I Need to Get My Hands on Free Stuff

Now that my life is at this weird, in-between-identities crossroads and everything is costing me more money, I have realized that free stuff is WAY better than paid-for stuff.  That said, here is the math on the knitting patterns, money-wise:

I pay xxx dollars for yarn.  I then design something.  If I have more than one size, I have to knit two things.  Then I write up the pattern, save it to a .pdf, and email it to anyone who buys it from me.  The overhead is the cost of the yarn, and if I REALLY wanted to start a business, I could charge for the time it takes me to write the stuff out or to knit the samples.

Well, maybe not the time it takes to write stuff out.  I get distracted way too easily, so I would end up charging someone thirty bucks for a pattern that didn't seem complex, but took me forever to write down because celebrity gossip was much more interesting at the time I set out to write the pattern.

Anyway, I don't have a brick-and-mortar store, employees, and all of the insurance and fun stuff that comes with owning a business.  I rely on the internet, which generally is seen as a free tool, to promote my designs.  I then rely on the generous sharing of you fine folks to get the word out.

It seems to be working...the Side Salad Scarf has become the most popular pattern to date, largely because of promotion on Etsy and a local yarn store.  So I thank all of you.

This holds true for the articles I write for examiner.com as well...this week, examiner.com asked us to push stories about September 11 and the anniversary of the attacks.  I thought, "How the heck am I going to be able to find something related to 9/11?"  Seriously...I googled everything.  "Knitting for 9/11, stories 9/11 knitting"...blah blah blah.  Then I had my off-center thought of, maybe someone designed a knitting pattern that was inspired by the events of 9/11.  Voila:

http://www.examiner.com/knitting-in-chicago/ladder-of-life-a-knitting-designer-s-inspiration-from-the-9-11-tragedy

This may seem like a story about a nice woman in suburban Denver, but go ahead and google Ann Budd.  I have the highest respect for her, and was completely flattered that she agreed to speak with me regarding an article for an online newspaper on which...let's face it...probably dozens of people read my stuff.  So to me, this is a huge deal.

But back to the free stuff...the more money I can make (no matter how limited...I am pretty sure I won't be quitting my day-job) doing all-things-knitting, the longer I can knit and enjoy and fuss around and make stuff up and hopefully entertain some of you in the process.  So after doing a shop sample for Yarntopia this week, I picked up two more.  One of them...you know who you are...ended up being a mutual challenge of sorts, and I look very forward to seeing the progress a week later.

The other one...well...I'm still on my big-needle-knit kick, and it called for size 11 needles.  Reason enough to knock the sucker out.

Have a good weekend!