January is off to a start! This last weekend we celebrated my youngest sons thirteenth birthday! We live in North Carolina, so the weather was incredible, a warm 70 degrees. Saturday was spent with his friends, and Sunday(his actual birthday) was just a nice family time. We played games and had cake, red velvet cake(his favorite).
I also put another design out for testing this last week. I already have the shawl design nearly finished up, but now I have a new hat pattern out to testers. I am currently working on hat patterns using a combination of twisted stitches, cables, and slipped stitches. This is the second design for the e-book. I have been so lucky with finding amazing testers! For this design, one of my testers is a left-handed knitter, and she struggled a bit with the cables. In order to help her better, I quickly took a left-handed knitting class. What an incredible help this will be for me as a knitter/designer! Not only will this help me with knitting short rows, bobbles, and such….but, this will make me a better designer. I can now put tips for my left-handed knitters in my designs! I love being able to make knitting a more enjoyable process for anyone working up one of my designs. This was a great way to start off my new year! Always learning!
The title of this particular blog has to do with my adjustments to the winters here in North Carolina. We moved here after spending eleven years in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has cold, long winters. Some days the high temperature would be -45 degrees Fahrenheit, and would begin in October, and last as long as into May! Here in North Carolina the average temperatures in winter, even as a low, are warmer than a high temperature for Wisconsin winters. I have an adult daughter living in Wisconsin, with her little family, and I always feel guilty if I complain about the cold day(40-50 degrees), while she is in 8 degree weather there. The first year we moved out here, we were in hoodies and shirts in the 40 and 50 degree weather. Now that we have adjusted, I need a good jacket for the same weather. The crazy thing about North Carolina, is that we can have 70 degree weather in January and then a few days later have snow storm warnings. Its well worth the ups and downs to be close to the coast again though! I say again because I was born in Oregon, and lived there through my 20’s. As I sit here typing this out, it is very windy, as the forecasted winter storm approaches.
All of these adjustments and growth have been leading me to make some decisions about my goals for the year. Looking back on 2018, I had many adventures. I actually stepped out of my introverted life and entered into some pop-up markets, I started seriously designing knitwear, I created new and improved bag designs for my project bags, and have learned new ways to help me deal with my chronic pain. As far as the markets, I sold quite a bit in the first market, but each one following it became less and less. I added some items to my shop, in hopes to attract more people, but in the end, I was not happy. One thing I have decided, is that I will be limiting, if not stopping my hand dyed yarns and focus on my handmade items and designing. It is so hard to make money from hand dyed yarn. As dyers, we put a lot of time and thought into each skein that we dye. People do not appreciate the cost and time that it takes to create them. I am going to dye yarn, but what I sell will be very limited, I will actually sell some of my hand spun yarn this year as well. This gives me more time to focus on my designing, which I am very excited about! I have so many design ideas drawn out, it will take me years of designing to finish them all. My goal is publish one design per month. I am not sure I will reach that, it all depends on how smoothly the ideas go from paper to my needles. It is an exciting goal for me though, challenge accepted!
I will pause now, and hope I have not bored you all too much. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section, if you have any. I hope you have a wonderful week. Be creative, be you!
Below is a rough picture of my newest hat design that is scheduled to be published by the first week of February.
Handmade By Zan 