I haven’t blogged much the last few months because as usual around this house there is a lot of illness. It’s not fun to blog about unhappy stuff so I prefer to just not blog. Also I can’t knit a lot when sick, I have a thing about holding the needles and yarn when I know I am covered in germs and on top of that who has the energy when sick to do anything but lay in bed, drink water and sleep. I had a sore throat/sinus thing 2 weeks ago and then last week BG and I had the worst stomach bug ever, it lasted 7 days for me. But I was happy, because I had just released Preschool and when I have had a pattern some out recently I am always happy and feeling accomplished. I have another free pattern to knit and write up in the next 2 months, 2 more samples to finish knitting for Stitches South, and a tank top pattern ideal I have wanted to knit for a while which would be a perfect summer pattern release.

Free Knitting Patterns

I have held off publishing a free pattern for a multitude of reasons. 1) Money & Time. Each pattern takes me a lot of time and a decent amount of cash to create. I have to buy yarn and sometimes I buy yarn I don’t want to end up using. I also have the pattern tech edited which can run me upwards of $150, depending on the complexity and how well I prepared the pattern myself. It’s just never been worth it to make the pattern available for free. Also I have heard from more than 1 designer that free patterns have way more overhead then the others. First off you get more downloads, so you server needs to be set up to support this without incurring any extra charges. On my website alone there has been over 170 downloads, and that doesn’t include Ravelry (which luckily does not use my bandwidth). Then you have way more people reading and knitting your pattern, which means more support e-mails.

So your going to get more e-mails for a free pattern then you would for a paid-for pattern. It’s just the nature of the beast, everyone can download and knit a free pattern, but a mere fraction of those people will pay for a pattern and then knit it. I have purchased patterns before that I still have not knit (or finished knitting, ehem). Go look at your FO’s, how many did you purchase the pattern to and how many did you get free? I would be interested in hearing the ratio.

So for this pattern there were a few factors going on, the pattern itself was absurdly simply. No seaming, no picking up stitches. Just a few stitches cast on under the arms. So the pattern was super easy to grade by the tech editor and my math I believe was correct from the start as well which helped. I didn’t create a schematic, which can be a big time suck. It was very cheap to tech edited, my cheapest one to date, and in all honesty there was a few things about it that I wasn’t happy with and wanted to re-knit and alter but with all the sickness etc I just didn’t have it in me. I thought it was still very cute and very wearable and why not just put it out there. I was of course thinking that a free pattern at this point in my business would be a good point for marketing/advertisement, word of mouth etc. So this for me is a part of my “business” plan. I do not currently envision offering any more free patterns on my own site, at least not for a while. I do however have a free pattern in the works for online publication but that’s about all I can say about that for the moment. So in-turn there will be more free Pixie Purls patterns but in that case I will be supporting an online knitting magazine which is a little bit different and has some different motivating factors behind it which I can explain once it has been published.

Setting up shop

I have been very slowly preparing my house for baby #2, VERY slowly. In turn I am going to need to set up some of my own space to work on my knitting pattern wholesale-sales and of course my yarn and supplies. Right now everything lives in a bassinette, the bassinette that BG slept in when she was little. I never moved it from besides the bed and window. It just slowly filled up with yarn. The underneath is filled, the top is filled, and then there is a basket and tote bag next to it also filled, and a pile of knitting design books under the little lamp table next to the head of the bed. I am going to have to go shopping and find some sort of small but tall cabinet to put in the corner. I want something meant to sit in a corner (angled) and that possibly looks like a little china cabinet, but I can re-use for yarn and a few books.

I thought the yarn would look nice through glass doors and would be easier for me to remember/see. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I am also getting frustrated from having yarn and needles on the floor and then when we bring BG into our room she wants to go through everything which is always a problem, so because of this I don’t like her in our bedroom at all, but we have to go through that room to get to the big bathtub, so getting a new cabinet will solve both problems. After all I DO need that bassinette back!

So then I have all of my wholesale supplies. Up until now our dining room has been a repository of all things not-baby-safe, stacks of oddments. I made half an effort to clean it last weekend. The goal is to empty the room out (this week we will be moving my sewing cabinet into the garage, so sad!) and turn it into the “play room” as we have a small house and right now the living room is the play room. I have a nice dining table in that room, so I plan to move this from the center of the room instead to press against the back corner of the room. Larger baby items can live underneath in bins or until needed (like the baby swing that is waiting to be used again) and then on top of the table is going to be my central location for pattern fulfillment. This way I can sit at that table and work while BG and #2 are underfoot and happy with their toys, maybe I can even sit there and knit!

Right now as far as supplies I have my return address stamp, “paid” stamp for when people pre-pay for orders, a big box of oversized mailing envelopes, a big box of velum sleeves (I buy in bulk to reduce my cost). A stack of copies of patterns still needing to be placed into the velum sleeves, and binders filled with color prints of my patterns, ready to be sorted and shipped out when needed. I actually oddly enough enjoy this process. It feels really good to see a large stack of patterns disappear and be sent out, the feeling of “wow, people are buying these from me AND reselling them to people, and people are out there buying them and knitting them!” It’s a wild feeling. The shop in the North West ordered from me a 4th time and this time it was a big order (8 copies of each pattern, 24 patterns total – to me that’s a big order!). I simply can’t believe they needed to re-order so many times; it’s so amazing and fun. I did ask if they had shop samples up, and they do have two which of course makes a huge difference. I actual have offered to knit samples for shops as long as they provide the yarn. So far only 1 shop has taken me up on it and it is more for Stitches South then anything but I know after Stitches, having those samples in their shop will help boost sales a lot!

So the basic gist is I have a lot of work to do to set up my home to be more efficient for sales and give me a more comfortable space for knitting. I don’t like having the yarn spread out and all dis-organize next to my bed, but I have no other means of storage and bins are good for when you don’t need to access something regularly. I need a permanent spot for my other notions, otherwise I keep losing them, not remembering which tote or project bag I left them in last.