The Blog Is Our KAL Compass
The Blog will be our compass for the KAL. It is the place the place from which the KAL content springs.  There will also be many other places and ways we will provide help: Facebook, Twitter, Ravelry, emails to Melissa . . . Please make sure you either set up an RSS feed for this blog or simply remember to check it every Monday. Don’t worry that you may miss a Monday because you “forgot.” Melissa will post reminders everywhere. I know some of you have mentioned to Melissa that you are having trouble with setting up an automatic RSS feed. We have checked our end and the trouble does not lie with the blog site. It generally stems from the browser you use. So, try Google, Safari, Firefox or whatever you haven’t used if you run in to this situation.

Starting Monday the Blog will explain what we all are to do for the week with knitting Ella. It will address where to start working and where to end so you are ready for the next blog entry/knitting installment. I will be assigning homework: the activities you need to do will be spelled out. They will relate to knitting Ella and perhaps to embellishments or “Ella Diversions” (additional content such as patterns for other items such as accessories that you may want to make for a complete “look”).

During the weekly blogs I will not only to offer instructions for what I have done but also to suggest other things you can do. I’ve had a lot of ideas as I’ve been knitting my fourth Ella and I will share all those ideas with you. What will be really terrific is if you also share your plans with everyone, post your idea swatches, post pictures of your plans and/or finished results. My dream for this project is that we create a veritable library of Ella coat ideas. How fun will it be to page through that?!

Weekly Ella Challenges & Contests

There will also be weekly challenges: This is the fun part of your “homework,” aside from knitting Ella. There will be info here in the blog each week as to little extras you may do to be entered in different contests or giveaways. Melissa will post details for the week in the threads on Ravelry.

For week 1, you will be asked to simply keep up with your “Ella Coat Project” by way of the “Projects” pages associated with your Ravelry presence. If you have never logged a project on Ravelry, it is very simple: while logged into your profile, click in the upper right corner where you see an assortment of colorful tiny boxes next to the word “projects” and simply fill in all the information you can about The Ella Coat. PLEASE take pictures as you go! It is not only a lot of fun for everyone to see what YOU are doing, but to some knitters seeing your progress will be a huge help! You should “share” you Ella project with the Ella Rav group called The Official Noni Ella Reinvented KAL–Melissa will post a thread in the Rav/Ella group discussion board). All the different projects will appear in our “recently added projects” box. I encourage you all to look over them as we go along. This contest of keeping up with your project will run for the duration of the KAL. Get as creative and detailed as you want. There will be a panel of 5 judges to look over and critique these. One GRAND PRIZE WINNER will be named at the end of the contest and win a delicious prize.

By now most of you have all your materials and have swatched. We have had such a tremendous surge of last minute knitters that we now have made The Ella Coat Pattern available as a Ravelry download. If you purchase the pattern on Ravelry, you will have plenty of time to take it to your LYS and find yarns to MAKE ELLA YOURS. We are providing the Ella pattern on Rav for those knitters who do not have the pattern available in their LYS. Be sure to check with your yarn store! Some may be just a little delayed in getting pattern. If you are without a local yarn store, getting the pattern is very simple: you can go to Ravelry and find the pattern page there or you can just pop over to the pattern page on the Noni website: http://nonipatterns.com/collections.php?show_design=1302 and click on the “buy now” button.

Check-in Here on Mondays:  See You Back Here on Monday the 16th!

Every Monday come and look for the Noni Blog posting. You will want to have your pattern next to you to reference what we are to do for the week.

Melissa will hostess the Ravelry chat every Wednesday 9 to 10 EST to discuss what is to be done or what you have been doing that week.

If you are in a LYS group or a KAL group you all will follow the week’s breakdown in whatever way you decide. Our Facebook page, twitter and Ravelry group will lend additional support.

The Bloggers Knitting & Blogging Along With Us

We have bloggers knitting and blogging as they go!

Shameka at http://shamekaknits.blogspot.com/ is blogging from NYC. Please sign up for her RSS feed and get inspired by what she is doing with her NYC Diva color pallet.

We also have Stephanie who is known on Rav as DrSteph. Her blog is http://acunningplan.typepad.com/andsheknitstoo/2012/01/ella-revisited-kal.html and she hails from Canada. You will want to see what she is saying, so sign up for her RSS feed as well.

We will also have a blogger on board from Down Under who posts in the blog Random Knits http://www.randomknits.net/ . Donna may offer helpful insight as she blogs, so stop by and see what she says!

These ladies are knitting alongside you: They are great at blogging about what they are knitting and thinking and doing. I believe they will give a fair assessment of their own process, how it is going, and what seems easy or challenging. These ladies were asked specifically to join our KAL because they knit and blog very well. When they post their thoughts on projects they are knitting it is not simply informative, but layered with inspiration and perspective. Making a habit of checking their blogs and supporting them through your comments will be assets to each of you during this KAL.

So are you excited? Ready? Can’t wait for Monday? (truth be told, I can’t wait either!)