A big step forward

Monster Hat I made from a pattern by Miriah Gilbert

My friend, Julie Spencer, has been faithfully researching and sending me links to crochet ideas. When she sent me the link to this pattern on etsy, I was really excited to make it. I immediately bought the pattern from www.emiegracecreations.etsy.com and spent the next 4 - 5 hours figuring out how to make this hat. It's one of the more difficult things I've made to date, but Miriah Gilbert, the author and artist behind EmieGraceCreations, did an excellent job of writing a thorough, accurate, and readable pattern. I love the challenge of stretching my boundaries and learning new things, especially when the end product is something as adorable as this monster hat! :)

I immediately fell in love with this hat, and all the variations of it that the pattern suggests, and wanted to make a dozen and sell them all. Copyright issues and conscience, however, made me carefully consider my options. Every pattern-artist on etsy has a slightly different set-up up for their copyright information, and I've been slowly learning the language of it all. The copyright on this pattern said "You do not have permission to sell the finished product locally or online without purchasing a cottage license. ..."



So I wrote to Miriah, attaching a picture of the monster hat, and asked what she meant by a cottage license. She explained that a "cottage industry" refers to an individual person making crafts from their own home. If you buy a "cottage license" from someone, you are buying the rights to sell items made from their pattern, according to a 3-tier system. (I love how everything about the indie-craft revolution is quaint and personalized ~ even the copyright terminology!)


For a solid week I contemplated shelling out for the full life-time license, since it was a relatively big expenditure for such a small, fledgling business as my own. (I hope someday to be able to swallow costs like this without even noticing ... ) After "shopping" her entire etsy site, however, I was thoroughly impressed with her quality of product and instructions, and decided I wanted to take a chance on this. She has been so helpful in answering my emails and telling me her very inspiring story of how her own personal hobby turned into a full-time work-from-home business. With her permission, I may someday pass her story on to my readers here. ... ??

After buying the life-time license, I continued on to buy 10 more of her patterns, and I would highly recommend her site to any crochet-ers reading this. I was a little bit ridiculously happy to receive them and, like a new addict of Harry Potter (or some comparably compelling series, Twilight very much excluded), wanted to stay up all night making them all. The necessity of waking up at 6am to face 150 odd high schoolers the next day, however, compelled me to sleep. (By "odd" i refer to the ambiguous number, not the nature of said students.)

Here's a "teaser" of some of the patterns you can find on her website, and products that I will soon be selling. I'm really looking forward to this new adventure in my emerging craft-career, and appreciate to no end her willingness to share her patterns and the years of experience and expertise that went into constructing them.

 She has so many completely unique and uber-cute patterns! I am especially looking forward to making this hat and slipper set. :)  I will post more pictures in an upcoming blog post, as soon as I make these.

I did it!!

Putting pencil to paper can be cathartically therapeutic (is that redundant?); even more so with fingertips (mine) to keyboards (anyone's). Although written expression embodies and justifies, often victoriously, my convoluted and introverted thought processes (processi?) (case in point), the overhanging threat of impending written assignments sends me into frenzies of inactivity, or other-activities to justify my lack of productivity.

Which is all to say that I love to write. But I don't. write.

i know, right?

So, here goes a first attempt at presenting to the (intrigued) universe my recent discovery of a fascinating form of cute-squishy-creative-colorfulness. Of the genus: Amigurumi. Of the species: mine own.

I picked up some books on Amigurumi (the most noteworthy being Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet and Amigurumi Two by Ana Paula Rimoli) this past summer (that would be 2010, for the sake of my future clientele from the year 2011) and started making everything I deemed cute-cuddly-colorful enough to justify the time expenditure of such creations. My rationalization defenses weakened in the face of storefuls of pretty yarn in every color, texture and price imaginable, and the unending days of unemployment spread before me like a blank canvas (of multicolored synthetic acrylic - read, fake mass-produced plastic stuff for gullible consumers like myself) ready to be made into turtles, bunnies and teapots. I ended up making nearly everything in these books.

Then, in an inspired moment of uninformed excitement, I posted them on etsy, hoping to earn back some of my "investment" in cute yarns and books to appease (please?) my husband who was mildly amused by my rigorous hobby. (On a side note, he has been incredibly supportive of my obsession and handles each new creation with respectful tenderness and impressive-ed-ness.) Upon further exploration of etsy, however, I quickly ran across the author of these books selling the Exact Same amigurumis that I had been making (imagine!) and I realized that she could just as easily run across my site and be equally (but more justifiably) surprised. Would I be in trouble for selling something made according to someone else's patterns? (For the record, they were very well written patterns!) I tried to ask a lawyer friend about the consequences of such "copyright" issues, but he laughed at me. :( I think the potential battles between yarn ladies over stuffed animal patterns did not seem like a legitimate legal issue. (As if big men battling over little bits of green paper is?!) When he saw my consternation, though, he affably offered to research it for me, at the cost of $200/hour. sigh.

So I pulled all my listings off etsy and decided to try my hand at some of my own creations, for which I would assuredly not sue myself for selling. I started noticing some of my friends' baby toys, stuffed animals, pictures, etc. and mulled over ideas of how to create these forms in 3-d crochet. Thus, Theodore and Frank were born. And now I have arrived at the day in my story in which I wrote this story.

The End.

For now.

To be continued.

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Theodore:

Frank, the fish:

Wedding bears for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law-once-removed-to-be. (Chris and Katie, if you see these here before I give them to you, please act surprised still!) These are adapted according to pre-made patterns.

Business cards made by my friend, Cristal. She has been an incredible help to me in designing logos, cards, websites, etc. (Let me know if you want me to connect you with her for help with your own business logos, websites, etc.)

The bunny, Evelyn, in process.

A sample of some of my creations (all done by patterns from Ana Paula Rimoli's books).

Aliens and squirrel up close.

Some of the books I use most often.

Victor's head was too big the first time around. no problem. cut it off.

From left to right: Evelyn, Samantha, Victor. I don't know where these names come from. The animals usually tell me who they are when I'm done with them.

airplaine. with stitched-on windows. my husband convinced me that hot glue guns are to amigurumi what scissors are to origami: bad?

i'll take more artistic pics later of my yarns, but for now here's a pile of some of the cotton yarns I use for most of the animals.

And a knitting toy i found that is fun to use for hat-making.

And more big fuzzy yarns for making hats. I'll post more on my hat making adventures later.

if you remind me.