I was supposed to be blocking Kiri yesterday, but like the best of plans, life had other ideas in mind for me. Nick stayed home, something about his stomach being upset (more like stress that he didn’t know how to handle, but one mental health day and he’s back to school). I do my blocking when Nick is in school. Mostly because our house is tiny and it’s his bedroom floor that I use as my giant blocking board. When he’s home, I run the risk of foot prints all over my hand knits which kind of defeats the whole wash, soak and block on a clean floor on top of towels technique.

Instead I spent my day wandering around the internet, checking the incoming links to the blog and seeing who was saying what about whatever brought them to my little corner of the internet. I noticed some links from the knitting forums and began checking them out. Most of the incoming links these days are regarding Maelstrom and honestly as the designer, it’s exciting to see what complete strangers think of something that I created.

Some of the forums I am a silent and lurking member of, others I joined today to help clarify any difficulties that knitters might have with the pattern. I pop up, say hello and give whatever information is needed. One of those forums just happened to be at The Knitter’s Review. I did my little posting there and went on my merry way for a bit. Shortly thereafter, a post directed to me came through and I just about fell out of my chair. It was something I never expected, nor did I ever dare to hope for. I stared at the monitor, for exactly how long, I really couldn’t tell you. I wandered around the house. Then I sent an email to Melanie. The whole day I kept muttering to myself (yes, I do that. Don’t you?) and kept checking the posting to see if I had really seen what I thought I saw or if I was in some sort of warped dream.

Melanie called. I told her that she would never guess what happened. I told her that THE Clara Parkes liked my shawl pattern and gave me a very nice compliment on it. Melanie said the name sounded familiar and asked me why it sounded so familiar… All I had to tell her was the name of Clara’s book. (There may have been some squealing at that point on my part, the details are a bit fuzzy.)

Later that night, when Spurg came home, I still had the page open on my monitor. I told him that something had happened and told him to read it for himself. He did, then he saw her signature line and realized that she was the publisher of The Knitter’s Review. There was a look on his face that spoke volumes and clearly he was very impressed. Of course I didn’t pass on the opportunity to tell him that this means that I have just opened the door on designing, but I’m going to need to buy more yarn to make a real go of this…

And no, he didn’t say another word.