About a month ago, I got a flash of inspiration for this shawl. My LYS, Yarn Harbor, was having a customer trunk show of shawls, and as I admired the variety of shawls, my eyes also lit upon the Peace Fleece DK yarn. I didn’t have the money for the yarn at the time, but a couple weeks later I was still stewing about the idea, and I went back and got it. Then, I started swatching for the shawl, and discovered that my left wrist was not up to it. I had injured it while furiously knitting arm warmers, sadly. I had to force myself to rest my hands from knitting for a couple more weeks. Finally, I am able to knit again, but I am taking it slow. The garter stitch is pretty easy on my hands. The one cable down the spine of the shawl is manageable. It will have more cables later, but for now, the plain garter stitch is pretty relaxing.
I am excited by the progress my Etsy shop Squirrel Seeds is making. Since January, I have had at least one sale per month. Since March, I’ve had two sales per month! It is such a small number that it seems like it should hardly be encouraging, but I am thrilled that I have sales. Really, for a bead supply shop, I don’t have much of an inventory yet. I believe that the more I add to my inventory, the more I will begin to sell. My vision for Squirrel Seeds is that I will continue to add stock to the shop and reinvest the money from my sales into that task. Eventually, I think it will have a snowball effect on my number of sales.
In my other shop, Fox Fancies, I am having to rethink what I want to sell. I had thought to sell knitted accessories, and to market the shop at a fall craft show that my mother-in-law is hosting. However, with my knitting-induced wrist injuries, it is becoming clear that I will not be able to produce a lot of knitting at a very quick pace. In addition to that, knitting things for sale keeps me from exploring knitting patterns for myself. I may try to transition into selling patterns for knitted items, but I will have to exercise my creative muscles a lot more if I want to design patterns! Writing patterns also requires a lot of attention to detail while knitting, and copious note-taking. Sometimes I end up with a pile of post-its combined with notes taken on my phone and on whatever paper is handy, and then I lose part of the pattern somewhere before I can write it up, and I lose motivation for actually writing up the pattern. So we’ll have to see if Fox Fancies takes off.
