Tag Archive | etsy shop

Stupid Hat

I had plans for the weekend: I was going to go to Nerd Girl Yarns’ Grand Opening at her new studio. Then I was going to go to a band competition and out to dinner with the mother. In between all those things, I was going to finish a proofreading job. Well, I can make plans all I want, and then life happens.

I’m closing my Etsy shop, as I mentioned before, and have everything marked down to cost, basically, to clear stuff out. These are things that have been hanging around for a year or so, packed up in bags in my craft show supply tub. I sold a hat last week, and in a hurry before work one morning, I packed it up and sent it out. Last night, I heard from the buyer: the hat had a big hole in it. What?? So now I’m embarrassed that I didn’t check it, worried that either I didn’t do a good job finishing it or I have moths, and disappointed that I sent out an inferior product to a customer, regardless of the price. Of course I’m replacing it, but I don’t have more of that yarn, so that means an emergency trip to my LYS to get the yarn, and then emergency hat knitting to make a replacement hat. And all of that means I will probably lose money on that sale. (If you’re interested, check out what’s left here. Low prices and free shipping!) BUT. It’s the right thing to do, and it doesn’t matter that I’m closing my shop, I’m still going to do the right thing. But. Sighhh. At least it’s a quick pattern in bulky yarn, and I do love to knit hats. This can be my band competition knitting tonight. Gotta look for the silver lining, right?

I’ve been doing some service projects instead of selfish knitting, so not too much knitting to show. I actually switched to crochet this week. We’re working on a Welcome Blanket at work, with several of us making squares that we’ll sew together into a blanket. The blankets will go on display for short time and then distributed to refugees. You can read more about the project here. I’ve got four squares done; our theme is black plus a bright color. Of course some of mine had to be purple!

I’ll be sure to share a photo of the finished blanket! It’s due by November 4th, so we’re trying to work fast. What’s your favorite service project?

Fast Yoda Hat

Oct16

Well, I was reminded that I have an Etsy shop this week. I’ve kind of ignored it since I went back to work, and let it slide. I’ve had a couple of small orders for stitch markers (like these) but haven’t done much else. Then I got an order for a Yoda hat. An adult Yoda hat. I’d created the listing as “Made to Order” when I was staying home and had plenty of knitting time to whip one up when I got an order. But that’s not really the case anymore! I’d sorted through my inventory recently enough that I knew I didn’t have one on hand, so I got to knitting.

I knit in the car while in standstill traffic.

I knit at a meeting at work, I knit at lunch breaks, I knit in the evenings, I knit at the football game.

After two full days of knitting, the hat was done and ready to ship.

Not too bad for someone working full-time, right? Of course the listing said it would ship in 1-2 business days and it actually shipped on the 3rd, but I’m still calling it a win. And yep, I went into Etsy immediately and made sure there weren’t any other items listed that weren’t ready to ship!

Another FO: my mom’s blanket! Ages ago she asked for a larger, warmer blanket, and picked out the yarn, and I started crocheting. It got set aside during the heat of summer, and then I picked it back up a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I got to deliver it!

It’s very thick and dense and warm and cozy and she seemed to be delighted with it. I’m delighted she’s happy, and that it’s done! It always feels good to finish a long-term WIP. My oldest is from February 2015, a long purple gradient seed stitch cowl. Pretty, but also pretty boring! What’s your oldest WIP, and what’s keeping you from finishing it?

Oy, This Shawl

Jun20

I have definitely learned the importance of the old knitting adage “Spend money to save money; buy more yarn.” I worked hard on my Marcelle Wrap over the weekend, even had to rip back 12 rows to fix a mistake I made in the lace. (That was over 5200 stitches. It was very sad.) But I made it back to that point and beyond, and I’m midway through the second repeat of the lace chart and it’s looking just LOVELY!

But do you see that tiny ball of green yarn? That’s all I have left, for nine more rows of green. Um, yeah, that’s not enough. You know what that means, don’t you? I had to go to KnitPicks and order more. And they’re having their summer sale, which means of course approximately 10 more ball of Palette ended up in my card. Who can resist such pretty colors at such awesome prices? Plus, I had to get free shipping, right? So, yeah, this project is on hold. Again. While I wait for more yarn.

What’s that? I should have checked gauge? Well, yeah, I probably should have. But I had to order the yarn before I could do that, didn’t I? So I should have just been smart and ordered an extra ball of each color to begin with. And I should have used the right size needle too. Instead of a 4mm, I’m using a size 4. (Not on purpose. Brain fart.) And my unblocked gauge was only 2 stitches off her blocked gauge, so I foolishly thought I was okay.

I was not.

Well, obviously I’m FINE. But I needed more yarn. So! This is back in timeout. I’ve been asked to do another test knit, which I think is awesome and super fun, but it also uses Palette so I ordered some in that same order and can’t start the test knit until it arrives. And I’m going to make the boy a hat, because in looking through his Amazon wish list I discovered (I almost hate to say it) a knit beanie. Clearly I can’t spend money to buy a hat I could make! Especially not when it’s a good excuse to buy more yarn! That yarn is also coming in my KnitPicks order.

So what to knit?? I needed something to keep my fingers busy! I made two cotton washcloths while at the family Father’s Day lunch, but last night I had a good chunk of knitting time. In my WIPs, I have:

gray garter stitch scarf (OMG SO BORING WHAT WAS I THINKING)
gradient seed stitch wrap (pretty colors but also pretty boring)
bulky cotton blanket (bright colors, soft organic cotton, but a heavy blanket in 90 degrees?)
crochet afghan for my mom (I’m not far enough along for it to be overly heavy or hot, but it just wasn’t calling my name)

Time to cast on a new project! Apparently in my yarn stash, it’s last in, first out: I picked three colors of the Ultra Pima I got recently and cast on for the Secret Beach Diagonal scarf. It’s a paid pattern, but you get the pattern for both the scarf and the cowl, so I figure it’s worth it.

This pleases me, and will definitely keep me knitting happily until my KnitPicks order arrives.

Now, finally, I would like to humbly ask for your opinion. I knit a little clutch, and my Knitting SIL felted it for me, and I think it needs a button closure. I don’t want to do an inside closure because it’s so small already and I want to maximize the useful space. So what do I use to go around the button to close it??

Oops, that wasn’t really “finally”, sorry. THIS is finally: my daughter is in the school Concert Choir this coming year and they’re planning a trip to Princeton. YAY! But also: time to fundraise, so I’m offering 25% off everything in my Etsy shop, even the sale items, so if you’re interested, take a peek at my shop HERE (this is probably more for my non-knitting readers) and if anything calls your name, use the code LOVEMUSIC25 for 25% off and free U.S. shipping!

Happy Monday, friends, and happy First Day of Summer!

Selfish Knitting

May9

I didn’t do anything I was “supposed” to do yesterday. Well, no, I take that back. I did EXACTLY what I was supposed to do: relax, let everybody else do all the stuff, and only do what *I* wanted to do. So we had a lovely brunch, I got a couple of presents from my sweet daughter, we went to see the new Captain America movie (spoiler: I wasn’t a big fan.) and then I knitted the rest of the day while watching old chick flicks. (Sweet Home Alabama and Pleasantville.) I made lots of progress on a beautiful Pink Diamond Shawlette: Pattern is Diamond Shawlette and I’m using KnitPicks Galileo in Abalone and I’m loving everything about knitting this. But for now I must set it aside so I can focus on the things I have to do, like a mermaid blanket and a proofreading job.

Oh, and I finally have pictures of the rainbow scarf, which just got listed on Etsy this morning.

I hope all my fellow mothers had an equally lovely day yesterday!

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. But 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.

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!

Happy Monday, friends!

New Year Knitting

Jan3

I know the trend is to do some reflecting on the previous year and make goals or hopes or dreams for the coming year, but I have no desire to do a lot of that this year. Last year is done and gone, thank goodness. Yes, some good things happened, the best maybe being our move to a new city, but there was also an awful lot of not-so-good for me. I’m ready to move on, but without putting high expectations on it. I want to knit, I want to read and write and edit, I want to keep trying to be a better person, I want to spend time with friends and family, I want to take care of my husband and kids, and I want to enjoy my puppies. None of those are new things.

That’s not to say I don’t have specific goals; I do. I want to knit from my stash more this year and control my yarn spending. I want to grow my Etsy business. I want to do more craft shows. But again, those aren’t new things. I’ve been doing well at knitting from stash, mostly thanks to the broken foot that kept me housebound. My Etsy shop did well over the holidays so I want to keep that momentum going. Craft shows, well, I’ve been trying to figure those out for ages.

Does any of this make sense? I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say. I guess just that I don’t want to tie it all together to a date. I want these all to be ongoing aspirations. And I think I’m off to a good start! I’ve finished two projects this year. One is a WIP that carried over from last year, and it was knit from stash. This is the Coors Cowl made with CEY Chateau. Originally I was going to do five colors as the pattern specified, but then I discovered that the darker grey I’d chosen wasn’t the same yarn. And once I got two colors knit, I realized five would make it extremely wide. I had to pick a third color, and debated between the pink and the blue… HSDY8293 before deciding to use the second skein of purple in my stash. This is for me, after all, and I’ll almost always choose purple. I adore the end result. It’s wide, long enough to wrap twice, and it’s so wonderfully soft and warm and squishy.

My second FO of the new year is my Malabrigo Rasta Cowl. Remember, I just bought this yarn the other day, so it’s not like knitting from deep stash, but it pleases me to use a new yarn quickly rather than stick it in the stash and forget about it. It helps that this is one of the fastest patterns I’ve ever knit. I used the Marian cowl pattern and made no modifications.

That one’s for me too. January is Selfish Knitting Month for most knitters I know! But now I’m ready to focus on other things. I’ve got a scarf commission I’m working on, plus a ton of ideas of things I want to make to sell. I can’t wait to get my boot off so I can get outside and take photos of my new inventory. Maybe the “fresh start” thing is affecting me more than I realized, but either way, I think good things are coming!

Crafting My Way to a Better Mood

Nov14

Maybe whining really does help: I ended up having a pretty good day yesterday! I managed to make it up to my craft room, where I spent a lovely hour or so prepping my for craft show. I had a big pile of finished hats with no tags. So I pulled out the Sizzix, made some tags, and got them all ready to sell. I also had a few that needed some finishing details before I could sell them, so I gathered up the supplies I needed and worked my way downstairs. NOT the couch, the dining room, with all the sunshine. I turned on my music (Imagine Dragons. Love them.) and set to work.On the second Yoda hat, I ran into a snag. I’d finished an ear with a new skein of yarn and realized in the harsh light of day that it was the wrong color.Oops! Frogged that. I found a leftover bit of the right color, reknit the ear, and sewed it onto the hat. Bam, another Yoda hat done.I added a button to a hat. I didn’t have matching thread, so I used a contrasting color, and I’m quite pleased with it. As I sewed, I noticed the top of the hat was pretty cool.The color in the photo isn’t great; it’s a greener green than this, but you get the idea. I love it when the yarn does fun stuff like this all by itself.

By then, I’d been up for a few hours and my foot was starting to ache, so I gave in and went back to the couch. But it was good, because I finished the candy cane scarf, a holiday order that’s been hanging over me and preventing me from selfish knitting. Okay, so I messed up and made it 6″ shorter than it was supposed to be, but thankfully my customer didn’t mind. (It probably helped that I offered it at a lower price.) Jack was very happy that I was back at the couch. He needed some cuddle time.I’m also getting close to the end of the mermaid blanket. I’ve joined it to work in the round and I’m ready to decrease, then it’ll just be the fin and it’ll be done! Woohoo! Okay, it’ll be done AFTER I weave in 50 million yarn tails, but still. I’m close.

So yeah, good day yesterday. Thank goodness for yarn and puppies and helpful kids and a loving husband. And thank goodness for encouragement from all of you!

Watch me WIP!

Oct23

I have SO many works in progress right now, it’s crazy. Maybe not, maybe everyone else has 10 unfinished projects hanging around. Do you? I tell myself it’s okay because one is in deep hibernation, and six are for me that need to be on hold while I finish some money-making projects. So really, that only leaves three, and that sounds a lot better!

I did finish the Royals gloves and earwarmer and delivered those yesterday, and I’m proud to say that for the very first time I was able to make two gloves that matched each other in size! Not only that, I did it TWICE. Whoooa, that’s serious knitting success for me. Fresh off that high, I decided to jump off the deep end and start my biggest project: a crochet mermaid afghan. I’m sure you’ve all seen the photos. Well, it’s my turn to make one. I’m using Knit Picks Brava Worsted in two shades of purple and one shade of teal. Funny story: I picked up my crochet hook and my yarn to make my chain…and froze. I’d kind of forgotten how to chain! I did two stitches like a knitting cast on before my brain was like, No, stop, I got this. Fortunately, once I got going, I realized it’s not really a difficult pattern. The hard part for me will just be keeping myself interested enough to make something blanket-sized! But I’ve got a deadline so I feel confident.

Of course, I’ve also got a couple of hats on the needles. My Knit Picks Preciosa has just started to become a hat. I’m trying the Spiraltini pattern because it’s a simple pattern that looks more complicated than it is. I’m not at the fun part yet, though. It’s still in the ribbing phase. Last night the girl had a choir concert and I needed something super simple and portable so I grabbed a skein of Cascade Eco Cloud and cast on for another Broken Rib Slouch hat. I love how the chained texture gives it such awesome stitch definition. I’ll probably finish this up today when I need a break from the mermaid. Gray and rainy day means a day spent with my yarn! Except I’m out of wine, and that’s a problem…

Yarn Day, Yarn Day!

Oct20

Today was Yarn Day! I placed a Knit Picks order recently for the yarn I need for the mermaid blanket order, and of course I needed to get free shipping plus there was a discount, so I ordered a few things for myself. And today I found it on my porch…as I was leaving to go to Costco!! Argh. I had to WAIT to open it, but finally the moment arrived. It just never gets old, diving into a box of yarn.This is Brava Worsted, and it will become the crocheted Mermaid Blanket. It might be a challenge for me, but I’m looking forward to doing some crochet again. I get awfully knitting-centered sometimes. I absolutely love these colors.This was my splurge: six skeins of Preciosa Tonal. Pretty, eh? I love the subtle color variations. They feel more…roving-esque? than I expected–I think I was expecting something similar to a MadTosh feel–but I really like them. Very soft, should be marvelous to knit with. My goal is for them to become more slouch beanies; I think I can get two hats from each skein. But sadly these little beauties will have to wait. First I need to finish some orders. I got one pair of KC Royals fingerless gloves done this morning, and during this afternoon’s game I aim to knit the earwarmer. Tomorrow is empty right now, so maybe I can get the other pair of fingerless gloves done. Here’s hoping! These gloves were a fantastic knit, extremely fast and I love how the ribbing keeps them nice and snug. Now if I could just keep track of how many rows I do in the first mitt so I can replicate it more easily for the second! The pattern is called 220 Fingerless Mitts.