Good to see that Kismet operates all over the internet. Another site that sells patterns announced a sale recently, and the site promptly went down for a while. Maybe it's one of the Unwritten Laws.

TNNA (www.tnna.org) is coming this weekend, and on Thursday Robin Melanson and Veronik Avery and I are driving from Toronto, Ontario to Columbus, Ohio for it. It'll take about eight hours, and since road trips with dear friends are one of my favorite things, the trip itself should be a joy, not just the show. We're hoping to meet a whole bunch of people for the first time-- like the wise and informed Therese Shere of Knitfinder, and the madly talented Janet Szabo of Big Sky Knitting Designs, to name just two-- and re-meet other old pals.

Since we have yet to figure out how to upload patterns reliably while hurtling along the Interstate, there may be a couple of sparse pattern-posting days. But have you noticed that after TNNA's, we tend to get some lovely new publishers? Fingers crossed.

Today is Patternfish's 2nd birthday.

We share it with Tony Curtis, Paulette Goddard, John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin bassist), Suzi Quatro, and our faves Josephine Baker and Anderson Cooper (if they had had children, they probably would have been the most beautiful kids in the world).

We have 231 publishers as I write. We have many many thousands of customers. We have sold tens of thousands of patterns. We have made splendid new friends and gotten reaquainted with wonderful old ones. We have encountered goodwill and kindness and support at just about every turn, which has enriched our work and private lives.

We have grown, and continue to grow, fast. We've been told over and over from many different sources that our timing was perfect-- that print distribution is giving way somewhat to PDF delivery, that we are the best at it, and that we make pattern shopping superlatively pleasurable. We are too immodest not to repeat this. We're also grateful for luck and timing. And for having had motive, means, and opportunity to bring about the opposite (we hope) of a crime.

Patternfish is Julia Grunau full-time, with masterful part-time assistance from Phil Lysons (Minister of Technology), Shannon Shields (Chancellor), Special Guest Star Greg Smith, and newest Patternfisher Gayle Clow (Ambassador, the moderator of our Ravelry group, and our overall internet monitor). I think it's safe to say that we all really like our jobs at almost every moment. We got together for a happy birthday lunch yesterday to celebrate.

Thanks to every publisher, especially the original ones who went live with us two years ago. Thanks to all our customers, past and future. And to everyone else in the industry and out who has smoothed our paths, encouraged us, and done us huge favour after huge favour-- muchas smooches.

There's something about major media types signing up as members that makes our 3rd-party PDF delivery service go crackerdog. It was down for a little while today for only the second time in two whole years. The first time it went down (about four months after we went live) a Major Media Type had just signed up and ordered four patterns. Today, another Major Media type signed up and it cacked again.

Not only that, but the first copies of Vogue Knitting's Early Fall 2010 issue are reaching subscribers, and we are thrilled to be listed in Classic Elite's back cover ad (they say Cover Four in the industry) as the source for the gorgeous Princess Mitts and Princess Muff pictured there. They had let us know months ago that the ad was booked, but they wouldn't have had time to photograph and print and distribute hard copies to all the LYS's for the official magazine launch of 8 June-- would we mind if they used us to deliver the patterns? Mind? It took some arm-wrestling, but they talked us into it eventually. In fact we were gibbering with excitement.

All is now resolved and back to normal, but the timing! The circumstances around getting what you wish for can occasionally be prickly.

We will write a big long post on Thursday, 3 June, for reasons which will become happily apparent very soon.