I don’t know what it is about us authors—we often get more excited about cover art than we do the words. Possibly it’s because once we have a book ready to publish, we have read those sixty-to-a-hundred-thousand words sixty to a hundred times. I like browsing book stores and judging books by their covers, I like squeeing over friends’ cover art, and I have discovered that I also enjoy creating cover art.

You’ve all heard me talk about Talli Roland on this blog. Although we don’t write the same types of books, we have found each other to be great writing resources. That’s such a wonderful thing, when you have a working relationship with someone that is balanced. We both give as much as we take, and our talents compliment one another’s. So, when Talli asked me to be an early reader on her Build A Man manuscript, I said, “Of course!” When she said she was thinking of publishing it independantly, we started talking about all the elements she’d need to do herself, so naturally the talk turned to cover art. Having read the book (and having loved it-honestly it’s the best of her books so far), I was suddenly struck with an inspiration, and we started to chat about it.

So I (digitally) sketched up my idea, and after some back and forth, we arrived at this:

By the way…someone wrote and asked me where I got the clip art for that image. All the illustrated covers I create are 100% original vector art images. I drew it with my own hands…well, my computer. No clip art here! There are some decent stock images out there, but nothing quite compares to having your character designed exactly the way you envision her, with exactly the look and feel you want. (I think every published author out there can relate to receiving “professional” cover art from their publisher that just flat-out misses the mark. – Thing #45 I love about being an indie author…being in control of what my book looks like!)

I have gotten a few enquiries about doing cover art, since I posted Rae Davies’ cover last week. Yes, I will consider taking commissions on cover art. I really love doing it. No, this doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing. (Like that would be possible!) This won’t ever overtake my writing career, but it is a fun sideline. If you have a book you’d like custom artwork for, just drop me a line and I’ll send you my “process sheet,” which includes information on pricing and scheduling.

And if you’re interested in indie publishing, Talli wrote an article yesterday detailing why she decided to leave her small press publisher, with whom she’s had great success, and go indie.

Exciting times… and look! Shiny cover art! Squeeeee!

As I said earlier this week, I was contacted by an author about designing her cover art. Rae Davies had seen my work on my own books, and wondered if I ever did freelance work. Well, I only had once before (more details coming about that project next week), and with everything else going on, I wasn’t sure I had time, but darnit, I just couldn’t resist. I really do adore doing covers, and the more she told me about the book, the more I knew I wanted to take on the challenge. The thing is, Loose Screw was already for sale on Amazon, and it was doing well! Her original cover wasn’t bad, it just didn’t convey the genre as well as she would have liked, I think, plus she wanted something that would really catch the eye. So, I had to take a bestselling book’s cover and try to make it even better. Definitely a challenge!

So, after some back and forth, designing and tweaking, this is the final cover art for Loose Screw by Rae Davies:

I’m really happy with the way it turned out, but more importantly, I think Rae is as well. Now we just have to see what her fans and new readers think of it!

When we first starting talking about the project, Rae gifted me a copy of Loose Screw. I am about 3/4 of the way through it, and it’s been tough to put down. (Darned work keeping me from reading all day long!) Loose Screw is a charming cozy mystery, with a likeable main character… so easy to read. I can’t wait to read the next in the series. Mystery and thrillers are my favourite genre after fantasy, so it was a delight to find a new series that was fun and easy to get into. Now Rae needs to hurry up and write the next one! I’m feeling impatient for it already!

You can find Loose Screw on Amazon USA, Amazon UK, and Barnes and Noble. I heartily recommend it, and I noticed that it’s only 99c (86p in the UK)! Wow… a real bargain for such a great read.

This has been a real week of ups and downs with my writing. The wordcount on Wildings is going steadily up, and its taking shape, but my characters are giving me hell and even though the plot is outlined, I am not entirely certain how I’m going to get them there from here.

I have added a page to the blog for My Fiction, where you can see what my current projects are and where I am. Will update as I develop workable blurbs for the new stuff. If you have any comments or suggestions about what you see there, please do let me know! I’m always open to feedback.

And… a bit about Twitter. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I love it. One thing I’m not so wild about though: #followfriday. I do like to recommend folks I follow, but A. every freaking week I forget it’s friday, so I have to scramble to put names together, and B. I hate feeling like I’m leaving people out and C. I hate it when people I follow post 20 tweets in a row with names they’re recommending. It’s eye-spammy. I’ve hovered my fingers over the ‘unfollow’ button on a few people who do this, and I don’t want to tempt my followers to do the same to me. I figure I’m on thin ice with them most of the time anyway.

So what I’ve done is create a follow-friday twitter list.  If you’re looking for fun, interactive tweeps, then follow them. Most of them are writers, all of them are active, and some of them regularly cause me to guffaw and make other unladylike noises.

I also have received some blog awards recently, which makes me feel all warm and squishy, but slightly awkward (which I usually feel when people are saying nice things about me to other people) and I wanted to note my thanks. My new friend and crit partner Sangu Mandanna gave me a Prolific Blogger award, Crystal Cook gave me a Sweet Blogger award (yes, really… shut up), and Talli Rolland gave me a Soulmates award. Thank you!

So this was my week! How was yours?

I have figured something out while I’ve been designing knit patterns, but I don’t know what it’s called, or if it even already exists in the lexicon of knitting.

I like a KFB increase, because it doesn’t leave a hole like M1, which seems to be what most people use. Also because I’m making toys, I use a smaller needle than is recommended for the yarn, so that makes things all the tighter and picking up random stitches can be awkward. On the downside, a KFB leaves a bar on the second stitch.

I don’t like the bar, so I made a modification to the KFB that makes the front of a stocking (US: stockinette) panel smooth.

Twist the stitch on the left needle as here:

Then knit once in the back loop and then once into the front loop. (The opposite order of a typical KFB). So it would be something like TKBF.

Have any of you knitters heard of this before? I’ve searched, because I want to call it the right thing when I use it in my own designs. If it doesn’t exist, I think I’ll call it the Drummond Twist! … although that sounds a bit like an alcoholic beverage. One of my brothers used to call me his “twisted sister” (har har), but I have the feeling I’d better play this straight.

Try it and let me know what you think of the outcome! If you have already heard of doing this, let me know what it’s called… pleasssssssssse! I can’t find anything like it elsewhere!

My folks are here from the States, and we’re having a great time. It’s always nice to see them and mom’s cooking just seems to make everything better. I’ve been spending as much time with them as possible, hence the lack of posting this week!

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on creating a little elf pattern for the past week, and so I had to come post now that he’s finished. He’s a small little thing. The grapes are life-sized, but that’s part of his charm for me! I thought about making him bigger to improve some of the details, but I confess I think having him be small makes him more charming!

So here he is! I’m afraid the picture doesn’t really do him justice. Maybe it’s the lighting! I haven’t really found a way to take great pictures of my knitting.

I’ve been working on trying to design my own knit toy, and I tell ya, it’s so much harder than I thought it would be. Who knew there was so much math in knitting?? I’ve knit and reknit, calculated and recalculated, sketched and graphed.. you’d think I was building an aquaduct with all the engineering that went into my wee moggie.

So, I’ve completed what I think of as a rough draft. Some things I’m pleased with, some not, so I need to put her away for a week and then come at her with fresh eyes and see what I can adjust to improve the things I’m not satisfied with.

But I thought I would share where I am so far Feel free to tell me what you think about her, and give any suggestions you like! She’s still a work-in-progess and I know I’m going to have to re-make her at least one more time, possibly more!

Here she is!

And some of the back detail:

Ta-da!

I’m about 75% happy with her.. so I figure that’s a good start!

I keep telling myself that I gotta quit filling up my blog with knitting stuff, because my reader probably isn’t that interested in my knitting therapy.

However, my spirits have been buoyed so much by the silliness of knitting clowns and sheep, that I really can’t help myself.

Deniz asked me yesterday how I did these so fast, but it’s really just because they’re very small. I can knit them up in a few hours while I’m watching Forensic Detectives and Crime Story, and then assemble them during Steven Segal: Law Man. I did take the time to wash and block the little ringmaster pieces, but I’m honestly not sure if it made that big a difference in the final product! Well, the blocking did. I think the washing just made it wet, rather than fluffing up my stitches the way I was hoping it would.

So, here he is!

Pattern from alandart.co.uk Alan is known as a “celebrity knit designer”, which sorta cracks me up. I can’t really imagine the paparazzi following a knitter around to see who they’re hooking up with or to catch them with their underpants showing as they step out of a limo.

Oh, and if you’re a yarn-head like me, you can find me on Ravelry here. But be warned… it’s easy to get sucked into the site and losing several hours just browsing through the patterns and other people’s FOs!

I can’t tell you how therapeutic it is to knit little creatures. You just can’t make a tiny little mouse tux and be worried or upset at the same time.

I decided that I wanted to have a go at making a Highland Cow. For those who have never been here, they look something like this:

For my effort, I modified Barbara Prime’s Cowboy pattern, added the shaggy hair and made long horns from a twisted iCord. (Oh, and if you ever make her patterns, I would recommend changing the K1 M1 to KFB, and ignore her method for attaching limbs and go for a mattress stitch instead.)

So here’s my little heilan coo:

My sweetheart said he looked more like “Animal” than the real thing!

Either way, seriously, could you frown and make one of these at the same time? I doubt it!

(If knitting talk makes your eyes glaze over, at least skim down to the uterus at the bottom. Or not. Depending on how creeped out you are at the possibilities here.)

I’ve been experimenting with various needle sizes, types of yarn and ways of assembling the Barbara Prime knit sheep pattern and I’ve been having fun with these. I plan to make others of her patterns, and can start now that I’ve received my massive yarn shipment I’ve been waiting for. Included in said shipment was stuffing, so I no longer have a mass of unstuffed sheep body parts on my living room table.

I’ve also made some changes to the original pattern, including a version I’ve started using dpn and also changing her K1 M1 notations to KFB, to get rid of the holes caused by the M1 method. (See small beige sheep below to see what I mean about the holes.) It looks much nicer! My favourite has to be the one made with the Wendy Origins yarn (the curly stuff). It’s a little tough to keep track and count the yarn on the needles, but on the upside, if you do make a mistake, it’s hard to see that too.

I am making great progress in my knitting techniques, and want to extend a huge thank you to those knitters out there that put such helpful tutorials on the web! I have such a huge resource available to me via the internet that my mom sure never had when she was starting out. One such resource is the website Ravelry.com It’s basically a facebook for knitters. Wow. Particularly helpful was a tutorial for the mattress stitch for toys.

Here’s the herd:

But while I’ve been surfing for knitting tutorials, I’ve come across the inexplicable. Yes, someone created a knitted womb. A KNITTED WOMB??? Yes.

Here’s the description of the item:

Human anatomy is pretty amazing, but not always pretty. My interest in anatomy coupled with the Blythe dolls phenomenon somehow combined in my imagination to produce a cute, cuddly uterus doll.

Of all the descriptions I’ve ever considered for uteri, the word cuddly just never came to mind.

I once saw a pattern for a brain, but even that didn’t see to compare with this one.

Seriously. WTF do you even do with that? I have my sheep next to a basket of yarn balls and they make some semblance of sense. But a uterus?

Honestly I do try not to judge other people too harshly, but this? Colour me boggled.

Well, our power was out for several hours yesterday. Holy crap, it was cold!

So, I practiced knitting for a while, trying to learn to get my stitches just perfect. My sweetheart was looking at my little practice swatches in a slightly puzzled way, as though completely unable to understand the difference between each one while I groaned, “But the rows are so uneven!”

I’ve been making quite a few of these sheep lately, including one black sheep and I’ve been experimenting with different needle sizes and techniques (I’m in love with the Norwegian Purl!)  However, I’m waiting for a delivery from an online craft store before I’ll have any stuffing for them! My living room table is a macabre display of mismatched body parts as though a serial killer had taken them as trophies and preserved them in a somewhat shrivelled state. (You can tell I’ve been reading crime thrillers, can’t you?)

My little lamb chop from the previous post got a new sweater in the deal!