A fortnight ago I went to the yarn shop near my parents because my mum wanted me to make something for a little girl down the road from her. I picked out Flora as the pattern, and my mum chose Hayfield Bonus Aran in a sort of mint green shade. On the off chance I asked if they needed any knitters, so they asked me to bring in some things I'd knitted in the past.

Fast forward ten days and I'd finished Flora except for the buttons, so I took it in along with My Aeolian shawl, Garden Path Shawl, my toe-up Jules Socks and Graham's jumper. They really couldn't get enough of what I'd knitted, they thought it was all amazing! They were particularly interested in Aeolian because of it's intricate nature and beading, they way I did jumpers top-down with circular needles (and no seams!) and how I did socks toe-up with no grafting involved. Needless to say I'm now a contract knitter for them. They've also expressed an interest in some shawls for the window display - it turns out the knitters they have already have turned down the work because of a lack of skill, I've never thought of myself as particularly highly skilled but it's just that I tend to be quite adventurous!

This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: accomplished tags: knitting

You know, blogging shouldn't be so hard for me, after all I have a lot to say but it seems not enough motivation to say it!

I published a new lens today, it's called Knitting Patterns with one skein of yarn. It's a bit of a mouthful, but most Squidooers agree it's good to have your main keywords in your url so there we are. This one-skeiner lens has a pretty brief (so far) but comprehensive list of ideas for what to do with that single skein of yarn that matches nothing else in your stash - God knows we've all been there! It includes some links to great stitch dictionaries for extra inspiration, as well as a couple of great wash-cloth patterns and some bigger stuff like blankets too.

This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: good tags: new lenses

So I got paid yesterday! This is the first time my payment has reached the reserve. My monthly payment was up from .92c to $6.96, so I'm pretty pleased! I expect payments to be a bit erratic since I'm still getting into the swing of things over at Squidoo, and I've still not got into the whole affiliate thing. The sale I had in July was a one-off, even if it was a big one off! Hopefully more of those will be coming soon though. I've got a knitting lens in progress that I'm hoping will get a number of small sales and click-throughs which will help bump lensrank eventually. Fingers crossed it might even be my first tier 2 lens!

This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: optimistic tags: knitting, squidoo

I did I did! Ok enough with the tweetybird impressions... I got a purple star for my Equine Recurrent Uveitis lens on Monday (I'm a bit late posting about this as you can see) and I'm very pleased! This one was my first, but I am hoping that as time passes and I accumulate more lenses then I'll be awarded some more - some people have huge lensographies of them!

A purple star is given to a couple of lenses per week, and it is an award for outstanding and unique content.

This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: pleased tags: lenscraft, squidoo

So I'm back to blogging now that school has started again. The other half is studying during the day now so it's giving me a bit of piece and quiet for a few hours during which I can concentrate and write. I haven't written much over on Squidoo, but I've been updating my Great American Aran Afghan lens, as I've been going great guns on the knitting!

I've had a couple of ideas for a small sales-lens niche, but can't get around the fact that they'd only be affective with an Amazon UK Affiliate account. Trouble is that it would be a long time before I'd reach the payout threshold on my own account, that's why I like the squidoo set-up so much - $1 payout every month!

This post was written by Poison_kitty

tags: great american aran afghan, squidoo

I've been feeling very un-motivated lately, and so apart from my Great American Aran Afghan lens, which is also an ongoing knitting project of mine, I've not actually created any new lenses. Annoyingly a few nights ago I had an amazing idea for a lens, had all the keywords sorted out to research - I even knew how I wanted to set out al the modules and what products to promote. The morning after all I could remember was that it was a great idea....

The problem has really been exacerbated by the fact that I KNOW I write good lenses with lots of content (apart from some experimental stuff) but they just never seem to get any more than a trickle of traffic, even when I put in the time and effort at backlinking and article writing. I wasn't expecting gold nuggets to fall from the sky with my Liverpool Library Lens, but I certainly didn't expect to be a month in and only now just getting into the top 100 for my main keyword (and title). Even the articles I wrote to support and backlink it ranked better for a while!

I've been reading some posts on ThrivingMom's blog and they've really helped motivate me to improve my small curation of lenses, so hopefully the situation will improve. If you're having the same problems as I am, specifically read these posts:

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• Why is my lens failing?
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• How to fix a failing lens
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• Why you must get niche
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This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: productive tags: lenscraft

I noticed something pretty cool this morning. Using Scroogle (an intermediary service between google and the user which scraps the cookies as they are sent and shows the unbiased search results for a keyword or phrase) I searched for Equine Recurrent Uveitis, which is my main key-phrase on the lens of the same name, and found that not only am I ranking quite well for the lens but also for one of my pro-articles supporting articles. I've only had one hit from that article but one is better than none!

This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: surprised tags: lenscraft, pro-articles

Well I've started on my Great American Aran Afghan again. A couple of months ago, around the time I took up a giant cross-stitch (which I've now finished!) I worked out I'd actually been purling wrong! I know, years of knitting and such a basic error... well it happens! But anyway - being half-way through this mammoth project meant that at some stage in the future I'd be re-knitting a lot of it, and that time is now! I've decided that re-balling each of the squares I'd already knit (apart from the ones done in the round as they involved very little purling) will be done one at a time, as obviously the yarn is already cut to size so the quantity is just right for each of the squares. I've re-started on the Carol Adams Square, pictures coming soon!

This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: creative tags: great american aran afghan, knitting, new lenses

I'm really going great guns on publishing new lenses lately! Meet my new Lens, all about the Liverpool Library! I love this old building, and was inspired to write about it when several people on one of my local genealogy mailing lists wrote to ask about the refurbishments taking place there. It has several buildings dating back to 1860, and a number built as late as the 1960's, the latter of which are currently being torn down and replaced with something more modern. The older buildings are being refurbished in line with it's grade 2 listed status, and will be reopened in late 2012. For the time being (and this was what caught my attention in the first place) a number of their services have been relocated or closed completely.

This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: chipper tags: new lenses, places

Well it's finally here, my Accounting and Ethics Lens! I got the inspiration to write this because I was learning it as part of a module on my AAT level 3 Certificate in Accounting. It's a particularly hard module to study, especially for people who are drawn to a subject like accounting because of it's black and white nature. Ethical problems have a lot of grey areas - in fact for most issues you are always advised to seek extra advice, but of course you can't do this in an exam situation! For me, teaching is a great way to learn a subject, in the process of turning the text into easy-to-teach bites for people that have never touched the subject at all I'm also teaching myself because I've removed most of the unnecessary complications.

Go ahead and read it here, I'm certain you will learn something new, and leave me a comment about how you apply these principles in every day life!

This post was written by Poison_kitty

mood: accomplished tags: new lenses