Hat and Mitten Replacements

As a follow up to the post on 3.28.09 regarding all of my sadly lost items, here are some pictures of my new wardrobe staples. The hat is Ashley Hasse's Cabled Beret located here on Ravelry. The mittens were Yellow Harvest Mittens from the Fall 2008 Vogue Knitting Magazine. I modified the mittens to be flip-tops, for access to the all-important bus pass.


Saturday I went to my very last ceramics class then picked up D's finished hat to fix it up for her. I am the Knitting Fairy. It actually worked out pretty well. I felted most of the top portion of the beret and left the band unfelted, to the extent that was possible. She'll be much happier with the new shape, but I'm not sure how she'll feel about the felting.

With the nicely refracted natural light going on in the afternoon, I also headed up to the roof to take some pictures for the shop. The best thing that can be said about it is that it was a learning experience. I guess some of the photos were all right, but I would really like to have someone help me ahem, and he's either sleeping or I'm not around during daylight.

This weekend, I replaced the missing Fetching in Rowan Tapestry (a very saggy yarn) as well as the first Bulky Flip Top mitten, repurposing the ribbed headband that I had made out of the leftovers (no one around here wore it). That leaves only one hat and one mitten replacement. I will need to have the Donegal Tweed swifted next time I go into the store.

Learning About Etsy

It's interesting starting a store like this. The last time I tried to create any kind of a website was circa a full decade ago, and all I remember is being pretty baffled by HTML. The new idea of Web 2.0 (an interactive, more user involved publishing process, Wiki-net to me) is brilliant. The accessibility of creating websites like Facebook pages, blogs, and Etsy shops is new to me, and I'm loving it.

Etsy is especially great at communicating with its users. I've already been to three virtual labs and learned how to better present and market my store. Just being in these groups has given me greater visibility. Here are some things that are on my list to improve from my first-posted shop three weeks ago.

_check!_ Improve banner to include items for sale and continue store theme
_check!_ Improve avatar in the same way
_check!_ Increase number of tags so that our items show up in search engines more easily
_check!_ Edit shop title for the same reason
_check!_ Price items to reflect the real amount of work that goes into each item, instead of just trying to cover the cost of the raw materials
_to do_ Describe items in better detail, including measurements and more adjectives
_to do_ Improve pictures by using natural light, macro setting, and models or the outside world

It's fun working on these things, talking to people and learning more about other shops as well as my own!

Lost Items Catastrophe

My personal life has been full of lost accessories this winter. I've managed to lost one of all three pairs of mittens I owned, along with two hats. Depressing, since this is the first time I've kept AND worn my own knitted creations. (I have a good? bad? habit of giving things away willy-nilly.)

In any case, the mittens/hats post from last month ended with me in the tragic situation of being mittenless. I can now happily report that I have replaced my lost things with one functioning set of warm woolies. Pictures of the hat to follow, but first let us mourn the lost items of Winter 2008-2009:

Learning About Cottage Licenses

So while simplifying a pattern for baby shrugs for my Etsy site, I saw that the designer required written permission to sell for profit. Now normally, I think that because I don't actually make any money off of things like this, it won't matter. But in this case, it seemed like a good idea to contact her. Since she has a Ravelry profile and blog etc, it was pretty easy to find her email address. She said I can sell up to five before I am required to buy a cottage license.

Now, I had no idea what this meant, so I Googled it. I have to pay some crazy amount like $100 in order to use the pattern for profit. We'll see. One sale so far, and a rocking 17 items up!

I've gone back to some Two-Tone Socks in self-striping superwash yarn etc. Hopefully, I won't forget to do my own queue while working some of this other stuff.

Etsy Shop!

First off, I did not get Needle Nerd as my Etsy shop name. Bummer. And my second choice, DuckDuckMoose, was taken too!

My new Etsy shop can be found at BrownEyedPurl.Etsy.com!!!

I just started it, in collaboration with my mom, last week. Our first sale came within a few hours, but since then I put up my vacation setting, and traffic slowed down quite a bit. I didn't know it put the whole shop into sleep mode! Oops.

Well, we have some matinee/layette sets, a few purses, and these great cotton baby shrugs I've been spitting out lately. I would love feedback, in case anyone reads this and visits the shop!

Hemlock Complete!

I finished it in time for Mammay's birthday!