Highly Irregular

For a moment, I'm between large knitting projects. I've recently finished my Bleecker Street cardigan and my Prairie Ridge Shawlette (SCARF). In the time since I've last posted I whipped up a bath puff with some cotton scraps and a simple baby blanket to use up one of those pound of love skeins that was taking up space in my stash. (And yes, I DO think that the light gray bits look like brains!)

I've swatched (to check for gauge) for a new sweater, and even washed my swatch, but I haven't gotten around to measuring it yet to cast on. It's a fingering weight cardigan and I just don't know if I have the mojo to start that at the moment. I've matched up my other sweater quantities of yarn with projects they'd like to grow up to be, but the light cardigan is the only one I currently own the pattern for, so it jumped to the top of the list. Use what you've got, right?

So in the meantime, I decided to pick away at that hex quilt I started many moons ago. Oh, this project feels a bit troubled to me! Several months ago, my parents were over and my dad knocked a full glass of red wine over......right into the bag holding my paper templates, finished block or two, and pre-cut fabric. I was a bit in a "throw the baby out with the bathwater" mood already when that happened, but my husband kept a level head and washed all the fabric in an oxyclean soak and laid it out flat to dry. In the end it was all saved, but I was annoyed by the whole thing, not to mention my behavior.

The other kind of irregular thing about it so far is that the hex template I had printed out from a Craftsy tutorial just never seemed quite....symmetrical. I could sometimes find a better fit between pieces by rotating them, which, as sort of a geometry professional, I knew was not right. On my last trip to the fabric store, I was enticed by a sale and picked up one of those fancy rulers shaped like a hexagon. I thought, I'll just cut out some new 5" paper templates and keep going. Sure, the first 3 blocks will not be QUITE the same, but it's ok and it will make the rest of the assembly much more smooth. It seemed like a valid plan.

I cut out a small stack of perfect 5" hexagons and set one in the negative space next to a completed block. In no way were the blocks I already had 5". At best, 4.5". While yes, I'm not exactly far along in this project, I HAVE already cut up a bunch of fabric for more blocks based on that original template. If I went up to a true 5" block, I'd have to really start over and that seemed like a waste. Instead, I painstakingly trimmed a bit at a time until I came up with an ALMOST perfectly symmetrical template the same size as my "5" lying wonky templates that I could use going forward.

It was really annoying.

However, I did manage to piece together the three irregular blocks I had already completed (note the wrinkliness from the wine bath, and further wrinkliness from not being perfect hexagons) - the front three in the photo above. I also took a few deep breaths and put together a fourth block (the orange one in the back), which happily took only about an hour. (For the orange block....not the rest of my whining.) As you can see, even though the fabric itself suffered the same wash as everything else, symmetrical hexagons make the whole thing lay much more nicely. I think I'll make the wonky flowers (that's what I'm calling them) the center of the quilt, and surround them by my now even new blocks.

Here is the whole thing draped over a chair in the dim February morning light for scale:

Slowly but surely, it's growing. Slow yes, but still faster than a fingering weight cardigan. For now I might focus my knitting energy on socks - I have a new two at a time pair going and I've turned the heels, so I'm in the home stretch!

Finally for today, I have to put a brag here. I don't talk a lot about my personal life, and if you are friends with me on facebook, you already know, but I am so damn proud I want to shout it from the rooftops. WE HAVE PAID OFF OUR STUDENT LOANS!!!! We graduated with two bachelor and two masters degrees between us in Dec 2006 and May 2007. We got married in October of 2007, so the majority of that total amount has been paid as a joint effort. Which, just for kicks and for the record, was an original loan amount of, drumroll and scary dun-dun-DUUUUUN music please, was $125,500. One hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. That's a modest house here in the midwest. Luckily we are both gainfully employed in our fields, so these degrees and that money isn't just in the wind, but, ouch.

I'm not entirely sure my husband felt the weight of it the way I did. I'm the money and budgeting half of our relationship. Before me, he had a little credit card debt. When we got engaged, I took away his card and added him as an authorized user on mine so that we could focus on paying his off. I am allergic to having a lot of expenses I can't just write a check to cover. Yes, I do sometimes make payments on 0 or 1% interest plans. I calculate it out to make sure I pay the whole thing off at least a month before that interest kicks in. I'm frugal, sometimes to a fault. If I'd had complete control over paying off our debt, I'd have been so crazy about it that it would have been gone a few years sooner, but likely so would my husband! He's more the type to buy the bar a round, where I'd be sipping water or nursing a single glass of wine to stretch my pennies. Needless to say, we compromised.

I can write more about how we pulled this off if people are interested. We aren't rich, far from it. We started out with pretty modest incomes despite advanced degrees - it's the nature of our field. We've grown over the past 7, almost 8, years of debt repayment to a fairly comfortable income, but still nothing terribly impressive when you put it up against pharmacists or most business majors (I'd guess). As I said, we took on the full load in 2007, but I got really serious about paying this off in 2010. I haven't always been able to stick to my plan exactly - life changes, job loss - but the basic timeline has come out much the way I'd hoped. I'm not sure what we'll do now. Paying bills next month will probably feel like we've gotten a huge raise! I have a couple of ideas, sadly none of which will likely involve a spur of the moment trip to Tahiti. We've got more changes coming up this year that will shake up the budget picture, but I am honestly so happy and so relieved that this burden has been lifted.

To celebrate I bought my knitting group a round of cookies last night. I haven't completely turned over a new leaf though - I waited until after 6 when they were half price!

Personal Day

It's been an incredibly busy two weeks at work. So much so that I ended up sleeping most of Saturday to recover from a few straight days of big meetings and travel, and enough extra hours to take a day off all to myself. I didn't get to sleep in much, but I did get to knit a bit on my Quaker Ridge Shawlette while I watched the latest episode of Downton Abbey. (Wow, what an episode!) Yes, lord help me, I'm knitting a shawl. I tell myself that it's just a big squishy scarf and I'm not 100% an old lady just yet. And it IS nice and squishy, as I'm using a pretty tonal shade of malabrigo Arroyo in Aguas. I'm a little worried about running out of yarn. My calculations have me running out at the cast on row, so perhaps I'll just do one or two fewer rows of the ruffle. Those are mighty long rows to have to knit backward.
 

I also got to putter around in the studio a bit, clearing off the big table, getting things in order. The shelves still need their trim pieces, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I started filling them instead. I finally found a cute little tin to corral my double pointed needles. I mean, I hadn't actually been looking that hard, but I found it in the dollar spot at Target.

I plan to get a rotary cutter this weekend. It's been on my list for quite awhile, and I think the time has come. I tell myself it will make my cutting much more even.

I dipped a toe back into sewing with a couple of little project bags. I wanted them to be sturdy so I interfaced the outside fabric. The stuff I had on hand was really too sturdy for the job, but I didn't feel like making a special trip out. I did make the bags a bit harder to work, and harder to line up the seams as you can see on the fruit print bag. Oh well, learning experience. They're just for me anyway. I'll have to pick up some ribbon to make the drawstring closures. I might get a zipper too to make a larger wedge type bag for sweaters or a baby blanket or something. These bags are good for socks and mitt size projects. I thought it would be nice to have something a little cuter to corral my projects than the makeshift bags I've been using - which are actually the casings to a couple sets of twin sheets! They work pretty well, but I've been wanting to dip a toe back into sewing and this seemed like a nice quick project. It would have been quicker if I hadn't made a few dumb mistakes! If the directions seem goofy....there's a good chance it's operator error. :)

Some thoughts on pricing on Etsy

Crochet Booties

The holiday season is quickly approaching, and for handmakers, now is the heart of the busy season. As soon as the calendar clicked over to fall, I could see my Etsy shop views and favorites start to double....and even triple. I've been making enough sales to keep me rather busy, but I'm not overwhelmed just yet. However, making products, listings, re-listings, shipping things out....it's all got me to thinking a lot about the way I run my shop and the way I've set my prices.

Want to know a secret? When I opened up my shop, I had no method to pricing. None. I simply threw out a number that felt sort of ok and went with it. I sold quite a few kids hats in the early days, and I priced them all pretty much the same. I thought, well, a kid's hat should be about.....this much, and I held that price despite differences in quality of material, varying complexities in pattern or color changes, and just went with it. I did price enough to cover the cost of materials and a little bit of pocket money to, most likely, buy more materials. But for my time? I pretty much didn't get anything for my time.

Slipper Socks

Don't get me wrong, I love making things. But when you are taking time from your family, your leisure time and your own hobbies....you sort of want something to show for it in return. I don't think that's greedy, I just think that's fair. Ironically, the more complex and time intensive a project is, I'm more likely to give it as a gift than for something for sale. I recently had someone inquire about the Nova sweater dress I'd knit to see if I'd ever consider making them for sale (by the way, thank you SO much for your interest! That was so sweet!) My first instinct was, good lord, how would you even price a whole sweater?! I mean, I can't just say $40 because that's what you might pay somewhere like baby Gap, because what if it takes me a month? But I also can't just say $300, because that's astronomical.

So I decided to actually work it out. What WOULD it cost to make that dress? In the past, I simply searched for similar items on Etsy and priced myself sort of in the low end of the middle of the pack. But after doing a bunch of research, and an incredibly enlightening conversation with the lovely and talented Elizabeth Ivie of Ivie Baby, I came to the conclusion that it makes MUCH more sense to look at my actual process and workflow to set my prices. I made myself a little spreadsheet, and it really opened my eyes. Even for the few existing items in my shop, I was paying myself a really wide and nonsensical variety of rates....some as low as $2/hr. Wow. What's minimum wage these days? Somewhere around $7? I've definitely done those jobs, as cashiering and filing work bought my first car and got me through the early years of college. Knitting and sewing certainly feel like more skilled labor than swiping canned food through the scanner. And yet I was only paying myself a fraction of that rate. And why? I'm certainly much more proud of anything I make in my shop than I was of those neatly alphabetized files.

I'm still working through it, but I think I've come to a couple of conclusions. First, an hourly rate doesn't make sense for knitting. For example, it takes me about 3 hours (roughly - I rarely have that much time in a single block in order to measure this!) to make one mitten. Double that, because most people order two mittens, and we're up to 6 hours. Conservatively, another hour or two for finishing work (it ALWAYS takes longer than you think it will!) and the cord....now we're up to 8 hours. 8 hours x $7/hour = $56. FIFTY-six dollars. FOR BASIC KID'S MITTENS. They're cute. But I'm not certain they are $56 cute.

Toddler Mittens

So....hourly rates for knitting sort of don't make sense. However, an option commonly used by commission knitters is a rate per YARD of knitting. This can range from $0.15-0.25 per yard of yarn depending on the difficulty of the pattern. I can easily do some mathematical wizardry (ahem multiplication and division) and figure out how many yards of yarn I'm using based on the total yards in the skein of yarn and the weight of the finished object. It's been pretty enlightening for me to work those numbers on the current (and super long list of potential future) items in my shop.

Hourly rates DO make sense for sewing though. Yardage doesn't, because yards go by in a snap when you're talking fabric! Plus there are all kinds of other details from cutting, actual sewing, finishing, and details like buttons, snaps or zippers to consider. Elizabeth said that she looked around at what professional seamstresses charge, and set her rates accordingly. When you are selling independently, you are not only the designer and maker, but you are also responsible for all of the back of house accounting, billing, shipping and marketing - those overhead costs really should be factored into your rates.

Even if you are selling as a hobby, it's important to price your work fairly. Some people are doing this as a full time gig, and it would be wicked tough to survive at $3 an hour. I've been working on a pair of socks (off and on) since June. So given the time investment, and the fact that good, solid quality sock yarn can cost $10 on its own, it's sort of heartbreaking to see people selling a pair of handknit socks for $12. I don't think you can even get Smartwool socks for less than $20 without some sort of monster sale! Obviously everyone should do what feels right for them, but the implication to buyers might be that ALL handknit socks should be worth $12, and I just don't believe that's true.

Snap Scarf

 I realized one more thing that I think is key for me to keep in mind. I - and other crafters and makers like me - might not be my ideal client base. Let's face it, I learned to knit and crochet and sew and who knows what else because I want nice things for just the cost of materials. I'm WILLING to invest my time and energy into learning these skills and into the time it takes to make them. I am not willing to pay for someone else to do this (mostly - I do still buy handmade from other people when I just don't have the time to pull something off or the desire to do it as well as they do!). It's important for me to realize that other people would much rather make the trade off to pay someone else to do the hard work and for them to buy the finished object. After years and years of mass production, there are plenty of people out there who actually want to seek out artisans to make them beautiful handmade things. And THOSE people are my actual client base. They understand that the cost of handmade goes beyond the wholesale price of paper and ink, or yarn, or fabric. It's much more than that. It's time. It's talent. It's hard work. And it's care.

So those are my thoughts on pricing these days. How do other people do it? What is handmade worth to you?

New scarves in the shop!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been working on a new product line for my shop....and they're finally up for sale!

I was starting to think these things were nothing but trouble...but then I got a rhythm going and got a couple done, and I've changed my mind! I've worn both the prototypes out and about, and have gotten a bunch of compliments, so I'm excited to see how they'll do on Etsy. (I should really get a dressmakers dummy for photography....I was hoping to wait for a really good hair day to take these shots, but it just wasn't happening. Had to settle for a so-so day!)

I struggled quite a bit with pricing these. I asked for a few suggestions and got about a $40 range! I know I've been pricing my handknits pretty low for the amount of work they entail, so I'm planning to start bumping those up bit by bit. I don't want to scare people off, but I really should charge what they are worth. Yes, handmade does cost more than picking something up at Target, but there's good reason for that. An actual person is sourcing materials, perfecting techniques, and personally, I'm happy to take requests so that people get the exact thing they are looking for. A friend asked on facebook just today if I'd consider making a scarf in a gray with gold snaps - the answer is sure! I can work on that!

In the end, I priced them pretty much right in the middle of the range of what people thought they were worth, and we'll go from there. I guess that's a good reason to get one now if you like what you see - stock is going to change, and pricing might as well! If you want more details, please take a look at my shop, cozycapecottage.etsy.com. I just have these 4 listed for now, so get em while they last!

New product line...soon

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, then you already know I've been working on something new.

My sister had a double edged idea...she wanted to make these scarves that snap, sort of like the yoga ones from lululemon, and she wanted to learn to sew.

The sewing lessons went well.

The scarves themselves....well, it's been a lot of trial, and a LOT of error.

Let me just go ahead and say a couple of things about snaps. #1. It totally doesn't work to use lightweight snaps on either leather or faux leather. #2. It also totally doesn't work to try to punch the holes through on a hardwood floor. It worked MUCH better the following day when I did it outside on the concrete patio. It would probably work much better than that if I had use of a snap press, but I don't like to invest in a lot of equipment if I'm not sure if a product is going to sell or not. #3. Leather and my sewing machine hate me right now.

In the end, I really liked the results of the test scarves pictured above, but they were too long. I was so focused on getting the leather and snaps attached, that I made a rookie mistake and didn't test out the length! They definitely work, but need to wrap around 3 times which is just uncomfortable. I tried making a couple of scarves with a real leather trim, but it's thicker than the faux stuff (which actually looks surprisingly good!) and my sewing machine seems to hate. it. so. much. I spent a few hours on Sunday afternoon having my new, ingenious method of attaching the trim just not work SO hard...and then a lot more hours Sunday evening having my bobbin skip and thread break and just general horrible things happen to me, which I solved with wine and aimless internet surfing, throwing things and avoiding the sewing room since then. Healthy coping skills!

As soon as I can face it, I'm going to try my easier method of attaching the trim with the faux leather to see if it's in fact easier. I managed to improve the snap attachment method, so surely I can do the same with the sewing...right? And if not, well.....hey, one of a kinds pictured above!!!!

Quilter?

I'm in need of some new twin bedding in the next couple of months, and I haven't been able to decide what to do. I don't really know what colors I want to do, I don't have a clear vision, but I am running out of time. I have been going back and forth on how I feel about quilts for years. My tastes run decidedly modern, so I suppose it makes sense that much of quilting doesn't really appeal to me. I actually made a quilt in 2011 for our bed, which I seem to have exactly zero pictures of. It's really nothing that spectacular, just 4-8" long strips the length of the bed with straight line quilting.

My very talented cousins made this one for me based on a similar one I'd pinned on Pinterest a few years ago, and it's pretty reflective of my taste - simple and graphic:

Lately I've been feeling a BIT more traditional, but still not "flying geese" traditional. I read several blogs that just make quilting, or rather, living with quilts, seem like something I want.

Alicia from Posie Gets Cozy is probably the largest influencer of my newfound appreciation for a bit more softness and eclecticism. Our styles are almost totally opposite, but she's created such a lovely aesthetic that I'm about ready to ditch my whole house for hers.The entire blog, it's just such eye candy to me.

 I love the casual rumpled throw and cupboard of full of quilts of Amy Badskirt.

Ashley of Film in the Fridge is a really prolific quilter with fairly modern taste which appeals to me.

So when I got my Interweave "Free for All" what did you miss this month email this weekend, well, I was in an impressionable place. I saw these cute little hexagons and thought....that might be just about right.

I followed the links and got the 5" hexagon template from Patchwork Posse on Craftsy (it's free!). I went with the 5" over the seemingly more common 2" because, well, bigger hex's will go faster!

However, I then counterbalanced that bit of sensibility with the decision to piece the quilt top....by hand. Darn you Posie Gets Cozy!! She just makes everything seem so appealing!

Truly though, there are a couple of reasons I decided to do this by hand rather than by machine. As I've mentioned ad nauseum, my sewing room is still under construction. This means that my current sewing room is pretty much filled to the max, and I've lost the urge to keep it fully organized (other than my thread!) knowing that a new room is on the horizon. I also felt like I'd have a little more control over how the "Y" corners meet up. I've been putting an extra couple of stitches at those points to hopefully ensure that they don't open up over time, and it's something I'm not sure I'd do well with the speed of the machine as well as my inexperience at piecing quilts. Finally, since this is something that I think would take a good time investment no matter how I do it, I like the mobility around the house that I have doing it by hand rather than by machine. I can knock out a dress or something in an evening or two - this will definitely take longer. Even though I know it will take LONGER by hand, I like that I can bring it into other rooms or outside for now. And if it gets too fiddly, there's nothing to say I can't do a mix of hand and machine piecing!

My tentative plan is to do white centers and colored "petals." I don't have a specific color scheme throughout, but I have a pile of fabrics I like. I think I'll just make the flowers and then put them together at some point to see how it's shaping up. If it's too much, I can always throw in some solids or neutrals to tone it down.

So. Yeah. It's an experiment.

Simple sewing room organization

I think I got my sewing machine almost 15 years ago. It came with a little sampler pack of thread that was probably intended for little hand sewing jobs, and from there I've purchased and lost a ton of separate spools of thread. The spools I managed to hold on to, along with their corresponding bobbins, were neatly stored in an equally organized dresser drawer in this box.

It was obviously super effective, and spoiler alert, I'm all done doing it that way. If you are jealous and want to implement this method, I will totally send you this bottom half of a box of checks, just as soon as I find homes for these things which definitely needed to be stored with thread.

So now my thread storage (purchased at Joann's during their storage sale) looks like this:

 

When I get into the new space, I'll hang it on the wall, preferably near the sewing machine. The location actually isn't critical as it's not like my work space will be enormous. I don't find I do a ton of color changing mid project. In fact, it might end up making more sense near my fabric. Anyway, it's awesome that my sampler threads are no longer tangled with my bobbins, and I won't fill bobbins with the same color thread I already have (I'm looking at you, whites and tans), and I'll actually be able to see what I'm out of and what I need more of. This was honestly such a relief!

Hi there starter threads. We've come a long way.

 

Burlap tote bags

I started making these tote bags at the end of last year, and I thought they were awesome. I really love those vintage printed flour and burlap sacks, and was thrilled to find a local source of burlap sacks that I could upcycle into whatever my heart desired. I started out with these super durable tote bags. I made about 8....and they just didn't sell. And, well, it wasn't really hard to figure out why. These photos man....they're SO. BAD!!

Good lord, that is embarrassing. I'm so happy that someone saw through the desperate-for-space-backdrop and the hasn't-figured-out-white-balance photography and, while I hate the word "styling"....seriously. This needs styling.

My POINT was to show that the front is funky and different and decorative. The back is a soft but sturdy flannel, reinforced with interfacing, and the interior is a contrasting fun fabric. There are interior pockets that can hold cell phones, laptop chargers and mice, pens, notions, etc. The bag is closed with a magnetic snap so that your stuff is secure, but still easy to access. The canvas straps are tough and rugged, and a great length for slinging over your shoulder. Do these photos express any of that? No. So much no. It's no surprise that these moved MUCH better at craft shows and in real life. My mom and sister both requested them, and carry them every day. While the studio and photography space chug along (I'm making baby steps! I ordered a tripod and lighting today!), I took to the outdoors to get some better "lifestyle" type shots of my sister and her bag.

Hi there. YES. Now THIS is the image I wanted to project! I've got two bags left from the original batch, and plans for new burlap projects like bags of this same style, along with another type of true "laptop" bag, baskets for the home, and cross-body totes (like this sneak peek at one I did a while back!):

Interested in having one of your own? Check out the listings in my shop here and here! (I still haven't improved my listing photos to the degree I'd like, but this is better than before I think. Plus I added the "lifestyle" shots for scale and a sense of the bag in use. I hope that's not too confusing for shoppers!)