Elizabeth (SquidWidget) with her bag “Barf Bag”!

Elizabeth took the spirit of the contest to heart and really went above and beyond to create a unique and one of a kind piece.

We loved her creative take on the original pattern. As a matter of fact, I was so inspired by her bag that I will be making one with similar design elements (the mouth!) to hold my sock yarn as well.

We hope your prize yarn will go towards many beautiful things for you and your beautiful family, especially considering if you looked anything like your bag during your pregnancy you deserve something beautiful!

Congratulations to Elizabeth.

Our 2nd Place winner is Tonks with her bag “George”.

This bag was modeled after designer Tonks ex boyfriend and the bird is named Puck. We were absolutely amazed with the detail on Puck and loved the extra kick the bird added to the piece.

We’re glad “George” is no longer in your life and even happier that Puck still is! Congratulations on your win, Tonks and we hope the yarn you get will be incorporated into your Knitted Wedding.

And our 3rd Place Winner is Aleta (RocketBride) with her bag “J. Harvey”

She got style points for actually having the inspiration hold the bag to take a picture. We just love the mildly amused yet obviously suspicious expression on Mr. Inspirations face.

Aleta also shared with us that she stuffed her honeymoon nightie and wedding band into the bag as well, which we thought was a nice touch. Being in the throes of a separation is hard, we’re glad that this contest offered a worthy diversion and ended on a happy note for you Aleta!

We want to thank (yet again.) everyone who entered the contest and everyone who voted. We’re hoping that the next contest we sponsor will go a little smoother, this was a learning experience for us and we’re glad everyone was understanding and patient with us while we worked the kinks out.

Stay tuned for pictures of the prize yarn before we ship it off to it’s new homes!

We closed the My Ex is Full of Knit contest last night and voting has officially begun in the forums. To share your two cents on who you think should win all that fabulous loot, click here!

We had some wonderful entries, and of course, nearly half of them came in the last 24 hours. Showing once again that knitters will absolutely wait until the last possible moment. I have a theory about this too, I’m guessing most of these have been almost done for a while but the knitter who was making it did one of a few things:

1. Did all the knitting and felting and stared at the blank face for a few days trying to decide the best possible way to decorate it.

2. Finished the whole thing in one big she-bang, but then wasn’t pleased with the results and fiddled and tweaked it until they ran out of time.

3. Waited until 11:30 p.m. Sunday night to even start it and then knitted on it until 4 a.m. and took a nap while it dried before doing the face while eating their breakfast before work on Monday.

Now, if it were me, I would have done option 3, because that’s the kind of person I am. My mother in law is the kind of knitter who would probably do the second option. Just goes to show, even among knitters it takes all kinds.

Speaking of taking all kinds, if you haven’t seen the Gallery yet you should definitely check out the great entries we got. We have quite the diverse crowd over there, we’ve got ex-husbands, ex-bosses, physical manifestations of things that make people miserable that people want to expel from their lives…everyone really took to the true spirit of the pattern and the contest. I am incredibly proud of every single entry that came in, they are all very thoughtful and brilliantly executed.

Voting runs through April 5th, and from there we’ll pick a winner out of the top 5 popular votes. You can expect a blog post early next week with the winner and the loot we’re sending out to them.

We will nail down how to create the most perfect baby bootie the world has ever seen. We will accomplish it. And at the rate we’re going, we will accomplish it THIS WEEK.

I joke. But seriously, we’ve received even more feedback on how we can help you guys do the booties in style. In addition to the video linked a few days ago, we’re also going to add the directions for the flower that is pictured on one of the booties. It is the same flower pattern that is on our Mo-Arc Bag in the free pattern section. Until I get a chance to update the PDF file for the baby bootie pattern here is the directions for the flower in the meantime.

Small Flower:

Cast on 30

Row 1 and all odd rows: purl

Row 2: k2tog every stitch

Row 4: k2tog (4 times), k1, k2tog (3 times)

Row 6: k2tog every stitch

Row 8: k2tog every stitch

Row 10: bind off

Leaves:

Cast on 3

Row 1 and all odd rows: purl

Row 2: k1,yo,k1,yo,k1

Row 4: k2,yo,k1,yo,k2

You can continue adding in this manner keeping one stitch in between the yarn overs to create as large or small of a leaf as you like. Then begin decreases:

Decrease rows: ssk, k to 2 from end, k2tog

Purl a row

Repeat decrease row until only 2 stitches remain, bind off.

These also look dashing on just about any bag you could ever knit; in your hair; glued to hairless cats and any other place you could legally get away with putting them. (Though, I’ve heard the Law looks down on gluing things to hairless cats….)

REMINDER! The My Ex is Full of Knit Contest closes on MONDAY NIGHT! Be sure to get your entries in. The entries I received today will be up there shortly and voting will begin next week!

We’ve gotten a few emails, comments and messages from people who were slightly confused by the directions for our Oh My! Baby Booties, so yesterday I made a little video to show how to work the top of the foot for this pattern. The video picks up after you’ve knit the first 14 rows in stockinette flat, and shows you how to knit the top of the foot and leaves off as you begin working the garter stitch rows before you work the toe decreases. It’s short, but it should illustrate a little clearer how to do this part of the pattern.

Let me know what you guys think! If this makes more sense, and there is another technique or part of a pattern you’d like to see illustrated in video let us know and we’ll work on putting those videos together. We’ve got plans for the curbing technique already, but that one will be downloadable when you purchase the pattern.

So now, shower me with praise and adoration because I feel like a big dork having my voice on YouTube.

The ‘My Ex is Full of Knit’ contest that is.

We’ve gotten some great entries, but in true knitter fashion it appears that the bulk of people are waiting until the VERY last minute to finish (or in some cases, start) their Ex bags.

Be sure to check out the entries we have gotten so far that are in our gallery, and as they come in more will be added.

In case you’re new to the ADHD Knitting website and blog, the contest runs through midnight on March 31st which is next Monday. Voting will open shortly there after and run through April 5th. Voting is open to the public and will be conducted via a poll on our forums. The top 5 entries picked from the open voting will be the finalists, and the winners will be chosen by the ADHD Knitting staff. Winners will be notified by email and then posted on the blog!

This week we’re working on putting together the winning loot to be shipped out mid April to our winners. Prizes will be packages of yarn valued at $500, $300 and $200 respectively. The yarns will be yarn store quality (no cheap acrylic from us!) and will include brands like Crystal Palace, Rowan and Berroco, plus whatever else we have lying around the work space stash.

So my question today is this: for contests in the future is there anything other than yarn you’d like to see given away? Needles or sets of needles? Roving? A spinning wheel? (Okay, truthfully, if we end up being able to give away a spinning wheel it better be because Gail and I already have one and don’t need another one.) Knitting totes or other accessories? What else is of interest to knitters? Is there a particular author that you’d like to see books from in our giveaways? Gift certificates to yarn stores? I’m not making promises but we always want to know what our customers want/need.

I need more good quotes! Email me your quotes about mental illness, knitting, insomnia, mania, yarn, or anything loosely related to maxxnv@aol.com. If I use one of your entries you may win a little surprise from me! (Nothing like $500 worth of yarn, but I’ll do my best.)

Until next time, check us out on Ravelry.com too, at the ADHD Knitters group. There’s lots of chatting, advice and yarn licking going on over there and we’re up ’til the wee hours of the morning gabbing about all sorts of interesting things.

We’ve had some questions about a few things pertaining to the contest. I’m going to answer the most frequently asked questions here.

Can I submit more than one entry?

Yes! You can enter as many times as you like as long as you follow all the other applicable rules.

Can I do someone famous or a politician?

Sadly no, while you and I might find it amusing we do not want to open ourselves up to legal action or even to establish ourselves as being for and/or against a particular person. If you do one of a political or pop culture figure you can still send us the pictures and we may all get a chuckle out of it, but we unfortunately will not post them in our gallery or enter them into the contest.

Can I use a different yarn than the suggested yarn?

Absolutely! Just like any other knitting or crochet pattern, our suggested yarn is just that: a suggestion. We have found that the Crystal Palace Fjord yarn gives us the results we were looking for and that they have great skin and hair color color ways in their selection. However you can feel free to use whatever yarn you have available to you that will come up with a similar result. We also suggest using Cascade 220, Lambs Pride Worsted or Berroco Peruvia. Each of those yarns also felt beautifully and result in a dense and sturdy fabric. If you find a yarn that works well please just let us know so we can add it to our list of yarns that work for the pattern!

What’s with all the anger? I’m a peaceful person and don’t like the idea of so much bad juju in my knitting.

We respect and acknowledge that this contest, and indeed this pattern may not be for everyone. We hope that if this isn’t up your alley that you will respect that other people may find this contest and pattern fun, interesting and even maybe a little cathartic. We at ADHD Knitting like to laugh instead of cry and we viewed this project and this pattern as a way of reclaiming a situation that may have been hurtful or upsetting. We like to think of knitting as therapy and this is a special kind of therapy. If this isn’t your cup of tea we understand and we hope that you will participate in our upcoming contests. We have pretty short attention spans and once this contest is over we will happily move on to the next one. We promise the next one will be nicer.

I hope this answers some of the more popular questions about our contest. We are still working on getting our gallery put together and we will be able to post the submissions in the next week or two.

We also need your help! Please tell your knitting groups, your LYS, your friends online, your blog readers, etc. about this contest. The only way we can continue contests of this nature is with the continued support of people like you! It’s free, you don’t have to buy anything to participate. We offer the pattern for free and all we ask is that you have fun with it and tell other people about it.

Below is a badge that you can feel free to add to your blog to show other people about our contest. Simply add it and have it link back to our blog (www.adhdknitting.com/blog) and you can help ensure that we will have more contests in the future.

As always feel free to email us if you have any other questions about our site or the contest.

Happy knitting guys!

We have worked diligently to be able to offer a crocheted version of the ‘My Ex’ pattern so that we could include crocheters in the ‘My Ex is Full of Knit’ contest.

So here it is: My Ex - Crocheted!

This pattern will also be available for free for the duration of the contest through the end of March and then we will have it for sale in our store.

We have received our first submission for the contest as well, so we will begin posting the pictures shortly. We’re very excited that this is taking off. Be sure to get your copy of the pattern and get knitting/crocheting so you can enter too!

We will also be working on converting some of our other patterns into crochet as well so that we can offer a wider variety of things for every possible kind of crafter.

After careful consideration we decided it was probably not a good idea to allow submissions of famous people or their likeness into the contest. This will keep all of us from potentially having an uncomfortable situation involving said famous person or their lawyers. I’m sure everyone can find someone somewhere in their own personal past to recreate for this purpose.

I can think of several celebrity figures I would love to render in yarn and then methodically drive my super sharp sock needles through their eyes as a form of fiber voodoo, sadly however, it’s probably not a good idea to put that on the Internet for the world to see. So, should you decide to use the My Ex pattern to exact a celebrity revenge scheme please just keep it to yourself.

Actually, you can still send us a picture, we’d all get a chuckle out of it, we just can’t enter it into the contest. Sorry!

On to other news!

We will be releasing a crochet version of the My Ex pattern in the next day or two, so for any of you that want to hook your way to the fabulous prize yarn, you’ll be able to play along too! Look for it in our free pattern section and on our blog.

We will be putting up new photos in our gallery over the next few days. More things that will eventually become ADHD patterns as well as some fun things from around Gail’s house and the ADHD Knitting workshop.

More fun things coming soon!

It’s time guys! Here is the official low down on the ADHD ‘My Ex is Full of Knit’ Contest Extravaganza.

We are asking you to knit up our ‘My Ex’ pattern in the likeness of whoever you don’t like. It can be your ex husband, your ex boss, your ex best friend, or your ex mother in law. (It can be your current mother in law for all we care actually…) When you have finished knitting the bag to look like whoever it is you’re not a fan of, then you send us in a picture of your finished bag and a little paragraph about the person you modeled it after and why you chose them. You can also send us a reference photo of the person you modeled it after if you’d like, but this is not required.

The ‘My Ex’ pattern is now available for free here. It will remain in the free section through the end of March, so get it now while it’s not only free but could win you some free yarn!

Here’s the trick; make this bag look as much like the person you are modeling it after as possible. If they have a particular hairstyle then try to mimic that in yarn, do they have facial piercing’s? Tattoos? Do they wear glasses? An eye patch? Figure out how to knit it. We give you the basic bag pattern but it’s up to you to embellish it to make it as creepy and/or realistic as possible.

Special points will be given to anyone who goes above and beyond the basic pattern. We want to see bling! We want style! Panache! Do it up and do it up big. We want to see everything from gold fillings to freckles.

Once you have knit up your Ex email as many photos as you like (we may only post one or we may post them all if they’re interesting enough) along with your story about why you chose the person you did. Email entries to maxxnv@aol.comwith the subject ‘My Ex is Full of Knit Contest’ in the subject line. In order to submit an entry you must be registered on our site, registration is free and gives you access to our forums as well. You can register here. Once you are registered be sure to include whatever name you choose as your username for the site.

We are currently working on developing a special gallery on the website for the photos so in a week or two we will begin adding the submissions to that gallery and they will be available for viewing and voting. You will be able to vote once a day for your favorite entry. Feel free to launch a campaign on your own blogs and Ravelry pages to get as many people as possible to vote for your entry, the more people who come and participate the more fun this will be.

Entries will be accepted starting immediately through midnight on March 31st 2008. As soon as we begin receiving entries we will post them on the gallery page through out the month so that you can watch the progression of the contest. Entries submitted after March 31st will be ineligible for voting and will not be considered for our prizes. Voting will continue through April 5th. On April 5th the staff of ADHD Knitting will take the top 5 entries (determined by the number of peer votes they receive) and pick our 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners from those 5 entries. Winners will be notified no later than April 10th 2008 and prizes will be mailed by April 30th 2008.

First place winner will receive a selection of yarn valued at $500 and bragging rights. (Also they’ll be featured on our website’s main page.)

Second place will win a selection of yarn valued at $300 and third place will win a selection of yarn valued at $200.

We do not believe in yucky acrylic yarn, so the yarn the winners will receive will be a selection of yarns from brands such as Berroco, Rowan and Crystal Palace.

Now, go spread the word! Tell your friends! Tell your knitting group! Tell your LYS!

More details on how to view the entries and how to vote on your favorite will be posted here in the blog and on our forum in the coming weeks.

See below for the ‘Lawyer Version’ of our contest rules. I can’t wait to see everyone’s entries! We’ll be posting our own little versions in the coming days too, to keep you inspired.

“CONTEST RULES”

1. Download the “My Ex” pattern from the ADHD Knitting website and create your own “My Ex” from the pattern.
2. Email photos of your “My Ex” to ADHD Knitting. All photos must be received at ADHD Knitting by March 31, 2008 at 11:59 PM. All entries must include an email address so that winners can be notified.
3. All contest photos will be posted on the ADHD Knitting website between April 1 and April 5, 2008. Cast your votes by sending an email to ADHD Knitting! All votes must be received by April 5, 2008 at 11:59 PM.
4. ADHD Knitting will select First, Second and Third place winners based on votes and judging by Gail and staff.
5. Winners will be notified by email by April 10, 2008. Winners must provide a shipping address for prizes.
6. First place winner will receive $500 in yarn products (retail value), Second place winner will receive $300 in yarn products (retail value), Third place winner will receive $200 in yarn products (retail value). Prizes will be sent by ADHD Knitting not later than April 30, 2008.
7. All photographs submitted may be used by ADHD Knitting in future marketing materials.
8. Employees of ADHD Knitting and members of Sin City Knits are not eligible.

Today’s question for our blog readers is: when you feel manic what do you do? Do you call everyone in your address book just to chat? Do you clean? Do you go shopping? Do you cut your hair real short and dye it a wild color?

(And those of you without documented neurosis are more than welcome to answer as well, everyone has a manic moment at some point in their life.)

I can tell you that at one point or another I have done all the things I listed as examples. (This is how I ended up with a pixie cut dyed bright blue when I was 19 and have several credit cards that are so full they could spontaneously combust and I wouldn’t be surprised.)

Gail cleans and organizes. I have left her house at six p.m. one night and come back at ten a.m. the following morning to discover that the entire house has been reorganized. Books are moved, yarn is moved and color coded (and organized by brand and weight….) the coffee mugs have been moved, the coffee pot is on a different counter, things I thought I left on the desk have been filed. (I use the word ‘filed’ loosely here.) Gail is a master at organization. When Gail gets manic she does two things really really well; talk and organize.

My favorite thing that Gail has ever done in a manic OCD moment is color code her balls of Noro.

She literally has hundreds of tiny little balls of expertly separated colors. All those gorgeous flowing color ways that we love about Noro? Gone. Neatly compartmentalized into a whole color wheel of segregated little balls of only one color. This is awesome when you’re doing the wonderful little felted flowers and leaves that are on several of our purses.

When I met Gail her house was a lovely fluffy explosion of fiber. It was everywhere, in every corner, in every book shelf, on every surface. I walked into her dining room one day and there was even yarn stuffed into what looked like a beautiful antique wine cabinet.

Several weeks later I came to visit Gail and she had done this:

All the yarn was put neatly in one room, separated by brand, fiber content and color.

Her books where all lined up neatly in her china cabinet and organized by type of craft (knitting, cake decorating, decoupage, etc.)

Never again will I underestimate the power of a few manic hours and a severe case of OCD.

So, now that we’ve shared a little bit about what we do when we’re feeling particularly crazy, let us know what you do.

Also, more details on our contest are coming up very soon! I’ll give you one more little hint about it though to get your brains running the right direction:

Think of your least favorite person ever. How would you render their likeness in yarn? Would you be willing to do it for $500 worth of yarn? (I’d be willing to do it for free and call it therapy, but hey the yarn would be gravy!) What kinds of details would you need to add to make it clear that you were knitting that specific person?

Be sure to visit our forum and submit your vote in our poll and let us know what kind of yarn you’d like to see included in the prize yarns! If the yarn you’d like to see isn’t on that list, leave a comment over there about what kind of yarn you would like to see and we’ll take it into consideration.

“I joke around a lot about the manic times because they’re funny. We manics do outrageous things and it is part of our colorful nature.”

-Patty Duke