Stalking my patterns

My patterns have taken out temporary restraining orders against me, because I keep stalking them on Ravelry to see how many sales I've made.  I just can't seem to stop myself.  Does anyone else do this??  Seriously.  I need to know that I'm among friends.  I check my patterns about every hour.  I check it on gmail to see if there are any emails about sales.  When I don't see anything there, I go over to Paypal to verify that there really is nothing there.  After that's been verified, I check Ravelry to see if the other two sites are lying to me.  It's really unhealthy, lol.  All I can think about is people knitting something that I've designed.  I'm hooked!  I have several designs that I've written a pattern for, which I just need to have test knit.  I've found a free test knitting group, but there are so many rules!!  I don't mind rules, but that means that I need the time to read them all, and then fill out all the necessary paperwork, and I don't have that kind of time right now.  (Anyone interested in test knitting a pair of stranded hand-warmers?)  I have a design that I wrote out based on an item that a customer brought into the shop yesterday.  She needed to replicate it for someone else, and didn't know where to begin.  We talked about it some, and then she said something about socks that jogged my memory, and I was off like a rocket, scribbling the pattern down on a notepad.  She offered to pay me for the pattern, but I gave it to her in exchange for knitting the sample for me (free test knitting!).  Hopefully it works out and than I'll have a sample photo to include with my pattern.  I also need to work out a few other sizes, and if it all works out then I'll introduce it here.  All I can say for now is that it's retro and based on a vintage item found in a yard sale.  Very cute, very practical, and I'm inspired to do some really funky things with it.

In other news, I'm knitting a sweater for the German-Nana (did I mention this already??) and it's coming along nicely.  My only issue is that the Cascade 220 superwash (which I love) is pooling just a bit through the sleeves so I'm now working from both ends of the ball to minimize this.  I could have just pressed on with the sleeves as they were, but I'm a bit OCD about these things so I ripped it back and started again with one strand from the inside and one from the outside, alternating them every row.  There's still a very slight amount of pooling but much less, and much less obvious than the first go-round.  When that's done, I'll be finishing a piece for a customer and then there's a possibility that I may need to knit an angora scarf for another woman who can't find what she's looking for.  I suggested she try Amazon, and Etsy, and then let me know if she still can't find it as I've got a connection to some 100% angora yarn.  I'm never gonna get Dante's socks knit at this rate.  The knitter's kids have no handknits.  But when I finally get back to knitting my own stuff, I'll have fantastic labels to put on them because I ordered custom labels from Namemaker.com.  They do lots of different types, and their minimum is really tiny so I could try them out before I commit myself to 1000 labels that will sit around my place taking up space.  I'll let you know what I think of them when they arrive, but I'm excited about them.

I'm also excited about the jeans, long-sleeve T-shirts, and gray wool pea-coat that I ordered from Gap!  I'm hoping this coat will fit better than the one I bought last year.  It was just too big, but I never got around to having it altered.  I figured that I'd try the next size down this year and see how it fits.  I really wanted a pea-coat anyway, and it was way on sale.  I also got a few long-sleeved tee's because they're really practical in the winter and they work really well under my vests, and short-sleeved sweaters.  And lastly, I got two pairs of skinny jeans.  I know.  I wasn't going to.  I'm more of a boot-cut jeans girl, but it's hard to wear my boots with them when it snows and I need to tuck the pants into the boots.  There's just so much fabric in the legs to tuck in.  So I figured I'd try the jeans with my boots this winter and see how they work out.  This is either going to be really cute, or really not. 

Finally, let's talk about school.  I'm burning out folks.  I'm frustrated with the ridiculous level of work in classes that have nothing to do with my major (thankfully, these two are the last of my general ed classes).  I'm irritated that the classroom layout was changed so drastically that I missed an assignment (my first missed assignment since I started school) because I didn't know we even had an assignment.  I got it turned in, but I had to hustle to keep from losing more than one grade on it.  I've never even been late with an assignment before.  Not even when my entire family was sick with H1N1 flu last year.  I've never earned less than an "A" on an assignment either, but I guess this is my first.  I'm also irritated because I've been assigned to a group for this week's discussion, and no one in my group has responded to the email I sent out 3 days ago regarding the project.  I finally just did my assigned part, and sent an email to the instructor telling her about it.  Hopefully we're graded individually and not as a unit, because I'm not gonna lose points for other people failing to hold up their end...and I'm not gonna do their work for them.  Guess I'll update you on that next week.  While you wait, here's a photo of a cat being silly.