A few of you have noticed (and kindly reported) our website issues here at PurlingPlans & Tadandmel over the last few days (weeks, months….) Thanks for your patience and all should now be well! On the recommendation of a friend, we’ve switched from the intensely problematic Globat to ICDSoft, whose support over the last few days has been nothing short of stellar.  Both sites now seem to be working great (better than ever, in fact!) Color us impressed! Good riddance Globat! Go ICD Soft!

Oh, and if you have trouble getting to the site now (same address, same station) - it could be a caching issue (imagine my frustration as my husband pulls up my website effortlessly on his computer, and I got only errors - thank goodness he’s a smartie and got me sorted out!) If you are getting errors too instead of the real site, click this link to for instructions on how to clear your cache.

Of course, you would only be able to see this post in bloglines or another reader if you were getting the error; otherwise you’d just be seeing the error. Well, here’s hoping it helps some of you!

Thanks for sticking with us through the change. I’ve enjoyed blogging and interacting with readers and other bloggers more than I ever imagined that I would, so I’m very glad to have a better solution that makes reading easier for all of you  and makes posting & managing the site easier too!

You all are amazing! Thank you so much for your donations, kind words, and well-wishes for our 3Day walk. After 3 years of doing this event, I have often been overwhelmed by the generousity and well wishes of acquaintances and strangers (really everyone who donates, but most especially those people that I don’t know well or at all)! I honestly didn’t know if anyone out there would be willing or able to donate to the walk - we all have our causes that we support and there are so many worthy ones - but I thought that if even one person could donate, it would be worth the post. I cannot thank you enough for your kind words and generousity!! It’s hard for me to tell you how much it really means to me, so I’ll just say THANK YOU!

I am working on a contest (to include those who have already donated, of course) to thank you and give you a little incentive as well. I’m stewing on it at the moment, but expect to see some details in the next week or two. I’ve copied the 3Day post to it’s own page in the tabs above and added links to the sidebar so that if you are looking for an update, it will always be in the same place and make it easy to pass on by if you choose.

A little more mumbo-jumbo: I had some hiccups last week switching over to a new email account for this site, and several emails got lost on their way to me. I do my best to keep up with my inbox; so if by chance you emailed me in the last week - week and a half and I have not responded, please accept my apologies, and if you would be so kind, please try me again (tadandmel at hotmail dot com or purlingplans at yahoo dot com). Thanks for your patience and understanding.

First off, I wanted to say thank you for all your kind words and comments about my MagKnits project. And that doesn’t count as administrative mumbo-jumbo, that’s just a heartfelt thanks. This is my first pattern, so there are bound to be hiccups; I’m doing my best to make it as good as it can be, and as clearly written as possible in case anyone actually does want to make it (that whole concept is still pretty much beyond me!). I am excited, but very nervous too.

Administrative mumbo jumbo (because there is some!)

I’ve been doing some work on the site with the help of my resident IT expert (he’s so good!), and changing/adding some things to the site. I’m still really new to all of this - can you believe that a couple of months ago, I didn’t even know that such a wonderful thing as RSS feeds existed?! Now I couldn’t do without them - there’s no way I could keep up with all the great blogs out there otherwise. Anyway, I was playing with my feeds and I might have made a boo-boo and broken one of them. I think it’s fixed now, but please let me know if you are having any issues with the feeds (though how would you know that if the feed didn’t show you this post? hmmm.)

I added the About Me widget that I have really liked on other blogs - I just think it’s a nice introduction. I also finally set up a separate email for my site, something that Tad has been encouraging me to do. You can still email me at the old tadandmel account, but comments and emails from the link to the left will direct to my new purling plans inbox.

I also finally added my spinning and other pics to the Galleries page, and organized the knitting projects by year - check ‘em out if your interested

End Administrative mumbo-jumbo

Let’s talk about yarn, that’s way more fun, right?

I’ve been thinking alot about yarn - One of the things that I’m shooting for is to buy yarn thoughtfully, with knowledge of what it is that I’m buying and why. On one end of this is expressing support for small dye shops and independent fiber artists - other people who are sharing the dream. Another avenue is focussing on natural fibers thoughtfully produced by companies that care about our world and environment (think Peace Fleece, Manos del Uraguay, Vermont Organic Fiber Company). I don’t expect never to succumb to impulse yarn purchases, and in fact my first design is in a yarn that I probably would not have used had I thought twice about it and really looked at the fiber content. But in general, this is something that’s important to me and that I’m working toward as a knitter and a consumer.

With that in mind, and with the next couple of designs that I have in mind focussing on color, I ordered one skein of each color of Green Mountain Spinnery’s Cotton Comfort. One skein in each color?! Yes my friends, I know they have shade cards - I ordered those too. Much good they do me. I have a visualization weakness - ask my dear creative husband, who thinks and dreams in great detail and vivid color - my brain just doesn’t work that way. I need to see it, I need to see it in color, and in order to be able to tell how they will look together, I need to swatch them together in different combinations. Thing is, and the thing that pushed me over the edge with this purchase, is that ALL the colors are beautiful (and colored with low-impact dyes), ranging from warm naturals to gorgeous brights. I can actually see using all of these skeins just for swatching and small projects, and even my color challenged brain can see several different lovely combinations coming of it. I don’t expect these to be something that hides in my stash. And it’s money well spent (and that I would have spent on random skeins of impulse yarns for swatching anyway) supporting a responsible company. My brain is focussed. I have a few things I want to make with this yarn, and once I have some successful swatches, I will be ordering more. In the meantime, I’m working on winding in between knitting on my MagKnits project. Want to see more? I do.