While we’re waiting for our voting gallery to be built I thought I’d start posting the submissions here so people can at least get an idea of what the competition looks like.

Our first submission comes from Susan also known as ‘Flowox’ on our message board and on Ravelry.

This charming fella is Susan’s ex-husband who we will refer to here as ‘Bloodsucking Doug’. According to Susan, Bloodsucking Doug has been immortalized in fiber for the following sins:

“He was very abusive to me and the neighbor once saw him hitting me and he was arrested for domestic violence.  His name is Douglas and he sucks the life right out of you as he knows how to really mess with your mind and get you to fall right for everything he tries to tell you….

He’s just a person who loves to manipulate others and use them for all they’re worth and he’s a very abusive person…”

Keep ‘Bloodsucking Doug’ in mind when voting opens in the coming weeks!

More coming soon! Remember you can enter more than once, so if you do one and don’t like it send it in anyway, you never know what other people may find interesting!

I know that fiber folk of all types are caring and giving people, well right now there are some little faces that need some help.

Right now in Pima County in Arizona there are almost 800 animals that have been seized from a home there in what has been described as the worst conditions some of the responders have ever seen. These animals are victims who cannot help themselves. They are being cared for by the Humane Society of Southern Arizona. Humane Societies are notoriously under staffed and under funded and I’m certain that this crisis has put a tremendous burden on them. I hope that each of you can find room in your hearts and bank accounts to donate a few dollars to help the Humane Society in Arizona continue to give these animals the care and attention that they need and to help them find forever homes instead of being euthanized. Please also forward this email on to anyone you think may be able to help.

If you would like to adopt one of these animals that would be even better and I am offering to personally drive to Arizona (only a few hours from my home in Las Vegas) to pick up an animal and I will help arrange to get the animal to you if you need the help.

You can read about this story and donate to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona at the following link:

http://www.hssaz.org/

Thank you!

** Some of you have may already seen this as I have sent out an email similar to this to my contacts and I have also posted this on a few boards on Ravelry. I cannot  begin to express how upset this story has made both Gail and I and we will not stop asking for you to reach out and give a little to help these poor animals. If we had the ability to, I would be on my way to Arizona as we speak to rescue one or two (or 800) of these little faces myself. If you or anyone you know wants a dog, thinks they want a dog or wants a baby but would settle for a dog, please PLEASE share this with them. These animals are in danger of being put down if they cannot find homes for them. I will make the ‘puppy run’ to Arizona myself to bring one back if you cannot make the trip.

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.

I was going to do this whole naming posts after days of the week thing, but it just seemed a tad bit weird to me. Then I realized; we’re weird! So I guess it’s okay.

We’re still waiting on the lawyer for all the fine print before we can post the full details of our upcoming contest, but I can give you another little hint:

Judging will be partially done by your peers via a rating system and then we will take the top 5 entries based on the publics vote and pick the winner from those 5. So, good news! You will not only be able to enter the contest but you can also help pick the winners!

We’re really hoping this will be huge, so the more people we can get involved the better. If this one goes off well and we get a good response, you can expect many more contests from ADHD Knitting in the future. So that means, tell your knitting groups, post it on your blog, remind your Ravelry groups and friends, mention it on Craftster.org or any other craft sites your on. The more people we get involved the easier it will be to convince my boss that he wants to keep giving yarn away!

Now for today’s blog survey question: what are your weird little tics? (they can be knitting related, or just in general. Do you have a weird thing you must do or you feel out of whack? That’s a tic.)

And of course I’m going to share some of our own neurosis with you guys, just to make the whole sharing thing easier:

Gail almost always casts on 100 sts to start a project. Even if this means she was to knit the project on US00 needles with lace weight yarn. (I’ve seen her do it, she has a beautiful christening gown that she’s been knitting that is still a WIP, but it’s done in a ridiculously small gauge.) She will completely rewrite a pattern if she doesn’t like the cast on number and some how she always makes it work. If it’s not 100 sts then it needs to be an even number. This does make working most of her patterns really easy, especially if they have decreases or increases in them because it’s always even. When I’ve helped her write patterns in the past if it isn’t an even number, I can’t tell her about it because she’ll want to change the number, sadly though sometimes you need to work an odd number, especially if it’s lace.

My own weird tic is needing to check the mail almost as soon as it comes. I usually open the curtains in my room so I can see when the mail man comes, he comes at between 2 and 3 p.m. every day and if I see he came I have to immediately go check the mail. If he doesn’t come by 3:30 I start to get anxious and upset.

Lately both of us have been on a website checking tic. I’m pretty sure I’m going to wear out the ‘refresh’ button some time soon. I keep waiting for the Internet to suddenly just pop up with a message that says “STOP! No one else has posted anything in the forum! Quite hitting refresh!” but it hasn’t yet so I still keep doing it. Gail has admitted to doing the same thing. This is what happens when you give two manic, OCD prone people night and day access to the internets. We just tic out on the refresh button until we pass out from exhaustion.

So, now that we’ve established the full tilt level of crazy that goes on behind the scenes at ADHD Knitting (don’t even get us started on what happens when we start tweezing our eyebrows….) share with us your weird habits. We’re dying to know we’re not the only ones!

More about the contest coming soon! I promise!

“Is it weird in here? Or is it just me?”

-Stephan Wright

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

We have so much going on it’s going to be hard to fit this all in one post!

Well, guys, I’m absolutely stoked to be the first to tell you that we are putting together what could be the best knitting contest EVER. EVER. I’m serious, I’m not just flapping my lips because I run this little shindig and I’m proud. No seriously, I actually contemplated quitting my job yesterday just so I could enter the contest too.

I can’t give full details yet, but be sure to keep checking back because we will have the full details of the contest up soon. What I can tell you is what our fabulous prizes will be.

Fabulous Prizes:

1st Place Prize will be a selection of yarn valued at $500, and a little blurb about them on our home page and in our blog.

2nd Place Prize will be yarn valued at $300.

3rd Place Prize will be yarn valued at $200.

I can also tell you that the contest will involve knitting one of our patterns but making it uniquely your own. So get your motors runnin’, ya’ll, it’s going to be fun!

We have also started a group on Ravelry where anyone who is knitting or wants to knit one of our patterns can have a place to chat on Ravelry. Our group over there is located at ADHD Knitters.

We are going to be revamping our own forum on our site as well to include a chat room so that we can offer real time help from our designer, Gail.

We’re working on developing new patterns as well, and you can see some of them that are slated for development in our Gallery under the ‘Upcoming Projects’ gallery.

Gail has started a poetry corner in our forums, and the only guidelines is that the poetry be your own work and somewhat related to knitting/fiber/crafts/art or mental illness. If you wrote a poem that corresponds to something you made, be sure to post a picture along with your poem. Submitted poems may be featured in a weekly blog post as well!

I’m going to be putting together some new blog features as well, that will include input from our readers, so I’ll be posing a few questions every once in awhile, you can contribute to our site by posting a comment on our blog with your answers.

Today’s question: What else do you do when you knit? Some examples might be; read, listen to music, dye your hair, read knitting blogs, talk to your Mom on the phone, pet the dog with your feet, help your kids with their homework, etc.

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.”

-William Shakespeare

It’s the beginning of another lovely week here at ADHD Knitting headquarters. We’ve been amazed with the response we got  last week. Within hours of launching the site last Monday we had already sold a pattern! Our first pattern was the adorable Baby Roots Cardigan and it went to a good home in beautiful Iceland.

How ideal that this was our first pattern sold, since it was one of our first patterns we developed as well! This was originally knit some years ago by Gail, and when we were going through all of Gail’s designs and deciding which ones to work up for the launch of the site, we just loved the beautiful lace repeat that she had done at the bottom of this sweater. Here’s a  close up of that gorgeous design at the bottom:

By far our biggest seller this week has been the Curbing Bag. People are really responding to this interesting technique. I will warn you all though, once you get started with this you’ll find yourself unable to stop! Around here we hold everything from extra needles and yarn to cat toys and groceries in our spare Curbing Bags. We have them everywhere in our work space, in our houses, I even keep a spare one in the truck of my car packed with survival gear just in case I get stranded somewhere. Not only will I be able to live for a week on the granola bar rations but I’ll look fabulous doing it too!

Just to share the love, here’s some Valentines inspired shots of another curbing bag:

Close up of the ‘curbs’ in a variety of red and pink yarns.

That’s the sexiest Curbing Bag I’ve seen yet!

In addition to the patterns, we’ve also got other great features on our site (including this blog.) that we hope everyone checks out. Our forums are a great way to connect with other knitters and our designer, Gail. We have already set up space over there to chat about or get help with all of our ADHD patterns. In addition to those spots you can talk about other knitting projects you’re working on, introduce yourself, tell us about a great new site or designer that you’ve found (hey, we make patterns but we also love to see other peoples work too!) or just ramble about how much you love a certain kind of yarn.

Speaking of favorite yarns: this week we’re loving Rowan Calmer. It’s the yarn we developed the Arm-egeddon Sleeves in and we just love how stretchy and versatile this yarn is. It comes in some great colors too, but for some reason we keep leaning towards this great dusty rose color.

As usual we’re always looking for new and interesting yarns, patterns, web sites, blogs, magazines and books. If you have anything you’d like to give us a heads up on be sure to leave a comment letting us know about the newest and coolest the crafting community has to offer!

Do you have a story about how knitting/crochet/crafting helped you overcome an obstacle in your life? Email it to maxxnv@aol.com and you may get featured in our blog and on our website.

“You can always trust the information given to you by people who are crazy; they have an access to truth not available through regular channels” - Sheila Ballantyne