ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

This is a sunset at our new place in Miranda

Unique Boutique Knits on etsy is now on vacation – because Best Beloved and I are riding from Haarlem, the Netherlands to Switzerland on our bicycles starting Friday 5th August and then we will fly home to New Zealand.

There we are selling or hoping to have sold our house in Auckland and we will be moving into a house in Miranda, the Waikato. It will take us a bit of time to sort out our stuff, reorganise and plant a spring garden. We hope that we will be sufficiently well organised to reopen for pattern sales on Unique Boutique Knits by the end of September.

we will post odd notes – on our personal blog of our travels and will be starting a new blog as yet unnamed to deal with our new life down on the farm. (2.2 acres or .9004 of a hectare – I think that is the right way to write it). Yes for all those on farms – for us we think anything over 1/2 acre is a farmlet not a farm. But down on the farm has a nice ring to it.

I haven’t had a functioning computer for some months and am catching up. Today I have checked Google Analytics for the first time in many months.

This site has had 18,898 visitors since 19 November 2009 when analytics was set up. That is 19 months with an average monthly visitor count a smidgeon less than 1,000 per month. In the last few months where I have not been adding to the website due to the lack of computer facilities to do so the average has still been just a smidgeon over 1,025 per month.

Thank you so much for still looking.

Just for fun:
19 months
19 November 2009
19,000 visitors (very very nearly)

The top post was Beret Pattern in 8ply or double knitting is on Etsy now It is now available once more on Etsy. So that is the news – my Etsy shop is opened with its patterns once more as well.

Kiwi Cape

Kiwi Cape Pattern

Multicolour and mixed fibres capelet

Carbon Footprint Graph – left and right foot

Sweet Shell

Chic, Classic, Elegant, Sexy Beret

I recently did a bit of a rave about Grannyg. She, that is Grannyg has a mission to save the world – one craft at a time, and she is doing very well at it, even on her own – she knits, spins, weaves, sews and bakes (I am told gloriously well). Oh, and she drinks coffee. I guess she must also drink tea given that the website is called Crafternoon Tea with Grannyg or maybe the name was a decision born to fill a rhyming need as Crafternoon Coffee with Grannyg does not work at all well.

Well Grannyg and I had a long talk a couple of weeks ago and today the podcast is up and ready so if you are at all curious about podcasts on crafts in, or to do with New Zealand and New Zealanders then do listen to it.

episode 36i – ConnieLene Johnston

Now I am Danish born, but I certainly sound like a New Zealander as you will hear. It is not so surprising as I have lived in New Zealand since December 28th 1948. Of course it is possible that it was the 29th, I just can’t quite recall, it being a wee while ago and at that time I was of an age where dates were not quite so important to me.

We established I have a long history with New Zealand including the craft / art / knitting world and as such am qualified to be interviewed, and what a fun interview that was. It did run on a bit, as it does when you are discussing stuff dear to your heart and it was great fun. Fortunately Grannyg being a very technically au fait granny, she has edited it a bit.

And if you think I laugh and sound like a smoker – believe me I am not and have never been. I spoke to Best Beloved about that and he reminded me that on the day I had a bad air day. What do you think of that – he noticed my bad air day, never ever notices my bad hair days. He was downstairs while Grannyg was interviewing me, or was that while we were talking about stuff we both love. No, it really was an interview.

Isn’t technology great – we spoke across the airwaves, and now I can, and I hope you do as well, we can listen to it over the airwaves – clear as day.

Sorry – I forgot say – we are living in Haarlem, in the Netherlands, In North Holland, which is why this was an interview via the ether. I am calmer about ether today you will note. We have been here in the Netherlands just over 2 years and will return to New Zealand late next year. In the meantime my Best Beloved is working, and I am designing and knitting, just filling in the days with yarn, ideas, colours and even patterns.

I hope these patterns and I probably have several hundred partially written or connie knithand notes that will become patterns. These here patterns are to be sold so I can continue my passion for yarns. I will quietly curl up my toes as the New Zealand pension is unlikely to be sufficient to cover my yarn needs.

Unique Boutique Knits – with my knit patterns

Please go look and then listen. It will help Grannyg with her quest and with luck it will also help me with mine – and please forward the link.

I have been talking, or is that writing, a bit lately about direction on a personal level with various friends, family and colleagues. But I still feel a touch confused.

But I shouldn’t be!

I am communicating like crazy.

Or is that crazily communicating.

Or should it be that I am crazy to communicate

Or what else could it mean?

I am on Facebook and Twitter, and have two etsy shops Unique Boutique Knits where you will find my patterns and some odd knits and bits. Then I have an etsy shop called ConnieLene where you will only find knits and that might be only for a wee while. This one is for the chop as it were.

Then I am on Youtube and as I am sure you have worked out already I am Connieleneknits The videos are of my (our graffiti) knitting exploits as well as bird life and bike travels etc in the Netherlands.

Crazy as it all seems I am also on the Big Idea but there I am ConnieLene Johnston and then there are other places in the world like LinkedIn, Digg as Connieleneknits, Ravelry as ConnieLene, GrownUpsNZ, my mobile for SMS, email, etc – there are too many places that I cannot list for time becomes an issue here.

All these internet connections are so that I can communicate with absolutely anyone who could be interested in me personally, and/or in my work, or in my travels with Best Beloved.

Life goes in full Circles!

Yes it does.

The very first connection I had with the world was with my mother and then with my family and communciation was snail mail, then the telephone other than real live real functional talking. You know that stuff – face to face. Fantastic stuff.

Life, work, marriage, children, illness, death, birth ……..

And we have forgotten to talk.

Oh we do communicate – but talk, what’s that!

Now we communicate via the ether.

I remember ether – it is what I used as a young nurse in an old coackroach ridden hospital ward in Auckland – to stun huge coackroaches into submission to be scooped up and washed down the sluice. I could still hear the scuttling of those other 10 million coackroaches but I did my bit with the ether.

Now I do so much with the ether – that I think everything has come full circle again. I feel like there are another 10 million connections that I am not making in this modern ether.

It is a little scary so.

Right now I just want family and friends and colleagues and fantastic face to face talking for a bit.

Maybe I have been alone here in the Netherlands too long. Maybe it is because I have been recently to New Zealand where we did lots of talking. Maybe it is because my sister has terminal cancer. Maybe it is because my sister is to be married this weekend, maybe it is just that I am not there.

I know, I am not alone – Best Beloved is here. He leaves for his work at around 7.30 in the mornings. I am not sure of the time – he brings me a wonderful coffee up two flights of stairs and then goes to work. He comes home again around 5.30 or 6 generally. I might go to the shops and the rest of the time I am alone.

Gosh I think I am having words with me.

Get up – get out there, only another 12 months and then who knows what we might get up to then – and I have at least enough yarn for another 50 sweaters, not that I will knit sweaters, and I am going to the Knitting and Stitch show in London. Then I will talk, I hope I will be talking a lot.

I am so looking forward to talking.

I will still communicate via the ether, but I am not going to try to make another 10 million ether connections.