Travel Maps to the Rescue

Craft Fair Season is upon us. Well it is the right season for SOME crafters. For knitting - I have found that the spring is never my friend. It is warming up, the sun is shining and most ladies are excited about pulling out their skirts and flip-flops. They are NOT excited about picking up a shawl or scarf for next fall.

I already expect lower sales in the Spring and I still enjoy a chance to display my items and hear, "Oh you make such lovely things." Even if those kudos don't translate into dollars. It is my time to exhibit my designs and work.

Last year the items most requested were: boot cuffs and cowls. At my last craft fair (in the fall) I quickly sold-out of my entrelac cowls and had requests for boot cuffs so I got to work and made more but (of course) the spring craft fairs are just not as conducive to wooly knits.

Thankfully - my visitors seemed to like my cross stitch travel maps. I have long wanted some kind of record of my travels. Being a military family we have covered most of the US and now that we are stationed in Germany we are quickly covering most of Europe too. I thought it would be great to have a map that we could fill-in over time and show off our travels. I have seen large travel maps with pins to track your locations but 1) they are very expensive and 2) they aren't as customizable. 

I searched and searched online for a pattern to use but couldn't find one. So I made one. And I figured if I want one then maybe others would want one too. I made my pattern, tested it for myself and invited a group of ladies over from my husband's unit to test it for me too. They loved it but a few of them didn't finish. They got hung-up with the initial black outline of all the countries. 

I had to make it easier. If the initial outlines were giving them problems - could we just skip that step? I printed the pattern straight on the fabric and VOILA! problem solved. Now they can just fill it in using whatever color scheme they want. 

But what if they don't know how to get colored thread or don't want to pay $2/color to fill-in their map? Why should they have to pay $3 for 10 needles when they will only use one? So I purchased a variety of colors and made a sample pack of colors with enough to cover 1-2 countries/states per color. I included a needle and figured I had better include some basic directions in each pattern. 

I thought about offering a little class for anyone that wanted it and then I had one of those brilliant shower ideas: wait a minute - I have an iPhone - why not just make a little video tutorial? So now each pattern has a link to a video tutorial to get them started and talk them through some of the snags they might hit. 

While showing-off my new design to family and friends, my cousin demanded a North America Version. Why should us overseas military spouses have all the fun? So I kindly obliged and developed a North America Version with my home province of Manitoba featured prominently. Rugby North Dakota might be the geographical center of North America but Elkhorn Manitoba is the center of my map!

I'm so excited to see their finished products. I colored in my examples using a variety of colors but I'd really like to see someone do a monochromatic color scheme. Dark red is where we lived, medium red is where we have visited and light red is where we just drove through or stopped at an airport?? Blue is where he has been, Red is where she has been and purple is where they have been together? The possibilities are exciting. I included my contact information with each pattern because I want to see and share all the finished results. 

I still have the original cross stitch patterns with Aida cloth and those are available as a kit as well and surprisingly they are doing just as well as the pre-printed fabric option. 

Hopefully these maps will help alleviate my boredom at Spring craft sales as well as offer my military friends around the world (and my bossy cousin) a chance to track their travels. 

Homework Therapy

This month I am taking a course from a fellow MilSpouse (Military Spouse) called, "Kitchen Table Marketing - 4 weeks to a stronger small business." Would you believe that this marketing consultant had the nerve to give us homework on the first week? What kind of a course have I signed up for??

I did my homework and I actually found it therapeutic. I was asked to brainstorm every last thing I can think of that is true about my brand. Since I kind of am my brand - it became a brainstorm about who I am as a knitter/designer. After I was done I thought it was so interesting that I decided it would make a good blog. So here it is. Bad punctuation and all. And like my favorite Stephen King novel - it is just one big long rambling chapter from a singular viewpoint. Enjoy!

Brand Basics: Facts of the Matter. What is TRUE about Yellow Ribbon Knits? 

I knit, I crochet, I like to teach others to knit/crochet, I made lots of mistakes when I started, I like things to be right, I work from my home, I started knitting when I was a kid but never liked it. I tried again in college but tried to make a sweater and stopped half way. Both my grandmothers knit, my mom knows how to knit but doesn’t, my Aunt used to knit during my cousin’s skating practices and everyone got a sweater from 1993-1996, my cousins knit, I love the blankets my grandmothers made for me and my son. I like to make patterns out of pixelated photos using Excel, I am a military spouse, I have taught people to knit at almost every location I’ve been at, I am a patient knitting instructor, I have a yellow ribbon logo, I made some patterns when I first started that are kind of embarrassing now. I love Stephen King books and named my most recent patterns after his characters, I am from Canada and have lived in: Montana, North Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, South Korea and Germany. My husband is in the Army. My boy swims and loves Lego, I have a BA in Broadcast Production/Public Relations and Advertising and a BS in Geosciences - Broadcast Meteorology. I am working on a certification in Financial Counseling. I cannot spin yarn but I’d love to learn. I used to be a Realtor, I used to be a weather anchor/feature reporter and won awards, I used to be the Assistant Manager of a NFCU branch. I have one child and he keeps me BUSY. I have a Facebook page. I have a Pinterest account but don’t understand how Pinterest works. I have Twitter but I never tweet. I have a blog. I own a website name but don’t use it. I own real estate website names too (but don’t use them either) I have an Etsy store but need help marketing on this site. I have a Ravelry account but don’t like to post my experiments there. I want to make videos to explain some of the techniques in my patterns but don’t know how to videotape myself. I don’t like needing help from anybody else. I am independent, I think best in the shower, I don’t have very good punctuation. I took photography classes in college and loved black room work but barely know what a pixel is. I am 36 years old. I love Entrelac because I can knit forwards and backwards. I use the continental method because it is so much faster but most use the English method. My purl stitches are always seated backwards. I just adjust as I knit. Continental Method makes me knit very loosely. I have trouble knitting very small items as my hands give me trouble. I love ribbon yarns. I love yarns that change color very slowly over time. I made a sweater once but I can’t fit into it so It sits on a dress form and I can’t enjoy it. I like to make things I (and others) can wear no matter what size they are (or will be). I have a problem with sizes and I think it is psychological because I don’t feel comfortable with my own size. I collect yarn like some ladies collect purses. II keep buying more yarn and I can’t knit fast enough to keep up. At Christmas - I use my money to buy display pieces for my someday store. Yellow Ribbon Knits has this name because I started knitting when my husband was deployed and when he got back I had a new obsession. My son is sick of hearing, “one more row” but when he started knitting he said the same thing and I laughed. I cannot sell my pieces on Etsy because of SOFA regulations. I can only sell items 2x/year at HCSC craft fairs. I do not like taking orders. I want to WANT to knit. I don’t want to dread knitting something that has been ordered. When someone asks me to make something for them - I offer to teach them how instead. I have so many techniques I want to try and projects I want to tackle - I don’t have time in my knitting-time-budget for mermaid blankets (sorry friends) but I’ll teach you how to make it! I am a very fast learner. I can become frustrated with others who don’t learn as fast but I’m surprisingly patient with knitters. I have problems with my neck and can’t lean over someone to teach them. They have to sit beside me so I can only really teach 2 at a time unless I have a way to rotate around. Sometimes kids learn faster than adults and I think it is because they are not afraid to fail. I love batik and I think it would be fun to apply that to yarn some day. Some days I think I want to have a sheep farm and then I remind myself how much work it would be. Unwashed sheep’s wool is disgusting. I have some. I love Martina Behm’s designs because they are COOL, EASY and DIFFERENT. I want mine to be the same but mine aren’t so easy. I love knitting patterns that explore a DIFFERENT way to make something like knitty.com’s Helix Heel socks. I have a Pinterest board called: Wow Who Thinks of These Things and it is full of innovative ideas. I would hope that someday someone would pin one of my designs on a page like that. I am an only child. I am ego driven. On personality tests I come out equal between data/organizationally oriented and creativity/ingenuity. I think that bodes well to knitting and knit design. I can follow a pattern but I can also create my own and I’m organized enough to make directions for others to follow. I an nervous to spend money on my business because I don’t want to be wasteful and I’ve wasted money on 2 degrees I’m not using right now. As a military spouse, sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up because the military is so limiting on a spouse’s career aspirations. I want my family to be proud of my knitting. I want to make a business of knitting so I can do what I love and feel economically productive when I do it. People that have an employer and a W-2 think that I don’t have a “job”. Ha Ha - I don’t. I have a passion and I’m figuring out a way to do what I love and report only to myself.

Sounds like a great exercise right? Melissa Shaw will soon offer the same course online so visit her at www.MelissaGilliamShaw.com to see how you can sign up. 

Learning Curves

Learning Curves

6 years ago I borrowed a friend's crochet hook while she was in Australia and taught myself how to crochet. There were more than a few hiccups along the way. After I figured out how to keep the same number of stitches in each row I tackled my first blanket.

I'm sure I didn't take a picture of it and I'm not even sure what happened to it (I've been known to frog a whole project for MORE YARN). I finished the entire thing and then realized I had crocheted through the back loops of the entire blanket. 

That taught me that it is important to be consistent. Nobody else knew it was a mistake. It is an actual technique after all. I guess I was accidentally ahead of the curve. 

This worked much better on paper.

My next blanket was only a touch 

more successful. I was making each stitch correctly but my sizing was laughable. 

Soon I had mastered REAL projects. full baby blankets with appliqués of jumping sheep that each required 16 ends to weave-in and then sew in place. I love that blanket but that's the only sheep blanket I will EVER make. 

Tail/Back legs/R Front/L Front/Head/Each ear
and body each had 2 ends

I would have loved to have made one more black sheep for my friend Amanda. She wanted one to sew on a pillow or a "jumper" for her little girl and it was a brilliant idea but I could not stomach the thought of even one more 16-ended sheep to sew on. Counting sheep became a bit of a nightmare for me after this project.  

Soon after, I started experimenting with knitting. It was NOT fun. I kept crocheting for another year or so after I taught myself to knit because it was adding stress to my life instead of relieving it. If anyone would ask which I liked better I ALWAYS said crochet. I explained how you could make all kinds of 3 dimensional shapes easily with crochet and tried to convince anyone who asked how superior it was to knitting. I don't think I would make the same argument today. 

Deep down inside, I knew that I preferred the fabric that knitting makes but It was daunting and I didn't want to put in the work to become good at it. Until I did. 

I thought I liked crochet but I became obsessed with knitting. I wanted to knit faster so I spent a whole scarf forcing myself to use the Continental Method and at the end of the scarf, you couldn't pay me to switch back to English. 

I'm trying to remind myself that there is an "other side" of any learning curve as our family made a major electronics purchase yesterday and purchased our first Apple computer. I can't get my son's swimming time-tracking spreadsheet to calculate his "percentage improvement" anymore because apparently C4 contains a date instead of a number. Umm that might take a while to solve. But I will keep reminding myself that deep down inside I know I will love an Apple world. I just have to put in the work to succeed. It still beats weaving in 16 ends x 9 sheep on a baby blanket. 

NEVER AGAIN

Yarn in South Korea - No Problem!

I know I have been neglecting this blog. But it is not without good reason. For the good part of February I was preparing to and during March I was moving to South Korea. If you were moving to the other side of the world what would be some of your concerns? What your kids' school would be like? What kind of housing will be available? I was somewhat concerned about those too but if I'm being perfectly honest, and I do try to be, I was really worried about how I would find good yarn.

Well have no fear, within a week I have tracked down two yarn stores that are each within 2 blocks of my apartment and found a local guy selling bags of yarn on the corner by the subway station. I am set.

I haven't made it into the second store. We just found it as we were strolling around looking for a place to eat last night and it was closed when we discovered it. The first is on the way to the subway so I stopped in and took some pictures. The shop owner really doesn't speak English but I had already used Google Translate to translate: "Can I take some pictures? I have a blog."

I'm not sure how that translated but she said yes so I snapped a few of her and her friends. Two were knitting and two were crocheting and she was working on crocheting a purse with a plastic flat yarn.

I stood and watched for a few minutes and then pulled out my iPhone again to translate: "Is that a lesson? May I come back and knit with you when you are not teaching a lesson?" She nodded yes to that so I will return.

I have to wonder what they said after I left. Probably, "What's with the crazy white chick? Don't they have knitting in America?"

I wandered off down the street past the subway to kill some time before I had to go to pick Kayson up from school. I'm glad I did because on the other side of the Jihaeng subway station there was a guy and his wife selling yarn.

A friend of mine had sent me pictures of this same guy but in her pictures the yarn looked cheap and stiff. I was wrong. It was fine and there were nice colors and all kinds of textures. My only concern is that the multi-ply yarns did not seem to have much of a twist to them and may be hard to work with.

His English was minimal but he said $5 for one bag (with 4 balls) and I was trying to tell him I would be back and a passerby realized we were struggling and translated for us.

But that wasn't the last yarn-related event of my day. As we were waiting for the subway home we met one of Kayson's classmates and his family. Take a wild guess what his sister was doing. You have a 50/50 shot!

She was ... Crocheting!! Her mom said she was self taught and when I took a look at her project I could tell nobody had ever told her to chain one between rows. I gave her a bit of help and I could tell she was eager to learn. You have to be if you have self-taught yourself and are already toting around a 8x10" piece of work! I was so pleased to see a young girl picking up the craft.

If I have found three yarn vendors within 500m of my apartment then I am really excited about how many more opportunities are out there.

Continental Success and Silence

My biggest accomplishment in my knitting means absolutely nothing to any of my family or friends. None of them knit. Well my Mom knits and purls enough to make a sweater and my friend, Amanda, is the master of the single crochet. But no one I know is as obsessed as I am. The other day I called my Mom just to share my big news. And nothing. She didn't know what the Continental Method was. She had no idea of the new blazing speeds my needles could now travel at. I tried to explain over the phone:

"Well instead of holding the yarn in your right hand and then wrapping it around the needle, you hold it in your left and kinda hook it with the needle and pull it through."
Silence.

I had seen it done by a lady on TV one day and was amazed by how fast she could knit. I had tried it a few times in the past but it felt like I was knitting left handed. Awkward and not relaxing at all. But I vowed to learn. I was working on a scarf with lots of ribbing and I absoultely hated ribbing. Loathed it in fact. I don't remember why but I swore I was going to knit the whole rest of the scarf using only the Continental Method and that's exactly what I did.

At first it felt odd and frustrating. It reminded me of keyboarding class when you were forced to learn the proper way to type. But like taking a keyboarding class, after months of painfull  aaaa-ssss-dddd-ffff excercises, you finally feel liberated and free to type without hovering over the keyboard doing the two-fingered-peck.

Now I knit ribbing as fast as I would knit or purl a whole row. I don't drop my needle pulling my yarn to the front or the back anymore because I don't have to let go of either needle. Life is grand. I'm estatic. I want to scream my excitement from the rooftops but all I get is silence from my Mom.
So I'll share my big news with you and hope that it is met with more than silence.