the cost.  

Well, my friend, Dawne, made up the yarn packs from her stash and gifted them to the Winterfest group.  Winterfest being the time consuming machine that it was, we all decided to celebrate Yarn Advent in January.  And me being behind schedule as usual, started mine on January 4th.

Each packet of yarn is made up of 30 yards and is wrapped in a cotton quilting fabric square.  They look like hard Christmas candies in the bowl.  😊  And you know what that means, right?  When I finish knitting the advent yarn, I will have a whole new Advent quilting project to do.  It's the gift that keeps on giving!

Now, if someone would only gift me some quilting skills.  And an iron.  😛  I can't find my iron.  How do you loose an iron?  Okay, maybe the fact that I haven't touched the iron in over three years may have something to do with it.

So for the yarn portion, I chose the cowl design. The actual pattern is the Manic Panic Cowl which is such an awesome name!  The stitch pattern is the linen stitch and when I saw that, I almost tossed the whole thing in the trash.  No, not really.  Well, almost.  

See, years and years ago I attempted a linen stitch scarf... with DISASTEROUS results.  I wasn't a very experienced knitter back then and didn't know how to 'read' my knitting and well, take my word for it - it was ugly! 

I was not looking forward to another linen stitch attempt.  But, I was coming off the high of a very successful Winterfest and was still feeling a bit God-like and decided to give the stitch another try.

I'm so glad I did!  I'm also very glad I picked the cowl/infinity scarf rather than the flat scarf.  By knitting in the round, every row is the same and it's super simple and I'm loving the outcome.  Absolutely loving it!

I'm also loving the colors.  The yarns are very bright and Eastery/springy/summery.  They are not my normal scarf/winter knits colors but that's not a bad thing.  After all, who says I have to wear dark, dull colors in winter?  Besides, I'm really enjoying knitting the bright, sunny colors as I sit huddled under my blanket, looking out the window at the cold, gray, winter scenery.

And now, I'm off to knit 30 yards of majenta.

Yikes! An unexpected post

 Okay, just a word of warning.  I completely screwed up and this blog may disappear on January 14th.

You see, I'm a tech moron.  Complete and utter moron!

My old domain register was bought out by a European company last year and it's time for my anual renewal.  Except they won't accept my payment because I'm in a foreign country and our banking and physical address formats are different and well, frankly I think the new company is a bit, well, horrible.

Long story short, I purchased my domain through another company.  Except I purchased "jeanniegrayknits.com" instead of "jgknits.com".  And when I went back to purchase the correct domain name/address, it says it's already being used.  And the old company won't allow me to transfer the name to a different domain registration company.  Did I mention how awful I think they are??

Anyway, I'm not sure what is going to happen here.  I need my kids to help me out with the tech issues and they aren't home.  It may be several days before I can get them to help me.  

So, to make this a tiny bit longer, if you can't find me at jgknits.com, go look for jeanniegrayknits.com

Of course, if this domain disappears, I don't know how you'll be able to know to look for jeanniegrayknits.com..... but that's a worry for another day.

Meanwhile, while I wait for my kids to be available to help, I'm going to go feel sorry for myself and knit.

First Snow

 Gosh, it's been a while since I blogged.  Do I even remember how??

I hope you had a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.  Our Christmas was pretty low-key and New Years was spent at Winterfest.  At least, mine was.  It's over now though and I've been busy putting things away and cleaning up the mess I created preparing for and dealing with Winterfest.  Good grief, what a disaster my craft space was!

We are having our first snowfall of 2022 and this photo makes me think of the Wizard of Oz.  I don't Miss Gulch will be riding her bike today.

I sure am glad we cleared out our Winterfest booth the day before this storm hit instead of the day of as originally planned.  On Monday, I was wearing short sleeves, shorts and walking around barefoot outside in the rain.  On Tuesday, the temperature dropped, all the rain froze and the snow came.  A typical Virginia winter.

Believe it or not, those are color photos, taken around noon.  It was near white-out conditions for a while.  A very good day to stay inside, clean up and reorganize my craft space.  Tomorrow, I'll go back to knitting.