UPDATE:  The free patterns are now all gathered on this separate page.  I have to make room in the sidebar for other cool stuff soon.

~Doris

This blog theme really works for me.  It is clean, easy to read, professional looking without being stuffy, and has a few useful doo-dads… thingies… widgets… that help me point you to cool stuff.  Dang it if I could never figure out how to accomplish these things at Blogger.  Could be I didn’t try hard enough there, but if you have to work so hard at something that’s supposed to be fun, what the frack!

So last night I floundered my way through a few WordPress tutorials and discovered that this theme let’s you put a customizable blogroll widget on the sidebar. That would have been gobbledy gook to me a couple of days ago.  I’m guessing that normal peoples’ list of links (blogroll) would include their friends’ blogs, the sites they visit, whatever.  But the blogroll  can actually support any kind of links you want.  HMMMM.

So last night,  more accurately this morning at 25 or 6 to 4, I had the brainstorm to locate, grab and post the links for every one of my crochet designs that is currently being offered as a free pattern download.  While not blogs, these are sort of my friends, huh?

Finding the links was pretty straightforward.  Most of the free designs of mine are from NaturallyCaron.com, crocheted in the yarns Spa and Country, or at the Caron site and done in Caron Simply Soft.  A few are from Lion Brand Yarn (be advised that they make you sign up and sign in before you can download the goods).  Other sources are Tahki, Coats, Craft Yarn Council of America, Knitting Daily TV, Michaels and Ravelry.

What was not so simple was providing the images in the right sizes.  This is what has taken me all day today.  And even though I’ve stopped obsessing over these images, it still bugs me that I can’t get them all the same size when they’re running down the sidebar in a line. Guess I’ll have to go ingest and digest another tutorial before it’s looking perfect.  Yeah, right.  In another life…

Meanwhile, please help yourselves to the free patterns linked through my shiny new sidebarblogrollwidget.  And while you are surfing around the net, if  you spot any more of my work that’s a free pattern, drop a comment to this post and let me add it to the pile.

One more thing.  The best way to view ALL of my crochet designs in one place is Ravelry.com, the awesome free site for all fiber arts. Simply join Ravelry if you aren’t yet a member, and connect with me there (dorisjchan).  What you want to view is Doris Chan Design Pages.

Thanks and enjoy!