Monday, December 3, 2012

Pattern For Sale

Happy Monday morning all. I had another busy, busy weekend, only this time it was also raining the entire time making all our adventures extra adventurous and all our returns home extra cozy. Let me start at Friday though because I actually did something I've never done.

After much thought and yammering on here and elsewhere online I finally made the decision to release a pattern for sale. So I carefully wrote up the pattern and took a few more pictures to flesh it out a bit. I haven't a clue how to do a proper diagram so I figured good pictures are the next best thing, then I listed it. Well, that's a bit out of order, before I listed it I read a dozen pattern listings on etsy to make sure I knew what information to include to avoid any issues. A big Thanks You to Marilee for such well written listings which I studied closely to write my own as i found them to be the best written there is. Anyway, the pattern is available for the Christmas Rose motif now. A few wonderful people have already picked it up and no one has told me I screwed up...yet, so I'm going to count this as a success so far. In fact I was thinking that I would add the instructions for the small version of the earrings to the pattern I gave out with the Special Occasion pendant and list that soon as well. I don't think I'll get in the habit of doing a lot of these, but a few can't hurt. And don't go thinking a book is coming anytime soon. I still don't have the time or skill set for that project. That's a 'when the kids are older' project.

The rest of the weekend was all that family adventuring I mentioned. We decorated the tree and put up lights inside. I like to say we don't decorate outside because we don't like to share and all our decorations are for us, really it's more cost and effort, plus it's not like it's a centuries old custom or anything, but I digress. We also left most of the ornaments in the the box this year because the cats were too aggressive with them last year and we have too many 'collectible' Hallmark ornaments that we'd prefer stand the test of time. I suppose if the cats behave this year, they may go out again. We also managed to knock out the bulk of our admittingly scaled back holiday shopping. Just a few more grown up gifts to get and some things to make and we're done.

I also had a wonderfully busy weekend in the shop. People clearly got paid and started buying gifts. In fact I woke up to a couple more small orders this morning and I'm really happy to get to work today. I have orders that need making and pieces that will need remaking. If I have time I should get that pattern I mentioned ready to list as well. I'm crossing my fingers that this is the beginning of a trend and I will be happily busy from now until Christmas. Here's to a busy day, week and month!

1 comment:

Marilee Rockley said...

Way to go, TotusMel - congratulations on getting your pattern up for sale! Your designs are very pretty indeed. Something else you many want to consider for "someday": submitting a proposal to Craftsy.com to become their needle tatting course instructor.