If it's quiet 'round the blog, must be coming up on Summer Knitty time!

Hi, y'all! How's it going?

Lots of Knitty production going on here, which is why it gets blog-silent for a while. I'm furiously busy, but writing about what I'm doing during production season is not the most scintillating reading. Never think I've forgotten you. I have had enough free brain-space to keep up the Twitter posts...because 140 characters is easy peasy!

Meanwhile, the iPod is on shuffle and this season, the Tragically Hip and a little Amanda Palmer are keeping me company as I code and Photoshop and try to keep up with the e-mail.

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So, is that all that's happening around here? Well, actually, the biggest news is that I just found out I'm going to teach at WEBS! All the details are on my tour page. Northampton + vicinity Knittyheads...come out and represent!

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What else? Well, I have set a goal for myself. I want to teach in Hawaii. There are quite a few knitting shops and dangit, I can't get the leis out of my head. And yes, the fact that it's the land of the ukulele, my newest and most sincere love, might be another reason I'm really hoping to go. Posting my travel/teaching dreams to this blog has worked before, so I'm going to try it again:

Anyone out there have LYS connections in Hawaii?
introductions most sincerely welcomed! you can reach me at
[my first name] AT amysinger DOT ca

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Not in Hawaii, but you'd like me to come teach at your LYS? I would love to do that! Write me and let's see what we can get happening!

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In knitting news, I am ready to bind off Ishbel , but the remaining yarn may not be enough. Yes, I know that the size I am knitting calls for more than 400 yards and this skein is about 400 yards. I guess I just believe in the power of positive thinking.

I had to frog back half a repeat and invent my own way to get the points in place on the outside edge, and will have no idea if it's worked until I actually sit down to bind off. However I have a lot of work to do [see 2nd paragraph above :)] and am saving this as a reward for work completed.

So I'm getting back to it.

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Don't forget the Hawaii thing.

What is a person to do with all this technology?

I loves me some new technology. Shiny is good. And I have fallen for Twitter in a huge way. Writing a blog post can take an hour, depending on how much info I need to share. Writing a Tweet [a single twitter post, no longer than 140 characters] takes less than a minute, if even that. Perfect for short-attention-span girl. And perfect for communicating silly things and even important things quickly.

It's getting so that Twitter will spread news faster than the conventional news media does. It's an amazing thing to be witnessing, the birth of this new medium of communication.

Anyway, I'm *not* abandoning the blog; not at all. But I am blogging less frequently. So in order to provide ongoing evidence that I am still alive -- and to share little tidbits of news, some Knitty-related and some not -- I've added a Twitter feed to the right sidebar. It's under the little blue birdie icon. It'll show the last three things I've posted.

Big stuff and the WWW will continue to appear on the blog. And should I feel all expository, there will be actual real blog posts. I just didn't want to leave anyone wondering.

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While I'm here, a few things of interest:

- I'm going to be at the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival for the first time ever [!] this weekend, and I hope to see you there! I'll be toting shwag [new buttons!] and if you are too shy to ask, just don't be. Come up and say hi. That's why I'm there! My homebase for the weekend will be Jennie the Potter's booth, so if you really need a button fix, that's where to hang out.

- I'm also going to be doing some cool pre-festival stuff at Lovelyarns. I've got my own button on their front page! [giggle] Anyway, I haven't been out that way since 2004 [!], so if you'd like to hear my No Sheep lecture and ask questions -- about No Sheep stuff or anything else Knittyish, please come and fill the auditorium! Details are on the Lovelyarns site. And if you'd like any books signed, just bring them with. I'll be glad to pull out the sharpie after the lecture.

- On the needles, because people like to know, is a chemo cap for a friend's mom who's just started radiation. I found this pattern and the mom in question liked it a lot. As I swatched, though, I couldn't imagine having garter stitch against a sensitive scalp, so I switched to stockinette and matched the gauge. It's a great pattern and swaps easily into stockinette, and worn with the smooth side in, it'll look quite similar to the picture anyway. And I'm knitting it in a variegated colorway of Fixation, so I don't even have to change colors. Knitting chemo caps is such a bittersweet thing to do. I'm sure we'd all love never to have to knit another one, but being able to help in a small way is a good thing.

- I'm also going to cast on another sweater. Another Liesl, this time with the higher neck and in a totally different yarn. Liesl is the sweater I find most flattering on my body and the one I never hesitate to reach for. So I should have another. I was going to use the Mission Falls cotton I have stashed, but a morning newsletter from Lettuce Knit suggested Rowan Summer Tweed for the sweater, and that's a brilliant idea. In fact, I have a sweater's worth in Brilliant [a super-sexy deep pink] and am going to cast on as soon as the chemo cap is done.

Okay, I've got prep to do for the trip, so I'll sign off. See you soon!

do you Tweet?

Knitty does.

Twitter is one of those weird web things that you don't see a use for until you stalk it for a while. Some people use it for fan contact, like the fabulous Greg Grunberg [@greggrunberg] from Heroes and just about everything JJ Abrams has ever done. @woot is where you'll find Woot.com's deal of the day as soon as it's released. Other famous tweeters include John Cleese and John Hodgman and Leo Laporte and even Dooce.

You know the Facebook status line by your profile pic? It's kind of like that, but is meant to be changed any time you feel like it or think of something you want to share.

And now @knittydotcom exists to send you fast-breaking Knitty and knitting-related news as it happens. :-) Okay, it's much less serious than that. It's just for fun, though there may be a time when I'll send out something you'll want to know about right away.

You can follow someone's tweets [that's what the individual posts are called] without tweeting yourself, if you're shy. Or you can join in the fun. There are lots of built-in browser utilities that send you tweets as they happen, as well as programs like TwitterBerry [for Blackberry] and multiple options for the iPhone, too. These utilities also let you send your own tweets so those who follow you can see what you're up to.

If you've already got a Twitter account, just add @knittydotcom to the accounts you already follow. If you're new, just sign up for a free account and tell your friends! Let's start a Knitty.com Twitter army!