I know I started this off as WIP (work in progress for you non-acronym types) but the site news is a little more important to the future of this site and the Knitter's Guide project, so lets talk honestly about the future first.

Facts

1. I have several secret projects underway.
2. I am scheduled to begin teaching at my LYS.
3. I have opportunities to sell more patterns both as an independent retailer and wholesale.
4. I am now treating my knitting as an extension of my freelance business (i.e. it's no longer just a hobby).
5. I have a business plan.
6. I have a large portion of my blog that really isn't a blog (e.g. Knitter's Guide to Inkscape).
7. I currently use Wordpress.com and am bound by their terms of service, which severely limit how I may use my site and forbid javascript and custom themes. (There is a big difference between custom CSS and a custom theme.)
8. My present website platform is Wordpress.

What's Changing

As some of you may have noticed in my bio as a freelancer, I wear multiple hats. I am familiar with multiple CMS systems. (Before you ask, yes, I am one of those people who can take a .psd file, look at it, and convert it into a working theme in 24 hours or less). My point is that I know SimpleCMS, Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress all quite well. I wouldn't claim any of them are old friends. Indeed, they all make me want to pull out my hair at times. But I do understand the strengths and weaknesses of each system. When planning my future website, one thing became very clear. Wordpress wasn't the right choice for me. The new site will use Drupal for four reasons:

1. Speed.
2. Easier SEO implementation (at least for me).
3. Forums, which I may or may not need.
4. Organic Groups, which I will definitely need in the long run.

No offense intended towards Wordpress. It's great and I will continue recommending it to clients, but it won't do everything I need it to do. One of the coming Designer Resources is a LaTeX knitting pattern template, which is currently in beta testing. (See a working sample here.) (If you are on Ravelry, you may read the original call for testers and the ensuing discussion on what LaTeX is and why I'm using it here.) I am very devoted to this concept, but because of the time involved, both support and development, it isn't a resource I can offer for free. Being able to support this and other efforts requires allowing users to comment and discuss problems openly in forums as well as contact me privately. My abilities to do that with WordPress are limited and selling the template from a Wordpress.com hosted site would violate their terms of service. Writing the tutorials, hosting fees, etc also costs money. (When you freelance, time really is money.)

Things like the Knitter's Guide to Inkscape, which is currently being expanded and several new additions will debut on the new site, including screen casts, will remain free. In the future, I hope to open the guides up and allow everyone to contribute stories and tips. If you really know what you're doing, I would love some help writing the tutorials. This content could eventually be broken away from the main site and doing that with Drupal is much easier than doing it with WordPress. Still, as I mentioned earlier, I don't live in a vacuum. For sale patterns will be part of the new site. I have considered putting a donate button or creating an Amazon affiliate account and linking to the design books I use. These would only appear on the Blog, Designer Resources, and Knitting Techniques page. And it will only happen if I can figure out a tasteful way to do it. I don't know what your opinions are on monetizing part of the site and I would love to hear your thoughts. In keeping with the new platform, one of my current WIPS is the site itself.

I'm still not sold on the vines on the side, but the site needs something over there. (I take suggestions!) Those are my placeholders for the moment. Who knows? They may grow on me and become a permanent part of the site. The blank whitespace where the cursor is will have a newsletter subscribe box. I turned it off before I took the screen shot and forgot to turn it back on. (For better or worse, I did my own drawings (vines, monogram, and RSS symbol).) I also decided to break the rules and used Times, a serif font, instead of the recommended sans serif. It's a look and feel decision and with proper line spacing, the page is more readable than it would have been if I'd chosen the sans serif. (Plus, Arial is rather ugly...)

Knitting WIP

Every year, I design a few Christmas ornaments which I make and give away to family and friends as gifts. This year will be the first year I formally write up the patterns. The first ornament is a tree top angle. Reminiscent of Victorian white work, the angel is knitted, not crocheted, with cotton thread. She doesn't have a head, wings, a halo, or arms yet, but she's starting to look quite pretty. I can't wait to wet her, dip her in 50/50 Elmer's washable school glue and water, blow up a ballon to fill in the body and pin the wings out. She doesn't have a name yet, but I'm thinking about calling her "Carol".