Patterns To Go.....

I touched on this topic briefly yesterday.......I have lost count of the number of times I get a convo or a message through Etsy, Madeit or FB asking if I sold my patterns.  It used to bother me that people were not interested in buying one of my hats but they wanted my patterns instead....over time I've come to realise that I should be flattered, and now I see it, and I am.

I've hummed and harred about this for a while, and I've tried to work out a better way of running dover & madden, but reality is my business is too big for me to continue knitting like I do....my time is no longer my own and I want to reclaim it back....I don't want to get to the stage where I'm resentful and lose my passion for knitting and what I've built up with dover & madden, so I had to look at alternatives.

I guess people don't realise how much time I spend on each little hat....it's a lot.  Most of my hats from start to finish take me around 4 hrs to make, and I work fast.....I have to.  So when it comes to evenings I was trying to get at least one hat finished sometimes one and a half, and coming home from day work then working dover & madden was just getting too much.

I did think about employing people to knit for me, but being the perfectionist that I am, I just found this a little too scary.  Yes there are good knitters out there, but they're hard to find, and then paying wages starts to become complicated....you get it....all seemed too hard and it went into the too hard basket where it stayed!!

So writing up my patterns to sell as PDF formats to knit at home seemed like the logical thing to do.  I've created quite a few patterns over the last 12 months and I've got a bunch more waiting to be played with, so with much angst and fear and dread, I've started writing up my notes for my first pattern release....I'm sure with time it will become easier, but there is a lot to be done.....My scribbly notes are just that, scribble!!  I understand what I'm on about but will anyone else....Anyway it's happening.

Little CASH will be my first hat....it's an easy one for those who just know purl and plain knitting and it's my first ever hat I designed so it seems fitting that this will happen first....So stay tuned.  There will be a 5 ply version, which is the current one I use, and then an 8 ply version a little later on.

I have a couple more orders to complete, a couple of things for friends who are having bubs, then I'm knitting some little CASH hats for photographers so I have some new images to insert into the pattern when I'm writing them up.....so hopefully I can have this pattern ready before Christmas....if not January 2013, we'll see how I go....but with a bit of time off my casual job over Christmas, I may just have the time.

Anyway I feel like a weight has been lifted off me....and I still will do the odd piece of knitting for my Etsy shop, and one thing I've always wanted to do but was never able is to hold a market at a craft fair or the like....it might just become a reality.....I have enough yarn here to open my own yarn shop!!

Vicki