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Fear and Self-Loathing

Jan26

Most of us have days when we’re full of those two emotions, am I right? Today is one of those days for me. Besides my life as a mom and wife, I have my passions: my yarn craft, my writing, my proofreading. If I’m not succeeding at those, I feel like I’m failing as a person. Whether that’s right or wrong doesn’t matter. It just is. The brain doesn’t function that way, or at least mine doesn’t. I need to train myself to define “success” more loosely.

So yesterday, you might have seen, I posted about starting a sale on my Etsy shop. I wrote about it here, and I posted a photo on Facebook. I tried to boost the photo but it was rejected, so I tried again with a different photo. Maybe I was obnoxious about it because someone unliked my page yesterday. This morning, I found that I’d lost two more likes. Does it matter? It shouldn’t. It’s not a comment on ME. Except that my knitting IS me, so a rejection of that does feel personal. Thankfully, I also got two new likes (YAY) so that made me feel better. Maybe I should get rid of the Facebook page and just focus on Etsy. I get so caught up in the numbers that I lose focus of what really matters.

Those of you with small crafty businesses, what do you do? Does FB help or hinder you?

Also, rejection just sucks, doesn’t it?

Yesterday, I also handed off my manuscript to a new reader, a former co-worker, and I’m anxious to hear her feedback. What if it’s horrible? I don’t always think it is, but today I do. And soon, I’ll be sending this piece of myself out to agents to critique, and reject.

Yes, rejection sucks. But I guess that’s the risk you take when you put yourself out there, isn’t it? And you just have to keep going to find the reward: those people who truly love what you’re doing and who aren’t shy about saying so. It’s too bad those voices are less frequent and harder to hear/believe.

But here’s the bright spot of my day: I have a potential proofreading client, and as much I love proofreading, I think I need to bump that up in my priorities. I love being that person who helps others shine. So getting a basic website up is on my To Do list, and soon. I’m sure I’ll share it when it’s up!

I’ll close with another highlight. I finished another project last night, a fun slouch hat with some of my newer yarn. I love it, can’t wait to get some better photos so I can list it on Etsy. IMG_4932

I have my knitting, but what about you? How do you cope with rejection, with fear and self-loathing?

A Scarf, a book and an Etsy Sale!

Jan25

Today’s post will be quick and a bit scrambled, I think, much like my brain today. First, some happy news: I finished the scarf commission, hooray! It will ship out tomorrow and complete that order. Now I can move on to finishing my eight other WIPs without guilt. Here’s a terrible photo that doesn’t show any good details…because it’s so darn hard to photograph black yarn. IMG_4916But just to prove that I’m not a complete and utter photo slouch, here’s a better one that I took last night. I’m pleased with it; it’s soft and cozy. IMG_4915

Second, I’m taking my manuscript and handing it off to my first co-worker reader! It’s a little scary and a little exciting at the same time. I hope she likes it, but I also hope I get good feedback. We’re having lunch too, which is why I don’t have time for a long post today.

Finally, I decided to do a sale on my Etsy shop for Valentine’s Day! I try to keep my prices affordable all the time, so I very rarely do discounts, but I figured, what the heck. Let’s try it and see what happens. So I’ve done a Facebook boost to hit a bigger audience, and you can see that here. Fingers crossed! IMG_4917

Happy Monday, friends!

Photo Editing of Yarn Stuff

Jan22

Yesterday was spent without yarn in my hands and strangely, it felt okay. That’s not to say I avoided yarn completely. Instead, I worked on photos for my Bonny Knits business. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while but wasn’t sure what apps or programs would be best. Photoshop is the obvious one, but it’s too expensive for my needs.

Thanks to a fellow fiber friend, I discovered PicMonkey and started playing around with the free Basic version. It has a good variety of effects, overlays, themes and fonts for free, which is great. The biggest flaw is how slowly it runs on my computer, and I’m not sure how much to blame on the site and how much on my laptop. When there’s nothing else open on my computer, I can use it without too much frustration. Here are a couple of early attempts. yodaHeartbeatLoveHatSadly, this one has a wee typo (should be ‘shop’, not ‘shops’) and I couldn’t go back and edit once I saved. It would have to be re-done completely. I don’t know if that’s something that’s different in the paid services, but it would be nice to keep the images in a library and edit them easily.

Then I tried Foto Editor Lite, another free app, this time on my phone. There were some different filters that I liked a lot, ones that seemed to alter the background without changing the focus of the photo too much. The text was easy to add and alter, but the app crashed a few times while I was editing text, and I’d lose everything I’d done. Still, I liked it well enough for a quick edit of photos on my phone that I could then easily post on Twitter or Instagram. IMG_4889

Then I moved to the iPad and played with LiPix, another free app. It’s easy to use with a ton of variety in frames and shapes. You can alter the colors yourself to get just the right shade. It has just as many filters as Instagram, if not more. Adding text was simple, with great options for color and font. There were stickers you could add, which were fun, probably not something I’d use for this kind of thing but great for personal photos. I think this might have been my favorite of the three. It was easier for me to work on the iPad than the phone, it didn’t crash once, it had a ton of variety for free, and the photos were easy to save and share. IMG_0348IMG_0349There you have it, if you’ve been looking for ways to spice up your photos but like me, didn’t know where to start. I’m looking forward to all the fun images I can create!