Etsy Shop Discount & RE: Previous Post, Frogged.

Ugh… that last project I posted, of the knitted ribbed circle-scarf? I had to frog the entire thing. I’d found a very awkward twisted stitch at the beginning, which made me cry. At least I am able to start anew, which is exactly what I did, only this time paying much more attention. The pooling looks absolutely awesome, I’ll post some pictures as soon as I get this going a bit more.

In other news, I am still looking for a job. Relying on public transit is the one thing that gets me around in this wee city – since I was a teen I had severe amaxophobia (fear of riding in cars) – and it was even less likely of me to drive a car, let alone set in one without clutching to myself, those grips and the like and trying really hard not to cry. It’s made life a bit inconvenient, to say the least. It ties in with my hard luck in finding a job – all the ones available are either on the other side of the bridge (where public transit doesn’t go) or you need a car for daily workings of the company.

So, localised retail by my house! I have a grand selection of the local Wally World, McDonalds (ugh), other fast food joint venues and Mattress World or whatever it’s called. I’ve been lucky enough to be hired at Michaels (my views are my views only and do not represent the company) but 2-3 days a week is not comforting when you’re used to at least 1000$+ per month.

Yes I consider that a lot. Why? Because I only really need 800$/month to live on, with bills, rent, and everything. Because of my family’s financial troubles as of late, I have to find another job, bring in money, otherwise we’ll lose our home. I’ve even taking the receiving truck shifts at work (3h-11h in the morning) in order to get a few more hours, but alas… So consider for a moment, I have an Etsy shop. IF you’ve been sitting on something you like, why not take advantage of a little discount I can offer? Type in the coupon code on order SNEAKYMCNEAL and get 20% your entire order.

Music and knitting.

I want to start off by saying even though I’m dead-addicted to crochet, I have been knitting for most of my life – at least since I was 8. I will be 25 by the end of this year. Unfortunately, I’ve never really made it past the simple knit stitch, only making scarves out of garter stitch. Ugh!

So earlier the past month, with the help of some knitting video tutorials off YouTube, I learned to do the purl stitch, which I could not for the life of me, understand on paper. I also taught myself basic ribbing, which I’ll include my little project here:

Pretty sweet, right? I’m using a vintage yarn an older friend of mine gave to me in a huuuuge black garbage back full of her stash she wasn’t using. This is Bouquet’s “Hot Tamales” in… 4050 colourway. Lol. I’m not quite sure how long this has taking me but it’s my first project on circular needles – something I’ve had since I was 12, at least, never used until now. I don’t even know what size they are, hahha!

I would so love to make socks. Homemade socks are the best, but for now I’ll have to invest more time into learning knitting.

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Music part of this post: I am a child of the 90′s. This might not seem like it matters, but I seriously dislike today’s music. The best music came from the late 60′s-90′s. I’ve been on a Lynyrd Skynyrd kick for the past week ever since reliving some old pre-teen movies (Happy Gilmore, anyone? Tuesday’s Gone? Go give it a go.)

My Etsy store has been getting a lot more hits now that I’ve hit 50 items – enough for search results to actually mean something. Seems people really love my hats and baby clothes. It’s an exciting experience. I started ‘dabbling’ back in July of 2011, while getting really into it with advertising in November of that year. It’s been an incline ever since. But I knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park!

So waiting on some calls from some jobs I’ve applied to, unless money starts rolling in from some unknown venue or I get more custom orders, I’ll have to move out of my current home. Siiiigh. Anyway, time to rock out. ♥

The Price of Handmade.

It’s come to my attention that many people that I will refuse to name are concerned with prices for handmade items. Now, I’m not saying everyone is in it for the money – not me, but I’d like some allowance. A few of my baby items – specifically clothing items, which are meant as heirlooms – are priced at 80$. Why this amount? Well consider the detailing, the amount of time and the complexity of the lace pattern and the materials. Now factor in the asinine prices the post office imposes unto the general public (I’m one of many unfortunate sellers on Etsy who are at the mercy of over-priced Canada Post).

Say if I spend 16 hours into one baby dress, using materials that cost me roughly 15$. NO I do not expect you to pay me 15-20$ per hour, otherwise the dress would cost roughly over 200$. Unreasonable, right? Considering I would have made this item anyway, as I love complex patterns and have an affinity for fine yarns and WELL-MADE items, I’m getting paid well under 10$/hour. Generally the formula is either 10.50$/hour, or materials x3. I use the latter. Mats x3 at 15$ for the creation of the item, plus hiding a bit of the shipping fee in the price. Why? Because people are unlikely to pay 25$ for shipping on a ~55$ item.

Who’s to say someone doesn’t buy this item offline? A lot of people buy my hats. Several of them ADORE my baby items. They love the dishcloths that I make, saying they’re unique, durable, functional AND nice as simply a decor item. If you want to pay 4$ for a set of 30 washcloths at your local big box store, fine, support export from cheap industrialists and corporates, but do not slander handmade artisans who put their entire heart into a project, something they’re PROUD to offer to the public.
Maybe you don’t consider that a gift to someone you love would want to be authentic? Maybe unique? Not mass-produced like cheap Hot Topic shirts or anything with a logo on it? Maybe something that won’t fall apart the first time you wear/wash it? That WOULD be nice, wouldn’t it? Maybe it would make the gift a bit more meaningful?

Factor in the time spent on one item made in my shop, and you’ll know I well under-price my work, because I love doing what I do. I create beautiful things with my hands. I block to ensure the sizing stays as it is. I write every description myself, I advertise all by myself. Business cards and shipping fees are paid for by MYSELF. This is, generally, a one-woman-operation.

For fibre content of the yarns I use, I never use the cheapo stuff. If the yarn is uncomfortable to work with, I simply will not work with it, easy as that. Sirdar, Berrocco, several handspuns, Myrasol, Cascade, and COLOURMART yarns are what I prefer!

Many handmade crochet shops are getting much critism such as Yokoo and everythingiswhite, and don’t forget classybroad to name a few!! These are my favourite sellers and I understand them completely.

I thought this would be of use, create a topic to share with the rest of community to at least try and enlighten. We handmade artists aren’t a huge corporate company with multi-million dollar CEOs and importing from third-world countries. We create art and love with our hands to share with the world.

Stop making it out to be that we’re money-grabbing monsters already !

Edit: To give you an idea, a package with the dimensions of 28x23x6cm and a weight of 61 grams is 21.68$ to ship to Montreal, QC.
The same package sent to Texas: 19.96-33.75$
To Minnesota, Oregon, etc: 18.63-30.95$
First price for expedited,  which with current customs delay is about 6-9 days.
Xpresspost is the second and arrives guaranteed 5 days with customs delays. I chose this option mostly because people like to get their packages as quickly as possible.

Don’t think that Etsy is my only venue for handmade. I get quite a bit of custom orders. :]  Judging a store’s success by the amount of shown sales is quite shallow, as Etsy isn’t a ‘household name’ as Ebay is.

Amazing Mold Putty and how I can’t resist taking over another craft.

I want this! It looks so neat! I’m always buying buttons just for the sake of them being cute.. (actually false, but I will look at them for a very long time) I’d like to make my own. In fact I’m sure that it would be kind of a good business opportunity as well because a lot of people like cute stuff right? ;D

This all sounds better in my head. But as soon as cashflow starts again I might partake just a little…. heehee. ♥

I want to Dye

I want to dye. I want to dye all kinds of colours. I have this very squishy, beautiful yarn that I bought online a little over a year ago – 6% cashmere, 94% Australian wool. It is called Staywise. And it is the most horrible, sickly looking green I have ever seen!

It looked nicer in the photo it had in the listing. I bought over 4000yrds worth because I wanted to treat myself to some awesome handmade shawls.

I dyed some of it (but it was SOOOOO arduous). I had to unskein it, loop into hanks (I have no idea what I’m doing btw), scour over the internet and resort to using Ritt-brand fabric dye.
Then I just let the hanks dry after washing them for months afterward.
And I had a big tangled mess that literally took HOURS to untangle for ONE skein (approx. 300yrds and fingering weight uggggh)

It turned out okay. I used ‘scarlet’ and then ‘purple’ to make a… nice harvest colour? It’s very pretty. I wound up approx 900yrds for this dye-job so it’s suitable for a few decent-sized projects.

It’s a nice mapley… reddy… purply…brownie… kind of colour in person. My camera doesn’t like reds or purples so this is the closest I’ve got to the original colour!
I have plans for dyeing the rest either black, some purple and maybe full-on scarlet when I get the chance!

More project stuff… that baby dress I’ve been working on is nearly complete! Just have to do the placket and a cute little trim around the shoulders. What do you think? It’s made with OmegaCrys thread:

And detail:

And now I think I’ll go play some Lineage II: Goddess of Destruction with my friend now. :B

Delicious, 100% Extra Fine Merino Wool….

YES I received my cone from ColourMart! I’m so excited to have it (only been waiting one week for it to arrive from overseas… haha!) and I’ve jsut spent the past 20 minutes or so just petting it and wondering what to make.
I rarely buy yarn with anything CONCRETE in mind for crocheting, which explains my stash of yarn taking over my room…
This is ColourMart’s 100% extra fine merino wool, on a 150g cone with a weight of 12/30. That means it has 12 plies and has 30 yards per gram….making it a DK/heavy DK weight. The yarns arrive oiled because they are essentially remnants from companies like Burberry and the like, which are renowned for their high quality garments. This particular yarn is by Zenga Baruffa, marked as ‘Cashwool’ because it’s so soft it could be cashmere… but it’s not.

^- And here is the ‘Heather’ colourway. I wish I could have afforded to buy more of this delicious colour because there are only 2 cones left. :’(!!!!!

Still working on the project from the previous post, but took a break to clean house a little bit.
Also, look! My little boy kitty was still long enough for me to take a cute picture of him. He is 7½ months old. His name is Sherbert but I just call him Sherb… he’s so sweet. ♥

That’s all for today! ♥

ColourMart!!!

I just have to say, as a yarn fetishist, I LOVE ColourMart!! They have a SUPER selection of fine fibre yarns – cashmere, silk, alpaca, extra fine merino AND shipping is free worldwide! A sampler pack is literally gushing with different yarns, and it will only cost you about 5,00$. Not bad, eh? Enough for quite a few swatches and a reference sheet in case you’d like to purchase more!

I have a pretty heather colour coming in a week or so in extra fine merino DK weight (12/30NM) that I ordered for only 15,00$. It’s around 450yrds per cone and quite a deal.

I ordered more… because a friend treated me. Lovely 10/28NM DK-weight extra fine merino in a creamy colour… I can’t wait! I bought 2 cones and I’m itching to use them already!