buttons

Okay, most of you know I'm rather addicted to Ravelry. I love the patterns and being able to search on a variety of elements. I love the yarns and the colors people have stashed and being able to help someone destash while increasing my stash (or, rarely, vice versa). But I haven't talked much here about the groups on Ravelry. Trust me when I say, "If you can think of it, there's already a group for it." Yup, even that.

So it shouldn't come as a shock to realize I'm not only a member of Ferret Fanatics on Ravelry, but I'm pretty active there. Recently, a new member (to me, at least) popped in and announced a contest. The idea was to come up with images of our ferrets and give them really good captions which epitomized life with ferrets. We would vote on them by clicking on the agree button. Each time someone does that, the label for the button changes, from agree (1) to agree (2) and so on. That's why you might be seeing a lot of shirts like this or like this around and about. Ravelry is everywhere!

Time went by and I think we all forgot about the contest, until one of the members "burned the ears" (magic-linked, so they'd get a PM that someone was talking about them) of the original poster who sponsored the contest. The votes were tallied and Samuel's picture/caption tied for 2nd place!!! Woooo-hoooo!

(Hey, I take my thrills wherever I can get them!)

The prize was 5 buttons of my winning design plus 10 buttons from the ‘ferret collection’ of buttons. They arrived today. Wow. So cool. Look:

This is the whole collection in one shot. (Okay, a crappy shot, but it's late and I'm tired.)

These four are slogans with no ferrets on them. (So I'm making them small and you can just go to my flickr set to seem them bigger 'cause I'm too lazy tonight to link all these buttons!)

These two tied for 4th place. The left one says "Ferret Proof Isn't" and the right one says "Mischief: I Makes It".

The first place winner says "Rescue a Ferret". The tie for second place says "No Paparazzi Please".

This is the 2nd place button Samuel won. It's a picture of Samuel rolling in an empty (clean) litter box. The caption says "What? I'm using my litter box.... Aren't I?"

I think this one is so awesome. The original photo has been done up as a poster for the owner with a caption that says "ROFL" in big letters and underneath that "EEEE! Stop! Stop! I can't....oooohahahaha!!!" It's hilarious. (The picture is really of a ferret yawning, for those not in the know about ferrets, but it really looks like he's holding his belly and laughing....)

And my personal favorite of all of them: Samuel's beautiful face filling a button. This is the avatar I use on Ravelry and many other places around the 'net. It's as connected to me as my "annekaelber" ID.

It's a rare week on Ravelry that I don't get at least one private message or response to a forum post commenting on the cute wuzzel that is my Ravatar. In fact, it's so connected to me (in my mind, at least) that I'm thinking of doing some "stylizing" of the image to reduce it to something more easily reproduce-able on a business card. Not that I need business cards, but I've been wanting to make calling cards for some time. I'm always out-and-about and wanting to give someone a way to contact me that won't be so easily lost. And since I'll probably give them out like businesses give out their business cards (or close to it), I want to keep the design simple (read that: cheap) and still have it "click" for people who meet me in Real Life.

If you're stopping by to see this post from Ferret Fanatics, do say hi. And if you'd like me to link to your Rav profile or somewhere else, I'd be glad to...I don't like to give other people's names and/or identities away without their permission. smile