Purple Baby Blanket

This will be one of my most simply written blogs; I am just taking a few minutes to post pictures of my most recently finished project. I was inspired by a picture I saw online of a blue and white granny square baby blanket, and made my own based on some patterns I had found in some crochet books I had at home. (Beyond the Square: Crochet Motifs and Around the Corner: Crochet Borders).

This is a picture of one possible design of squares -- I decided not to go with it because the white was too overwhelming.

After I had put about 7 hours into the blanket (each square took about 9 minutes to make) I realized my work had just begun. My husband took this picture of me beginning to sew all the squares together (which turned into a 3 1/2 hour project excluding the nap).

My book on crochet borders has an incredibly fun assortment of border ideas ~ I chose this one for this blanket, but will probably experiment with others on future blankets, since there are so many to choose from.

This is an up-close picture of the border ~ it is a lobster-stitch chain woven through a double crochet stitch. The entire border took another 3-4 hours, and the final trimming and fastening off loose strings took at least an hour. (that's the most boring part ...)

Both sides of this blanket have a unique look and could serve as the display side.

And this final picture shows both sides together. I am going to post it on my etsy site for $130, based on the 14+ hours it took to make, and the going rate for similar products on etsy.

fanatical, fantastical, financial figures

$11/ hour. That’s how much I make teaching 8^th grade math in Oklahoma.

I’m so glad I didn’t calculate that until now, but now that I have enlightened myself on the futility of money-making in this particular line of stress-intensive (insert-descriptions-here) work, it does make facing the final 9 weeks a bit of a daunting and discouraging task. How can America at large expect teachers to produce an intelligent-and-competitive-in-a-global-economy generation of young people when They (the Great and Unknown entity of They-ness) pay teachers $11/hour?? Oy. But that’s another story for another book. (coming soon to your local trash can)

So in a moment of transcendent inspiration, following months of considering this idea of taking the crafty crafting world by storm, I decided that I could earn myself $11 an hour crocheting and skip the stress of daily teaching drama (left purposely ambiguous in this rendition of the story).

Since $11 is my “real” money after all the taxes and insurance and retirement and feed-the-hungry-millionaires percentages are cut out, I did the math (trust me ~ I’m a math teacher) and figured that if I made $140 dollars worth of products, five days a week every week, I could make up for all taxes, insurance, cost of materials, etc. and still come out ahead of my teaching salary. If I throw 5 hours of math tutoring a week into that, I’m down to about $100/day. That’s 3 hats. One bird mobile. Or 2.43 frog-and-turtle duos. (I just made that up. … but it sounds cute. I think I’ll try it.) Of course I still need to build in time for Research and Development (aka, designing the frog-and-turtle duo, since it inevitably won’t be quite right the first time), blogging, posting to etsy, facebook, twitter, etc.

Number theories make me giddy. Within minutes of this fanatical and fantastical epiphany I was sky-high in my dreams of living the high life in the delicate balance between creativity and insanity. Talking it over with my ever-faithful-and-pragmatic business partner, my husband, brought me quickly back down to earth. It’s too dangerous to take this leap of faith when we’re $100,000 in debt from college loans and trying to start a family in the reasonably near future. Etc. He was very loving and gentle in his reasonings. I was equally thankless and harrumphed in my murmurings against his reasonable reasonings.  But of course it was what I would have told myself if I didn’t have him there to tell me.

But still… $11/hour??? I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow… I think that’s what this all comes down to … (apologies all around if any of my students ever end up reading this ~ I heart u all!)

So I’m signing off a bit discouraged … I have so many dreams of projects I want to do and so many leads to follow through on (see future posts) and not nearly enough time. I’m afraid that these dreams will shrivel up and die and my potential customers will forget about me if I don’t follow through soon. And strong. And my present career path is draining me of everything. That’s seriously another book though.

Closing quote from my dearest “hubband:” Honey, I think you’re wonderful.

Me: well, I know that, but I just want to be more wonderful.

Vote of confidence: 1

Vote of discouraged-i-just-want-to-hide-in-a-hole-and-not-go-to-school-tomorrow: 1

Score tied. Overtime play-by-play to be continued.

in the meantime, here's a picture of a knit headband i made today :)

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.