I just had a revelation this week, that I started my Knitwear Design business exactly 1 year ago this month. It was April 12th that I launched my first pattern, “Country Kiddie” when BG was just 7 months old. I think I worked on it for about a month before getting it out the door. I hit some sort of stride being home when BG was 6 months old. I was settled in, happy with things and ready to “get to work” on something fulfilling and fun without too much stress behind it.

BG modeling a Country Kiddie, size 18 Months – Knit for Stitches South, Cast on Cottage

In the past year I met both of my beginning goals, the first goal being I wanted release 4 patterns in the first year (Done! 3 purchasable and 1 free) and then I had my dollar amount that I wanted to reach, and that goal was also met. My patterns are in several yarn shops around the country, all of whom have re-ordered more patterns from me. I was asked to speak at the Atlanta Knitting Guild (how totally fun was that?) and then later asked if I would be interested in being “featured” at a booth at stitches south, complete with 5 samples on display and kits being sold. I am so very proud of my accomplishments for this first year being in business. It has honestly been very hard to focus as much on things as I have wanted to these last 6 months. I work full time now, and the part that really has derailed me is how sick BG has been, and then I have been and then of course being pregnant again is a huge energy and time suck.

With all that going on I still met my goals and I could not be happier. Now entering the second year of my business I have of course set up another set of goals. I want to triple my income, and I have a marketing plan for how to reach that goal. I still have been considering submitting to a magazine. I have to pick which magazine to submit too, and which design I am willing to submit. That design of course would only be available via a magazine that once that season is over is more or less gone and that idea doesn’t sit so well with me. There is the whole nasty business of making sure you retain copyright and working out at which point you get the rights back to once again sell your pattern and if so in what manor. That all makes me a bit nervous, but it really would be lovely to be printed up in a national magazine or even better a worldwide magazine. So I may or may not do that in this second year, and of course you have to submit the design several seasons ahead and there are much longer wait times when publishing that way vs self publishing. I would like to learn more about that whole process and make some more decisions around that.

BG modeling a Country Kiddie, size 18 Months – Knit for Stitches South, Cast on Cottage

The most pressing goal for my second year is to get more organized from a taxes/legal perspective, and to make at least 4 more designs (4 being more conservative knowing I’ll have a newborn and then be learning to handle 2 children, I would like to say 6 but I want to be realistic). So basically beefing up my line and getting more creative and learning more about garment construction is the focus. All of this comes with time and patience so I just have to “keep on keeping on” and really this is a business I know very little about. I know about self-publishing, I know about self-marketing and online marketing and how to create a pretty PDF template but there is lot I don’t know and I am excited to learn.

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.

In my last entry in “from the studio” I talked about my issues with this design, how I had tried to solve a problem with my “end of round” switching from one place to another and how that in trying to solve that I had some stockinette rounds prior to my fair isle. I have sense solved that (sort of!) and I also mentioned how my Kauni yarn was messed up in that one of the balls had a “color break” where the color simply changed from blue to red without any warning. Very lame. It’s supposed to be a gradual change and having that 25% into the ball was very disappointing.

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