Ah Ha!
No, I hadn't included ramdisk support! I'm now writing this using my new kernel! THANK YOU! I'm sure I'm not the only person on the list who's really glad you're here Alexander!
For others who might be in the same boat as I was: 1. Run "make menuconfig" 2. Navigate through the menus: "Device Drivers -> Block Devices" 3. Enable "RAM disk support", and "Initial RAM disk (initrd) support" 4. Enable any other kernel stuff you want/need. 5. Run "make", then (as root) "make modules_install", and "make install"
The "make install" will create your initrd and add the appropriate stanza in your /boot/grub/grub.conf.
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/udev/ explains how to boot using udev without using an initrd.
