I have some huge, exciting news!

CrochetMe.com has been acquired by Interweave. As most of you know, I have been working at Interweave for the last couple of years as editor of Interweave Crochet. The sale of the site is not related directly to my work there, though. I'll explain.

As you know, CrochetMe.com is my baby. I have loved and nurtured and at times neglected it over nearly five years. The site, and more importantly you, its community, are enormously important to me. In the last couple of years I have not had the time, energy, nor resources to continue nudging the site and community to grow, and I found myself this past spring in a bit of a conundrum. How could I enable the site to continue to thrive without having the much needed money and craftpower to fuel it?

That's when I started talking with the VP for eMedia at Interweave, Eric Shanfelt. Over several months he convinced me that Interweave gets the all-important It and that they'll do wonderful things to maintain the Crochet Me community and encourage it to grow. They get that people are the most important thing about CrochetMe.com. They get that one of the most special things about the site is that it has always been a playground for people to explore their creativity. They get that the people who publish their thoughts and ideas and designs here are just as important as the people who make stuff and learn from the site. They get that the internet is an overflowing resource for crafts inspiration and fun, and they have the resources to give CrochetMe.com what I cannot.

And there's the other part of it. I'm a little burnt out on crochet, kids. I lived the dream of making my hobby my career, and in the end, like so many other people who have done the same, I pretty much lost my hobby. When I stop working at the end of each day, I reach for my knitting needles or a book or a pen instead of my hook. I stopped wanting to surf the web for exciting and innovative crochet. And so, entirely independent of my decision to sell CrochetMe.com, I am stepping down as editor of Interweave Crochet. (I've written more about my decision on my blog at kimwerker.com.)

That's kind of a lot to announce all at once, so I'll do some Q&A in a possibly terrible attempt to anticipate your questions. If I don't address your questions here, please do ask in the comments; chances are other people want to know the same thing.

What will happen to all the great patterns, articles, and tips? And
the forums? Egads! Will it all go away?! Will we have to—*gasp*—pay for
it?!
Rest assured, all of the user-generated content on the site (i.e., the
patterns and tips and articles and forum posts you have posted or had
published on CrochetMe.com since the site was started in 2004) will
stay just where it is, for free.

Is the site going to be all about making Interweave money, now?
The site will remain all about making crocheters happy. Yes, of course Interweave wants to make money. Frankly, this site has always needed to make money and I've never had the resources to make that happen (both because I'm a terrible salesperson and because I've always been so busy making my own living). But as I said, Interweave gets it. They won't sacrifice your experience of CrochetMe.com!

So, did Kim just up and decide to sell out because she felt like quitting her job at the magazine?
No! My decision to leave the magazine is complicated, but I made that decision before I thought selling the site would be a reality. I have known for a very long time that CrochetMe.com needs a lot more money than I can give it, and a lot more time spent on it than I have. If Interweave weren't around to enthusiastically take the helm, there's a good chance I'd have to pull the plug on the site altogether. That said, I would never make reckless choices just to keep the site alive; I believe very strongly that Interweave is exactly what CrochetMe.com needs not only to survive, but to thrive.

I've posted patterns and tips on the site. Does Interweave own them now?
No. Just like I never owned your content, neither does Interweave. You retain the rights you've chosen to (any Creative Commons licenses you've applied to your work still apply).

Is Kim jumping ship now that she's sold CrochetMe.com?
No! With Interweave taking over the under-the-hood maintenance of the site and all the other administrative and forward-thinking tasks, I will remain involved at a very high level, lending my thoughts and ideas about what the community needs and how best to continue to push crochet online. I'll also continue to blog on the site, and in fact will blog more than I have these last couple of years.

I'm sort of freaking out over here! My arms, they're waving about! I might start hyperventilating!
No worries. As I said, it took me a very long time to get comfortable with the idea of putting CrochetMe.com into the hands of someone else—of course it will take you a while to get comfortable, too. But do rest assured: There was not one moment over the last several months that the needs of this community weren't my number one priority when I was working things out with Interweave. I very much trust them, and I'm very, very excited about the future of CrochetMe.com. I'm also personally excited to be involved with the site again, without the worries that had me so bogged down I ended up withdrawing for so long. So do take your time, and ask me any questions you have.

Crochet is an epic adventure! Here's to the next level.

An update in three parts.

Part the First

You've perhaps noticed some inconsistency in our server upage in the last few months. I've discussed it here before. The good news is that we've put our finger on the problem; the optimistic news is that we're confident we'll be able to fix it... soon. So we've set up a Twitter account, and urge you to follow us there so we can let you know about things should the server go down. (Since Twitter is its own program, it's unaffected by our server, see, so we can still communicate with you easily. Sweet.) [Thx to Whipup for the inspiration.]

Part the Second

This is the coolest recent use of the Amigurumi Dude pattern I've seen. Rock.

Have you caught wind of the Day in the Life series Robyn has sparked over on her blog? I wrote up a weekend and weekday of my own, and loads of other crocheters have joined in. Julie just posted about more days-in-the-life to come in June, too. Makes for a really cool look into the daily life of crochet people, if you're into that sort of thing.

Part the Third

I'm going on a proper holiday tomorrow. I'm not bringing my computer or my cell phone. Also, my cell phone would be useless, as I'll be in London, England. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'll be doing things like riding a ridiculously enormous Ferris wheel in an urban setting, attending some musical theatre, drinking tea and beer, visiting good friends, buying Doc Martens for it's time they make a comeback, and relaxing in the countryside. Emma Jane will be keeping her keen eye on the site while I'm away, so do send her some hugs and yummy yarn wishes, eh?

Preparing:kpwerker

Consider my Icelandic Turtleneck in a bowl after washing evidence of my impending trip to Ohio for Knitting Daily TV taping. My nails are done, my hair is coifed (which shouldn't be taken too literally—my hair: I do not coif it), and soon my bags will be packed. I'm psyched!

But now to the apology. I blogged recently about CrochetMe.com being in need of a new webhost. We've experienced a lot of downtime in the last few weeks (this afternoon, most recently), and our web host has experienced a massive technological glitch, and I thought the two were related. It turns out I wasn't asking the right questions when I was submitting my support requests—our server isn't actually affected by the web host's other problems. Our downtime has been caused by our own database problem, which is hopefully now fixed.

I apologize both to you, dear crocheters, for the inconsistency of the site of late, and to our dear web host, whom I inappropriately blamed.

Have a great weekend, and a great week. Pictures and updates later, gators!

In the last couple of months, this site was down about a handful of times. Each time it was for an understandable technology-related reason, but taking a higher-level perspective makes the inconsistency in service frustrating and unacceptable, and I can only imagine how baffling it might be to you, our dear members and visitors, to come to CrochetMe.com to find a blank screen or a confusing error message.

I've put off looking for a new web host for three reasons. First, I've really enjoyed working with our current host. They're friendly and responsive, though not quite as good with their up-time guarantee as I would like. Second, our current host's fees are relatively low, and I've been concerned that a switch would result in a fee increase we simply couldn't afford. Third, switching web hosts is a royal pain in the patootey.

However, like with most issues, there comes a point where the costs of maintaining the status quo outweigh the (potential) costs of change. We've reached that point and we need your help.

First, if you have experience renting a dedicated server, we'd love to hear your recommendations for a great host. (We've far outgrown shared hosting, so please only weigh in if you're familiar with dedicated hosting services.)

Second, we could use some of that awesome community spirit that makes this site so special. Months and months ago I thought we'd be revitalizing our languishing CafePress store, but that fell through. If you're a talented graphic artist and would be willing to donate your skills and art in any small or large way so we can raise some funds to support CrochetMe.com, please be in touch (there will be goodies in it and undying gratitude from thousands of crocheters, and hopefully your crochet and CrochetMe.com-themed work walking the streets and adorning caffeine-delivery vessels the world over). I'm also very open to suggestions for engaging our active and caring community to push this site (and crochet) as we enter this transitional technology period—there are many improvements yet to be made to the site, and the more people get involved, the better the site will be!

I'm going to trample my inclination to feel great stress over this hosting situation and rather will channel my energy into making this into opportunity to build our community even more. Won't you come along for the adventure? It won't be the same without you.

Thoughts?

I don't really use Facebook all that much, but given it's the greatest thing since sliced Myspace, I thought it would be fun to create a Crochet Me page there, so all y'all can become a fan and then—I don't know what. What do people do on fan pages on Facebook? I'm looking forward to finding out...

UPDATE: The preview of the Spring 2008 Interweave Crochet is up. I hope you enjoy!

Kids, I missed CrochetMe.com's fourth birthday! It was two weeks ago. Happy birthday to us!

Also, I'm over a third-of-a-month tardy in shouting out National Crochet Month. Doing anything special to celebrate or promote crochet this month? There's a giant hoo-ha going on at the NatCroMo group on Ravelry.

It's always exciting to see crochet covered in the mainstream media. And though it's not the best writing the New York Times can offer, this article about the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project is awesome.

I've been surprised over the last year to read occasionally about people's confusion when beginning to make squares for the Babette Blanket. After overcoming my assumption that the squares are super simple, I did a demo on how to make them at the Knit Out & Crochet Too. I blogged about it at the magazine, and hope my drawn-on images don't do more harm than good (Skitch is so cool, I don't know when to stop).

Moving on to very-well-done images, Sister Diane recently posted a great tutorial on How to Crochet a Wire Flower Pendant [via Craft].

Finally, today is my sixth wedding anniversary. In a sea of magazine submissions, copy editing, and tech editing (with an added sea of marking, homework, and studying), the Mr and I are doing our best to carve out good time to celebrate. A wildly expensive night out is planned!

Have I ever mentioned how dark winter is in Vancouver? Beyond being a wee bit North, although far south as far as the rest of Canada is concerned, the cloudcover is brutal. I think it's out to get me. I've had a bugger of a time getting work done today.

But I did tinker a bit with the site, and think it's about time I give you a tour of how you can maximize your CrochetMe.com fun with our sidebar widgets. You have to be a logged-in registered member of the site to use most of these (it's free!).

1. Tag This
   You can label content any way you'd like! Not only will this help you categorize your own posted content so people can find it more easily, it also enables you tag any content on the site. And that makes all the content easier to find. Rad.
2. Rate This
   Since the revamped site launched, there's no editorial vetting of content. Although this is a change it's taken a little while to get used to, it doesn't have to mean that the quality of content you encounter here has changed at all. Use the Rate This feature to mark content you think should be most visible (it's the best!) and not so visible (it could use some improvement). For now, the most salient result of content ratings is on the main Patterns and Tips pages, where there's a list of the top-5 most highly-rated posts.

   A related aside: Something that's very different now is that patterns are not tech edited and nothing is copy edited before being published. Certainly one shouldn't judge the quality of a posted pattern on the coolness of the finished object alone, but also on the clarity and quality of instruction in the written pattern. Since the beginning, I've had a slew of ideas for how to implement some community-based editing on the site, and I haven't been able to figure out a way to pick and choose. Got some ideas? Wanna help out? Leave a comment or drop me a PM.

3. Blue links
   1. Add to Favorites
      Click this link to mark the page you're on as one of your favorites. On your profile page, there's a section that lists your favorites from different areas on the site (patterns, tips, forum posts, blog posts). So not only will you be able to find them easily another time, other people will find them, too.
   1. Print-Friendly
      Click the link for a printer-friendly version of the page you're on. No ads, no fancy formatting.
   1. Email This Page
      Click to bring up a page that will allow you to enter a friend's email address to send them a link to the page. Neither your own address nor the recipient's address is saved by us; it's just used to send a note saying you think they'll enjoy the page. Fun!
4. Share This Page
   This is a new box in the sidebar. Click any one of the icons to add the page you're on to that service. If you hover your mouse over an icon a tip will pop up letting you know which service it's for. In most cases, you'll need to have an account on that service to use this feature. Spread the CrochetMe.com love!
5. You Might Also Like
   This is another new box. It lists a recommendation of other content on the site you might enjoy if you like the page you're currently on. This is CrochetMe.com spreading the love just to you.

And there you have it. Are there functions you wished were there but aren't? Think something could use some improvement? Wanna help with the editing thing? Let us know.

PS You might also notice there's now (finally) a link to comments on the main blog page. Older posts are displaying just title and categories for now, but all posts from now on will show up in full on that main page. In case you were curious.

PPS (8 January) Note that around the time I posted this a few days ago, I managed to screw up the RSS feed for the blog. I've since fixed it (I think), which is why you might first be seeing this in your reader or inbox now. Oops.