Oh my gosh I hate what I’m about to type so much but here it goes… I’m committed to blogging once a week! Aaaah! There it is. In bold! I hate it because I hate coming across apologetic for not having blogged regularly at all for several years now because, well, I know that you all know why I haven’t had the mind space to blog, right? You all know what’s going on in our world and how taxing it is on everyone who lives on planet Earth! So, no apologies, life is crazy, I had no time or energy but I miss it and I KNOW that I would feel pretty happy to have a place to share some thoughts once a week. I’m going to aim for Tuesdays. And maybe even bring back the 5 Things Fridays posts! I’m so optimistic!
The other reason I hate making promises about a regular schedule that I intend to keep is because I know myself very well and even more important to me than keeping a schedule is my ability to stay flexible and move things around if I have to and if writing a blog post doesn’t fit into one week I want to give myself the permission to skip it, no guilt! The way that I hope to be able to live up to this commitment is by keeping the blog posts completely organic and journal-y. They may not all have a specific topic or thesis or even a point! LOL! They’ll be about knitting mostly, because that’s mostly what I’m interested in, but maybe sometimes also about reading or baking or shoes. Whatever I feel like writing about on that particular day! I’ve got my newsletter for real news (be sure to sign up at the bottom of any page on my website!) I’ve got Instagram and the podcast for everything else, this blog is just for me. Just for me but also I hope you’ll read it. :)
So, friends, here’s what I wanted to share with you today that I’m kind of struggling with. I want to focus more on designing. I’ve always thought of my designing as being complementary to my main focus which is my yarn dyeing business. And while that’s true it’s also true that it’s basically an entire business all on it’s own and I need to give it more attention. The beauty of selling patterns for me is that there is no immediate additional work involved after the sale of the pattern. You have to understand that I’m coming from a hand dyers perspective where every sale involves a massive amount of work after the fact. I receive an email saying that I’ve made a sale and then the work really begins. The yarn gets dyed (if it’s not already) labeled, shipped… that sounds simple enough but it’s literally days of work and physical labour. When I get an email saying that a pattern has sold I exhale, say a little thanks and move on. No extra work!!! Obviously there’s extra work in terms of pattern support emails but it’s apples and oranges. Anyways, you can see how this would be appealing right? I want to be completely frank, it’s also a totally different amount of money earned, I could not support my family on my pattern sales alone - and that’s quite a statement because I have over 100 published patterns and have been a designer for over a decade. Kind of goes to show how hard it is to make it as a designer right? Now, if it were my only source of income perhaps I would be able to generate more sales because I would prioritize it more than I do now… regardless, it’s an area of my work that I really love and that I find very fulfilling but also very challenging. It’s definitely where I experience the most imposter syndrome. Are my designs unique? Special? Does the world really need another cabled hat? To that I say, Yes! Never enough cabled hats!
So 2022, here we go. Blogging, designing, living my best life. Maybe splurging on fabulous shoes… Who knows what the year will bring!?