If you’re going to order yarn from Knit Picks, I highly recommend ordering some color cards while you’re at it. Face it: there’s just no way to mentally mix and match colors off a website, the colors are never going to be what you expect when you’re looking at digital pictures being displayed on a computer monitor.

These are probably one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. They’re less than $2 each, and it also lets you feel the yarn. Pictured open is the color card for Merino Style.

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Looks a bit like berber carpet, doesn’t it? Feels like it, too, until you put it through the blocking process. This is color #10 (I guess they don’t really have names).

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I worked with a few skeins of Noro Blossom last night (I’ll post pics of the final result after the recipient has received it). Man, it felt like that stuff was fighting me every step of the way.

It defeated any attempts to check gauge, and I ended up having to work by just measuring it and increasing or decreasing as necessary. The entire time I was knitting, I was getting 4 stitches to the inch. But the end result is 21 inches long, at 64 stitches. Try doing the math on that one, I dare you.

Any textured yarn is tricky to work with, but the lumps in Blossom seemed particularly obstinate. I think the lumps are to blame for the freakish non-gauge. It didn’t even feel very nice as I was working with it – not nearly as nice as I would have expected from a mohair/silk blend.

That is, not until I blocked it. I’m not sure what strange alchemy happens when you give it a bit of a soak and lay it out to dry, but it changed into a completely different creature. When I peeked into the laundry closet this morning to see the final results, I found that the sullen, uncooperative thing I had knit was gone. As it dried in the night, it was replaced by a soft, drape-y marvel in Noro’s fantabulous colors.

At any rate: Noro Blossom. Hated working with it, love it after it’s blocked.

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Lego knitting robot. Using a Lego Mindstorms robotics kit, this clever clever man made a knitting robot which is both effective and hypnotic. Works a bit slowly, but if you set it up when you left for work in the morning, and came home at night to discover a scarf had been knit in your absence – heck, I’d buy one!

Too bad it seems to be fitted out with, what are those, say about size US 508 needles?

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A little while back, I decided to experiment with running ads down the sidebar. I did this out of curiosity, because I wanted to know what the click-through and payout rate would be, but the only way to find out was to give it a try. I decided to sign up with the primary contextual text ad provider (you know the one I’m talking about) and try it for three months.

I had tried this particular ad server in the past, on a movie review website that I ran for several years. The problem then was that I wanted the ads to say “click here to buy or rent movies.” But since they were contextual, they would pick up words that I used in the movie review and run ads for it. So for example if I said “no cheerleaders were harmed in the making of this movie, although perhaps they should have been,” the ads for that particular review would all be selling cheerleader outfits.

This got tiresome, and I pulled the ads after only a few weeks.

I had better luck with the contextual ads for this site, since it’s pretty knitting-specific. I would say that 95% of the time, the ads were completely relevant. Occasionally I would accidentally say a target word, like the time I said “turbo” as in “Addi turbo needles,” and my site displayed a full-length ad for a shiny turbo SUV. Charming.

Nevertheless, despite their high degree of relevancy, the click-through rate was abysmal. I am not allowed to share specific numbers with you as part of my contract with Non-Evil Contextual Text Ad Provider (henceforth, NECAP). So let’s just say that in three months I earned enough to buy a Sunday paper, but not enough to buy a Sunday paper with sales tax.

I think the problem lies in the fact that, although knitting is very hot, there don’t seem to be many knitting companies buying space with NECAP. No matter where you go or how often you refresh the page, you’ll still see pretty much the same five ads. Occasionally they would switch places, but it was always the same five companies, no matter where you look.

So forget the NECAP ads.

I’m still willing to sell ad space on an informal basis, though, and if you’re a knitting-related business with an online presence, email adspace@fisherking.org if you’re interesting in purchasing space. My website stats are pretty good, and I’m sure we can work something out.

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