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.

Sock Monkey Hat

Mary Ann Hacking's amazing photography skills and her uber-cute baby wearing my sock monkey hat :)

 My latest adventures in crochet creations:

A friend requested a sock monkey hat for a 6-month old boy, and showed me a picture of a hat that looked something like this. Based on the picture, I was able to figure out a pattern that consisted of hdc (half double crochet), sc (single crochet), rsc (reverse single crochet), and changing out hook sizes. I adapted the mouth idea and stitched in a mouth-line-thingy. I love the way it turned out! The colors are pretty much the same as the original picture, but I made up the stitches, stitch count, and assembly of accessories ... does anyone know where you draw the line in the indie-craft world between copying and creating? Is something like this a copyright issue? I sure hope not ... because I'd love to sell these! :) 

(On that note, let me know if you would like to place an order. I'll be selling them for $35 - $40 depending on size.)

 I gave this hat to one of my friends in exchange for her photography of some of my hats (see a future post for those pictures) and needed to make another one for my friend who requested this hat. The next day I sat down to recreate it from memory, but tried to make it slightly larger. Unfortunately, I was too lazy the first time around to write down the pattern as I went, thinking, I suppose, that I would remember what I did.

epic fail.

I worked at it for about an hour and a half, stubbornly in denial that something was fundamentally wrong.You know that slowly sickening feeling that you're making a big mistake but you know very well that you're not going to stop the chain of events that will ultimately lead to the impending disaster? All melodramatics aside, that was pretty much how I felt.

I'm including pictures here to prove to myself (and anyone else who cares) how vital it is to write down a pattern as you create something.

 and yet ... 

This experience, like all mistakes, provided the potential for learning on a deeper level. Spending hours on this "mistake-hat" forced me to analyze and perfect my color-joining technique. I plan to start creating mini-posts on techniques I figure out as I go, in hopes that the details I learn can be of help to other crochet artists. I took pictures of each step of the process as I went so that I can include step-by-step pictures and instructions in a future post regarding how to make perfect joins, as well as how to securely and invisibly tie off all loose ends.

The picture on the left is my original method of joining colors, which created a bump the whole length of the hat and distorted the shape. I tried something different on the next one and it worked beautifully.

I now have the pattern written down in a shorthand format that makes sense to me, but I would like to rewrite it in a user-friendly form, and possibly sell it on etsy. Before I do that though, I want to experiment with colors more so that I can claim this as my own invention in every regard. I'm thinking about a hat pattern that consists of hdc stitches with a red and tan yarn together and multiple sizes, so that somebody could make two as a psuedo-gag gift for a father and son :) I'm doing plenty of mother-daughter sets, and thought it would make for such a cute picture to have a father and son wearing matching sock monkey hats! ... more on that later. 

 This picture is proof of my eventual success in recreating my own pattern. I posted this picture on my facebook page (SandiesSofties) and got 26 likes/comments in one day! :) 

And finally, here is a picture of my lil workstation ... I'm still dreaming of one day having my very own studio with a litany of storage options. :) (see my post titled "Visions of Bookshelves ... ")

quite a lovely saturday

so this morning i woke up early (well, before the tornado sirens went off at least), determined to add to my head covering collection. (as in, hats and head band scarf things ~ see pic ~ i don't know what they're called)

I laid out all the head-related things I still have (i wish I had taken pictures of the ones that I've already sold or given away!!). I'm hoping to get some time with my wonderful photographer (megan!) and some beautiful friends tomorrow to do a nice photo shoot of some of this so I can finally start listing things on my etsy site.

I had some coupons for Hobby Lobby and Michaels (both are right down the street) so I went out and bought some more yarn and some buttons and random scrapbooking stuff that was on clearance. I've pretty much made it a policy to only buy things at Hobby Lobby or Michael's if I can get it at least 35% off, and I've found out that if you go weekly, the sales rotate around enough so that you can buy everything at a very discounted rate! :) Here's the results of my shopping adventure today:

I branched out into a new brand of yarn today: Baby Bee Sweet Delight. I bought 6 different (mostly coordinating) colors and had a lot of fun making this hat. I love the multi-colored yarn, because it's like a mini-adventure making any project, discovering how the pattern turns out as you go. (lol, i guess that officially makes me a yarn geek??) I don't know if this will actually fit anyone ~ I just kept shaping it as I went according to some imaginary picture of a child's head ... I need to get some set of standards for head/hat dimensions so I don't have to keep playing this guessing game everytime. Is there somewhere I can buy a bunch of different sized styrofoam heads? That would pretty much be the coolest thing to line up against our patio window :). {Anyone up for a Paint the Foam Heads party?} For now, I'll have to try this hat out on a few of my friends' kids and make adjustments as needed to the pattern I made up for this hat.

I also began three other things but they all were being a little bit too much uncooperative and frustrating, so I changed gears and decided to write this blog post. I know that at some point here I'll have to pick a few items that people like and just make tons of those, but I haven't quite transitioned into the business mindset yet. At this point, everything I make is still a unique idea (or based on a pattern, but with the goal of learning the basics so I can venture forth into uncharted copyright-free territory). I've come up with a few things that I really like based on requests from friends and family ~ I'm always honored when someone asks me to make something, like an elephant or a baby boy bear hat, b/c it gives me that giddy feeling of theythingiknowwhati'mdoing!!! anyhow, somewhere in the process of manning up to the challenges and being too embarrased to admit that I really am not as talented as they think, I discover how to create amazing things that I never would have attempted on my own accord. So a big shout-out to everybody who has faith in me: Thank you! :D

and one last note and pictures for this post, before I turn back to the rebellious piles of unravelled yarn and half-begun projects behind me. ...

sock yarn!

 I've been tempted to buy sock yarn every time I go to a craft store, but I've held back so far ... well, until my friend took a trip to Portland, OR and discovered an epic yarn store and brought me back the neatest sock yarn I've ever seen. So today I broke down and bought some more to add to the collection and picked up a few patterns and knitting needles. :) that will be another story, I'm sure.