Pumpkinspun’s Musings

Awesome weekend…. I attended my second Podcamp since July, this one down in Philly.

I guess you can count me in the camp of folks who were happy that more SEO (’Search Engine Optimization’, for the non webbie tech folks) topics were added, and as a full time web developer, I was truly grateful.

On Saturday I attended the SEM on Shoestring Budget session in the morning, presented by Beth Harte and was grateful the conversation that developed during the session, and for the chance to hear what attenders had to add. I heard about a new book, called “Groundswell“, which will be useful to me to add to my conversation with clients as I try and convince them WHY they need to pay attention to social media.

I briefly met Li Evans who had so many interesting things to say about SEO and was appreciative of her input on both the first session of the morning, and her presentation on Social Media Do’s and Don’ts session.

Two sessions on using Twitter, including “Social Media for Business and Being a REAL person” with Annie Heckenberger, and another by Howard Greenstein which was more a general conversation about Twitter. Both were very entertaining sessions as well as informative. Annie, thanks for the candy lipstick!

The Viral Marketing, Strategy, Implementation and Results session with the guys from Pandemic Labs was very interesting, and although I’m not a video person, I learned a lot from it that could be useful to a few clients.

I also had a chance to meet Wil Reynolds and Simon Heseltine in the Small Business Site Clinic session.. where I learned that we’re doing some things right with the sites we design, BUT that there are a bunch of pieces we need to pay more attention to, for natural search engine optimization on the sites we code. And that we need to partner with a few SEO firms who we trust on sites. As a designer, I don’t have time to be a full time SEO expert, and even though I try and keep up on all the changes, I was so glad to meet some SEO experts that I feel I can recommend. Thanks, Wil and Simon!

I was sorry not to be able to attend the Sunday sessions, and wished I could have cloned myself somehow, but with a 5 1/2 hour drive home, it wasn’t in the cards this time out.  I hope to get to meet many of you again….thanks podcampers!

So much more I could comment on.. perhaps in coming days/months, but since I have work to get to, I’ll close with this: Web folks.. do some googling on Podcamps… and get to one near you. They’re not all about podcasting! And artist friends… if you’re the least bit techy, think about going to one of these events. You’ll learn alot, meet many interesting folks, and have a great time.

This was my 6th Clapotis. I guess I’ve become rather fond of them - easy to knit, they drape just wonderfully, you can choose just about any fiber to make them from, you can make them as wide or narrow as you like. They make great scarves, shawls, wraps. My first 5 were made of Cotton, Rayon or Cotton/rayon blends, most for gifts, the first rayon/silk one was for myself. I decided this year I wanted a new scarf/clapotis that was a tad warmer and lighter. So this winter, while I was purchasing some thrift store sweater to harvest for yarn (yarn harvesting is a GREAT way to get thru quitting smoking!), I found a women’s small sized cropped sweater in 100% cashmere.

The real luck was that the yarn was near DK weight, a rarity in thrift store cashmere sweaters. It was an ugly dusty pink, so after harvesting, I painted it with a kool-aid dye solution, using sponge brushes to get the color just where I wanted. I ended up with 4 skeins of 600yds total yarn, and used blueberry and cherry kool aid packets, about 6 total. In general, when I make my Clapotis’, I use purl stitches rather than stitch markers, to mark the stitches that will be dropped. It’s very visual, and much less fiddly.

You can find the original Clapotis pattern by Kate Gilbert on Knitty.com, as well as some other tips on working with the Clapotis pattern here: http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Clapotis I really like the warmth and lightness of this particular Clapotis. I also twisted the stitches on either side of the dropped stitches in such a way that they mirror each other. When I finally finished, I added some fringe to the short ends of the scarf. It’s lovely yarn…I wish I had more of it!