Sorry for the down time folks!
If you tried to visit my site sometime in the last 24 to 48 hours or so you may have been greeted by a "error establishing database connection" message instead of the content you were looking for. What happened is that I requested an upgrade from my host, which required them migrating my databases to a new location. I pointed the site to that new location but somehow the database refused me access and therefore the site stopped working.
I spent an hour and a half on the phone with them, during which they initially kept insisting that I must have a typo somewhere and then finally admitted there was a mysterious DB problem that they had to investigate. After that wonderful conversation I decided there was no way I could wait for them to fix the problem and went ahead and created a new database, then restored that new DB with the backup from the REAL database, then pointed the site to the new one instead. Which obviously works since you're able to read this right now! Then after I got home I went and did the same thing for the other 5 or so sites that were affected.
Moral of the story? Make sure you back things up! Especially if you're about to make a major change to something, and especially especially if you're requesting that someone else make that major change. I ran backups of all my databases right before I put in the request for the upgrade and it's a good thing I did because otherwise I'd be manually restoring my content from old backups and Google caches . . . not fun.
Speaking of which, the only site that I wasn't able to restore this way is the latest one, Knitspiring. Something went wrong with that DB backup and I have literally lost all the content. It's sort of ironic that this happened to the newest and therefore most updated of my blogs, but on the bright side, that means it had the least amount of content in it! I'm going to restore the content from Google cache and the site should be back up by this evening.
Bet most of you reading this are thinking you're happy you don't do this sort of work for a living . . . ;o)
Introducing: Knitspiring!
In an effort to better remember the ideas I have and the cool stuff I come across online or IRL that inspires me, I've started a new blog, Knitspiring! It will mostly be a photoblog with only small bits of text for each entry, and not all entries will directly relate to knitting, but they will all have something inspiring in them. Whether it's a color combo, a unique construction element, or just a gorgeous photo, each of these is something that spoke to me when I saw it and that I wanted to share with all of you. Hope you like the content and that it helps to inspire your knitting, too!
New beginnings
The Jewish new year was this past week and coincidentally, a major change in my life happened on that day: I got fired. That sounds worse than it actually was (I was going to give notice but they fired me instead) so please don't worry about me or feel bad, this is good news!
I have been planning to change careers for a while and now I'm just doing it sooner rather than later. I've been doing basically the same jack-of-all-trades office/operations manager job since I graduated from college and I'd reached a point where I needed to move up a level or focus on just one aspect of the job and go on from there. I've dabbled in website design and programming for years and over the last 4 or so years have felt pulled in that direction more and more . . . so I'm doing it!
I've been taking evening classes in Javascript and on Monday I start a programming internship with an awesome lifestyle magazine whose office happens to be only 2 subways stops away from my apartment. In preparation I've been reading all I can about Drupal and set up a site running it to get more familiar with the way it works. I feel like I'm back in college with all this reading! But thankfully the reading is all on my computer instead of in a textbook, which makes it particularly easy to knit while learning.
You didn't think this post would be completely devoid of knitting did you? I hope not!
Here's what I've been knitting while studying:
Yep, that's my Koigu Scraps Blanket. I finished the second strip and sewed the two together to see how it's turning out and I really like it! I also started on the third strip:
I like to work on mindless stockinette while reading because I never need to look down except when I'm adding a new color. My other WIPs are all fairly complicated right now so I had to put them aside and pick this up instead. Unfortunately I'm running out of Koigu scraps so I will probably have to find something else mindless to knit shortly . . . maybe some Koigu socks to create more scraps for the blanket? There's a thought . . .
A whole new look!
The Chiagu website design has been around for a long time with only small tweaks, but I've been dreaming of redoing everything for awhile now. I wasn't happy with my super-basic logo that I made myself and knew I was going to commission a professional to design a new logo for me. Enter Jacqui Oakley who was featured on a blog I regularly read and whose work I fell in love with as soon as I clicked over to her site . . . and her site's logo is amazing too! I sent her a quick email asking if she does logo work and we went from there. She and her husband got me my new logo completely finished in just two weeks! I loved it so much that I decided to redo my whole site around it. I asked her to do a bright pink and she picked this sort of watermelon pink, which I probably would never have picked but which I absolutely LOVE now.
Not only did I completely change the look of the site, I've also installed a whole new shopping cart system. Now the downloads are hosted on my own server and I no longer have to deal with e-junkie or payloadz to send an email with a download link. You can now purchase more than one pattern at a time with just one transaction!
I'm also now starting to offer pattern "bundles" where you can buy 3 related patterns for basically the price of 2. When you're browsing through the patterns you'll see that certain pattern pages, like the Leila page, show you a related product that's a bundle containing that product in it. The "Neckwarmer bundle" includes Leila, Vimioso, and Soho in it for only $10 instead of the $14 it would cost to buy those three patterns separately. I'm going to add a few more bundles to the site over the next few days . . . and shortly I'll also be selling kits for some new designs! Are you as excited as I am? No, probably not, but I hope you're at least a little excited!
Click around the new site and let me know what you think!!
Oh and if I'm not on the blog before then, happy Labor Day to all my fellow hardworking Americans! =)
Sorry for the outages, folks!
If you've tried to access my site over the last few days and got errors or blank pages, please accept my apologies! I've been trying to fix a particularly elusive error that was causing my entire site to load ridiculously s l o w l y and was seriously driving me crazy! I think I've fixed it now, but it did take a lot of trial and error and caused a lot of down time (more than I've ever had before combined!).
Please let me know if you see anything broken or follow a link and find a dead end, thank you!
