Those of you who are members of our Facebook group or follow us on Twitter or Ravelry (search for Patternfish-- I am tragically not a member and Chancellor Shannon is likely asleep and cannot help) will already know that we have listed our 3,000th pattern and are bursting with pride.

We have lots of other wonderful things to blog about, but to do it all at once would be pages and pages. I hope to do it in steps over the next day or two. Patience. I understand that professional LYS bloggers are taught to keep their blogs at five paragraphs or fewer. This will be hard.

Bad news first. On Tuesday night, 19 May, I was interviewed by the ebullient and encouraging Marlaina (Marly) Bird on her podcast Yarn Thing. During the course of the hour we happily encouraged designers of every stripe to send their patterns to patterns@patternfish.com, so we could set about listing them. This morning I discovered that emails have been bouncing back to people since that mailbox was (or very soon became) FULL. So embarrassing. It has since been cleaned out and polished and made all shiny. Would all those who were disappointed or discouraged please try again?

Good news now. Last night I went to the Toronto Downtown Knit Collective meeting to hear Sandi Wiseheart of Knitting Daily speak. She was wonderful and unexpectedly moving. Her topic was (ostensibly) losing (and, one hopes) re-finding your knitting mojo-- burning out and rekindling. I was sitting next to designer Robin Melanson who sympathized with the burning out side; I was glumly hoping to get back to a point where I might someday have the opportunity of burning out. It would be a glorious process, I think. Anyway I got a bit of a sock cuff knitted-- first knitting in weeks.

Danny Ouellette pulled a new hat design out of his secret bag-- a wonder. I cannot wait to list it; but he will offer no patterns before the items are perfectly executed, the patterns perfectly written, and the photos perfectly taken. Patience is required.

To my delight, Cat Bordhi was in the audience. Faithful readers will remember how kind she was at January's TNNA, inviting me to address a class of hers about selling their work on Patternfish. After Sandi's talk I scampered up to Cat (who remembered my name!) and admired what she was wearing-- this beautiful Sivia Harding piece.

"You have it on Patternfish, of course?" smiled Cat.

"Oh, yes. In fact, it's our best-selling pattern in Germany."

"That's because they can spell Moebius," she replied instantly.

We are faint. We want to shout and dance and lob love bombs!

Patternfish just sold its 10,000th pattern. It was either this one or this one, we don't know which-- we were at 9998 and then a Wonderful Customer bought two, so they're both winners.

And the most extraordinary thing is that we did this with only 4,188 members-- some of the smartest people in the world. Patternfish is still a too-well-kept-secret. Let people know! Spread the word!

A terrific milestone. How should we celebrate?

We'll email this to publishers personally in a while, but can't keep our mouth shut.

First, 'Publishers' are defined as the copyright holders-- the people who have the right to realize revenue on the own work published under their names. If you buy from the publisher Robin Melanson, then Robin Melanson gets the money.

All publishers can now use vanity links in their own blogs or websites or whatever without further assistance from us. If you type in the URL:

http://www.patternfish.com/pub/classic_elite_yarns

-- you get only the patterns published by Classic Elite. (The '/pub/' means publisher, get it? Of course you do.) Similarly:

http://www.patternfish.com/pub/interpretations

-- takes you to only Denise Powell's imaginative Interpretations patterns. Likewise:

http://www.patternfish.com/pub/dovetail_designs

-- will take you to only Val Love's great work (we know, not enough, but we're working on it!). As a publisher, you just plug in your own name, and if it's multiple words, just put an underscore between them. All new additions are automatically included. Any questions or problems? Forward to 'info' or 'support' at patternfish.com. Phil or I-- or both, most likely-- will get it. I tell you, empowering the people is mighty satisfying. Thanks, Phil. Go forth and linkify.