99 Subscribers To My Blog On The Wall - And A Contest

Hee - according to my calculations on Bloglines, I have 99 total subscribers...neat! (And to think I started with...well, zero.) Thanks for readin'!

Sure enough, the SAFF workshop coordinator e-mailed me today to ask for a bio. WHY must she be so well-organized and on top of things?? I'm not!!! (Aha - and we discover why SHE is.)

So....bio....bio....let's see....

"Alyson has been knitting for about three years. What?! Don't look at her like that. It's totally enough. It's longer than you! Oh, it's not? Well...um...wanna give her a few bucks and knit a sock anyway?"

All right - in celebration of my 99 subscribers (Bloglines alone - I know there are other subscription services out there *cough*thatdon'tsuck*cough*) and my need to come up with a bio, and my nifty workshops, I have a contest!

For one entry: Help with the bio. Send me a "jacket quote". You know those little blurbs on the backs of book jackets, the ones that fledgling authors slobber all over their fellow (more famous) writers for? "I thought this book - eh, well, it didn't totally suck" - John Irving, or "Congratulations on getting it published" - Stephen King, that kind of thing. I may have to resort to desperate measures, so I thought maybe just a series of fun quotes from blog pals could be fun. It is unlikely (though not impossible) that I will actually just construct a bio out of your contest entires; still, I'm not going to rule it out. (Love ya! Oh, and PS: I can totally take a joke - it's okay to tease, the blurb doesn't have to be touching or anything. Neither do I expect Tolstoy - any random phrase gets you an entry, ya know?)

For another entry: Help with the workshop. The "Other Class" I'm teaching, the one that's not sock knitting, is all about being a Strong Brave Knitter. About not being afraid to try stuff, about using gauge, about fixing mistakes, et cetera. But I admit that being a Strong Brave Knitter can, on occasion, have some - uh - creative results. Send me a picture (or a link to a picture/blog post/whatever) of your most "creative" (read: disastrous) project. I'm sure you've seen my Sock Monster of Doom by now. Stuff like that. I want my sweet newbies to know that it happens to every knitter and that it's nothing to be ashamed of or fear. It's going to happen - we laugh, learn, and move on. (After lighting our lying cheat of a gauge swatch on fire and dancing around it with glee.)

Important note: you're not signing off permission by entering the contest! I'm thinking hard about cost - I won't have access to projection technology, so I'd have to do colour copies of these things - I may use the creative knitting examples more anecdotally. Like how one of the speediest, brightest knitters I know of somehow ended up making a sweater that looked suspiciously like a Muppet. And I would request your permission before using it either anecdotally or photographically - both anonymously.

Back to the contest - you can enter one, or the other, or both!!! (I guess you could enter neither, too, if that's your game.) I'll ask that you only enter each of them once, but you can totally send one blurb and one "creative project" for two entries.

Then we'll use my old pal Random.org to determine winners. Winners of what, you say? Well, obviously some sock yarn (not ALL of it!!). If you're a spinner, maybe some fiber. Probably some stitch markers, the ones that I love so much. And who knows what else! There will be multiple winners, depending on how many entries I get.

Enter by email - don't leave your entry in a comment! I can't be guaranteed to keep track (see also: not on top of things). Click the link or send the e-mail to yoyocontestATgmailDOTcom. You have until Friday at 10:00 p.m. EST (while I'll undoubtedly be at The Simpsons movie) to enter!

(Pssst: while you're feelin' out contests, check out Turtlegirl's! And Adam's!)

Tomorrow: photos!