I have a habit of disappearing. I’m no Houdini, I promise you that. I might exist on a social media blitz high – posting on my Facebook group, Ravelry, Twitter, yada –  for a couple weeks and then disappear for awhile. That’s the nature of my existence, for now anyways, due by in large to the multitude of constraints hoisted upon me.

Yes, even while I’ve been on a 2-month staycation from the Day Job – let’s not mention that too much since I’m 36 hours away from its demise – I’ve been busy working. I’m not one to rest on my laurels. If given 2 months off, I try to use my time wisely (sorta). I believe in a philosophy of working hard and playing hard. On this staycation, however, it’s certainly been more work than anything. Between doing stuff around the house, selling things on eBay, getting rid of stuff around the house, pumping out pattern updates, and working with clients – other self-published crochet and/or knit designers – I’ve kept myself busy. Such is the case of the later in the last several days.

KRW Knitwear

Karen Ratto-Whooley contacted me nearly 8 months ago about doing the graphics for her pattern line. She’s a busy mom with an equally busy schedule of teaching classes and designing for herself and other notable publications and is like most prolific designers in that she’d rather have someone else deal with the graphics-end of things while she concentrates on the designing itself.

When Karen approached me about laying out her patterns, she was doing what most designers without graphics experience or a graphics budget do: use a basic word processing program to layout her work. Yes, one can get by doing this, but there are so many limitations to those programs, nor do they ever produce something that’s as polished in presentation as one can achieve through traditional print-publication software. That’s where I come in.

Karen wanted something simple (“minimal” is what she said) in terms of layout and color palette. She had gone ahead and had a really lovely logo created by another designer. It’s a yarn ball that leads up to a butterfly which represents her “Nonna.”

by Missa of KPixie

The layout needed to reflect her color choices she’d started with: brown and pink with lots of white space in the layout. She wanted a flexible layout that could work if she decided to include diagrams, schematics, and step-outs, or not. Additionally, she was hoping to cut down her page usage which for a simple pattern was eating up sometimes as much as 6 pages. And we certainly did that as the longest pattern of hers is only 2 pages (one sheet of paper back to back)! Now Karen is saving lots of money in up-front printing costs, enabling her to put that money back into the “profit” column without compromising the integrity of her patterns.

With a lot of back-and-forth, Karen and I, in a host of synergistic email conversations, came up with a layout design that we both love. It’s fun, airy, and flexible, simple without being understated. The important pre-pattern information – yarn, hook, notions, etc) are all in neatly organized brown framed bubbles on the side of each main product shot. The romance text – that name makes me chuckle because I instantly think of the word SWOON – is in a prominent, brown colored box near the top as well as the name of the pattern, which makes it easy for LYS’s with a lot of patterns to locate quickly. And the pattern text flows seamlessly from there on down.

Front pages of several KRW Knitwear patterns

The layout also translates well to her catalog, which she also had me do over too. The catalog is designed for 11×17 format so the back and front cover are on the same side with the two inside pages next to one another. On the bottom of the two inside pages is a series of descriptions about the features of KRW patterns as well as pointing out that Karen teaches classes and is going to be selling some kits for her patterns in January 2011.

Back and Front Cover

Two Inside Pages

There’s nothing more exciting than a make-over!

Six years of doing business selling online crochet patterns. SIX. I love what I do, but I don’t love dealing with PayPal. Matter of fact, I dislike them with a passion.

Cartoon courtesy of PayPalSucks.ORG

In the last six years, I’ve had to make several phone calls to PayPal to work out claims and disputes. Every time it’s involved someone making a purchase and not realizing one of the following:

1) They’re downloading a pattern, not an actual item (I kid you not, a few people have purchased thinking they were getting, oh, let’s say a $6.50 real shawl) and they want their money back. It’s no wonder why I have to put this on my site:

2) The link to the file was sent to them, sometimes landing in their spam filter. They had the email with the link, they just didn’t realize it. To solve this, I just forward it to them.

3) The link to the file wasn’t sent to them to the best of their knowledge. They checked their spam filter to no avail. And no emails landed in their inbox containing said link. This is another easy one to solve. I forward the email from PayLoadz (they are the sending source for the patterns) - because I’ve received it but they haven’t. It includes the link and they download the file. In a few rare instances, neither the customer nor I have received the email from PayLoadz. This is always PayLoadz fault as their system somehow didn’t pick up the receipt from PayPal. So I go into PayPal to confirm their purchase and then send them a link from PayLoadz manually.

4) They couldn’t open the file. Now this was caused by two things: a) their Adobe Acrobat software is out of date or 2) they didn’t realize there was a password involved (which was listed in the same email with the link to the file). I’ve gone ahead and solved that issue by removing the necessity for the open document passwords. But until now, the password has been in the same email with the link to the file just some people didn’t see it was there at the very top of the email. And then again in the second paragraph. No big deal though.

In each and every instance, I’ve had to call up PayPal to get the claim or dispute taken care of, otherwise, it could linger on for more than 30 days (Yes, I’ve had that happen before which means PayPal gets to keep my money for that long). In each and every instance I’ve been told that I needed to provide documentation that the item shipped, which I do. I send them the receipt of purchase, the receipt from Payloadz that the email was sent, and a copy/paste from my PayLoadz account showing the same. It’s usually taken care of right then and there.

A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE

Now, fast forward to three days ago when a payment made to me was flagged as a dispute a couple hours after purchase (that’s the higher tier of the two between claims and disputes, usually people put in a claim first then it escalates into a dispute). I instantly figured the scenario was one of the ones listed above. And I spent the next 30 minutes going through my emailed receipts and PayLoadz account looking for my documentation, taking screen captures, and uploading the pictures.

That was three days ago. I’d heard nothing from PayPal regarding this – not surprised – so I called them today. This time, however, I was informed that PayPal had flagged the transaction, and not the customer. I’ve never had that happen before. I asked the customer service rep why this happened to which I was told that it could be any number of things and that she wasn’t required to tell me why, as though this was a matter of international security.

So, I continued to press on about their non-existent virtual goods policy that gives all protection to the customer and none to the seller. I got the same has-been, regurgetated speech I got the last several times: “We apologize. We’re working on it. We recognize this is an issue and we apologize but as it stands, there is no policy. You have no protections.”

Sorry doesn’t cut it. I’ve been doing business – not so thankfully – with PayPal for six years. You mean to tell me it takes SIX YEARS or more to come up with a policy to protect both the sellers AND the customers equally? It’s time to embrace virtual goods as a real and viable form of goods that deserves protections. If that means that there’s an extra layer of security involved in the transaction, that goods can’t be downlaoded instantly but rather the transaction is checked and double-checked for authorization, I’m all for it. If it means I have to wait a few days for payment – and subsequently the buyer waits a few days for their item – just to know that it’s a valid transaction, then I’m all for it.

Back to the transaction, I was told that the money would be held for 10 – 15 days while they tried to contact the buyer to authorize the purchase. I asked what would happen if they said it wasn’t authorized. I’m sure you could guess the response. I don’t get my money and the buyer gets the goods. This kind of shell game is not cool in my book.

And they wonder why there’s an entire website dedicated to the disdain of PayPal several websites dedicated to the disdain of PayPal.

PayPalSucks.com

PayPalWarning.com

PayPalSucks.org

The Problem with PayPal

In the meantime, my account looks like this:

This has me puzzled because I was lead to believe the money from one single transaction was frozen, they were giving me my money back, and that the case was closed.

Nope.

When I click on all those cancelled fees, it leads to multiple transactions from different people, one of which I spoke to this week personally so I know it was a valid transaction! And the dispute? It’s still open.

This is a shell game of the worst kind.

They continue to get away with it. I’m not the only one who has had to deal with this. And some people have had it too as there’s a class action lawsuit against PayPal:

“The law firm of Freed & Weiss LLC has filed a lawsuit against eBay and PayPal on behalf of their clients, Ronya Osman and Brian Patee. The lawsuit charges that PayPal’s practice of “holding” funds for up to 180 days in the accounts is fraudulent because of the “systematic and arbitrary manner in which the freezing is done and the lack of information shared with affected customers.”

Freezing funds and not sharing information as to why? Hmm, SOUNDS FAMILIAR.

The day I can cut the strings that me to PayPal and PayLoadz will be an awesome day worthy of a red sangria toast.

It’s crazy to think a year has gone by since I got married. A year ago on this nearly 90 degree day, I was running around like crazy taking care of all the last minute details of our do-it-yourself wedding, right down to the flowers with live succulents, the booze, the invites, the music, the wedding fans: you name it, we probably made it ourselves. Between my husband and I, we have enough of a skill set to host any kind of party. Oh, and the crochet. There was crochet! “Crocheted Gifts” by Kim P Werker had just come out and I saw Annie Modesitt’s, “Trinity Lace Shrug” and loved it. It was a week before the wedding and I had no time to think of engineering a garment on my own considering all that I was already doing. I bought the book and set out to make the garment within days of the wedding (cutting it close, eh?)

What you can't see are my buckling knees, no lie! 6" yellow heels will do that to a gal.

Our wedding was the anti-wedding and I was the anti-bride. Neither of us are completely into formalities. We didn’t want anything fussy since we’re not fussy people. We like to have fun and hang with our friends and that’s what our wedding was set out to be: a party to celebrate 10 years together. That doesn’t mean we boozed it up making our way down the aisle! We did have our fair share of laughs though. The ceremony was both very touching and quite humorous at the same time. Our wedding “celebrant,” Dana did a fantastic job delivering the opening remarks. There was a lot of poking and at times it felt like a roast (in a good way).

No booze was ingested during the making of this photograph. I swear.

We had a simple ceremony that lasted 15 minutes. I wrote the reading which left very few dry eyes in the small group of 50 family and friends; I am a soothsayer with the words when I need to be. We also wrote our own vows. I don’t know how I got through that ceremony without crying.

Someone yelled, "IT'S ABOUT FREAKIN' TIME!" right after we were pronounced husband and wife. Love, Love, Love!

But I did. It was an emotional day made extra emotional by the recent passing of my step-father just a few months earlier. His passing was the impetus to move forward and get married after a 5 year engagement (no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you on that number). We received so many compliments on the wedding. Many said it was hands down the best wedding they had ever been to.

Our reception was a party. No fussy sit-down meal. Incredible food served buffet style. All organics! Friends made up the band and switched out during different sets so the music was always pumping. We skipped the wedding cake – we both HATE cake, yuck – and opted for Bailey’s vanilla ice cream in a chocolate bowl with a chocolate dipped spoon. SUPER YUM.

A sweet ending to a sweet day.

Wouldn’t you like to know what this is???

Actually, it’s a shawl.

And I’m only showing this lil’ bit. It’s a work-in-progress right now. It’s taking awhile to design because it’s fairly complicated. It’s a challenge. A fun challenge.

Speaking of complicated, I had asked both my Facebook group and the folks at CLF on Ravelry what their thoughts were about trying out patterns labeled “advanced intermediate” and “experienced,” and I was pleasantly surprised that many were in favor of harder patterns. Based on my own sales of slightly harder patterns, I’ve found the more simple ones sell. Well, that was my opinion a few years back anyways. Certainly that will be tested out when I publish this pattern; we’ll see if I’m wrong (and I won’t complain about being wrong on this one).

Love the execution.

Hate the style.

FUG-et-about-it

In a nutshell, that’s how I feel about this tunisian shawl. I just spent a half hour the other day going through all my crochet stuff trying to organize the items into three piles: sell, donate, and needs pictures for pattern updates (that’s what I’ve been doing ad naseum for over a week now). This one didn’t exactly fall into any of those categories.

I don’t think I could sell it. It’s made with yarn that I ashamedly purchased at the beginning of my crochet career when frizzy, fuzzy, play yarns were all the rage. Don’t get me wrong, I’m also grateful for them. That’s right: GRATEFUL. Whether we like them or not, novelty yarns brought more people to the crochet and knit community. They got people to demand more yarns in big box craft stores like ACMoore and Michaels. They got people talking – not always in a good way either! Don’t be hatin’ on the fun fur (too much).

So a few years down the road from having made the Miami Scallop Shawl – and having fed into the novelty yarn rage by actually designing with it – I’m sitting here looking at this design pondering it’s revival.  I believe in the design. I really do. When looked at on it’s own, it’s really nice. And the garment does have great drape. But the yarn. Ohhhhh, that yarnnnnn! It’s hard to get past. Whatever yarn I replace it with has to have the same great drape as this does.

Anyone have an great yarn recommendations for a very drapey yarn, most likely with some silk or other organic content to help this design along? I might be pondering a variegated yarn. Thoughts?

I feel better now having aired that dirty laundry!

I’m stoked that the Midsummer’s Dream Camisole (published in the Summer 2008 edition of Interweave Crochet) copyright came back to me awhile ago. This was a popular pattern in terms of “love” on Ravelry (453 hearts isn’t so bad, is it?). I edited the pattern and bought yarn back in March, but I’ve slacked on it ever since. Apparently I’m in the mood to get the WIPS out of the  way because I picked it up again a day and a half ago.

I’d completed the waistband portion and a little of the skirt but ran into an error in my stitching and put it down back in March. I’m back on track now and pumping away at this (actually, I was up until 3am last night working on it).

Since I’m not making it a surprise as to what the design is – it’s already been published – I’ll say that I’ve re-worked this piece using a different yarn (truth be told, I hated the original yarn I designed it in as it was chosen for me and it was constantly a tangly mess; I’d never buy it on my own). I’ve chosen to use Voile de la Mer by Tilli Tomas in Moroccan Blue and Sky Drop. Love those names. They sound so delish.

I had to use the beat-up looking mannequin for this shot, eh?

OK, so I’ve always prided myself in working with affordable yarns, yada yada. This is one project that I wanted to splurge on though. And customers can sub out the yarn – as most do anyways – for whatever they like. I have to say, crocheters are a crafty, construct-their-own-reality kind of people; they never seem to use the suggested yarn. Am I doing a good job of justifying the $18 a skein price on this one, already 4 skeins into it and probably another 2 to go?

Unfortunately, it looks like I have to buy another 2 skeins of yarn to complete this.

“Buy?” you say. “Don’t all designers get free yarn?”

Yes, buy. I’m a self-published designer and I don’t have the yarn connections to get my own yarn. I buy my own. And boy is it painful at $18 a skein! Oh well.

Look for this design soonish (depends on when the yarnie reinforcements arrive).

It’s been in my head for awhile now to update and revamp the layout for all the NexStitch patterns. With the last published patterns (Rhiannon Tote and Dandelion Neck Cuff), I had done some updating to the layout to eliminate the “intro” page and rework the materials page to include more product pictures and edit out some unnecessary graphics (a picture of a hook and the chosen yarn) that add to the workload when self-publishing. But more so than that, the amount of paper the written portion of my patterns take up has always weighed heavily on my conscious.

I’ve struggled to find a balance between providing enough instructional material while producing Earth-friendly patterns. I’ve often failed in the later department. My thinking has always been that I’m providing instructions in two ways: the step-by-step version with tutorial pictures and an easy-printing format that’s in black and white with no pictures; I’ve always guessed (read: hoped) that people would be like-minded in their thinking about being Earth-friendly and not print out the step-by-step version but rather view and refer to it on their computer if they get stuck. Who wants to spend all that money on ink and paper anyways?

All of which makes me wonder: If you purchase crochet patterns online, do you print out all or a portion of the directions provided?

So far I’ve managed to reduce the number of pages from 1 page for the smaller patterns to as many as 4 in the larger ones. I’m nowhere near done yet, but I’m happy to be saving some trees even if it’s a time suck on my end to make that happen.

I’m really happy to see print magazines like Crochet! magazine lean towards technology and open up online subscriptions. It’s inspiring, actually. I’m going to save my thoughts about the supposed or not so supposed death of print media in the crochet world for another post because I have more thoughts on that which are more germane to that topic than this, but just know I’m hoping to see Interweave move in the same direction. I love getting my Interweave Crochet magazine in the mail – there’s a sense of romanticism for that tangible moment when it hits my hands – but I’ll be amongst the first to applaud and sign up for the digital version.

How about you all? Would you stop buying the print editions of magazines if you could get your hands on the digital versions? No? How about if the online version gave you access to all previous editions? What if the digital version was cheaper? What would it take for you to bag print and move to digital?

I’m very curious about your thoughts!

Green.

Something about the color green triggers certain memories for me. Actually, colors in general do that for me. It’s how my brain is wired: a crazy juxtaposition of spoken words –  both from pop culture and my own experiences – and colors along with a heavy helping of loaded feelings. That’s how I remember things. I rarely can re-tell a story and give the play-by-play of it all, rather choosing to regurgitate it in a non-sequential order in the manner in which it was coded into my brain.

Think of my memory being like a long rope. Tied to the rope are smaller ropes that jut off in different directions, each coded with a piece of memory in no certain order. I can reach down and pick up the rope at any give point, tapping into just a part of something but not really knowing why it’s been placed there and if I’ll ever revisit it again.

Sometimes I can remember where I was standing or what I was wearing or doing when someone or something triggers that memory for me, never really recalling exactly what was said line-by-line, but rather how it made me feel and the general gist of the scenario. I’m not a gal of facts and history. I’d flunk at Jeopardy. Just sayin’.

So there I was two weeks ago trying to put together an idea of a pattern. I pulled out 7 skeins of “Luna” by Elann, a rich green color that I really loved.

Cypress Shimmer. What a great name. I quickly formed the idea to make a bag out of it because I was unsure if I had enough for a garment. It felt like a perfect Fall color. And I had a brown leather handle that would look awesome with the green.

Rewind a few days prior to this, I’d conducted a little online research about crocheters buying trends for crocheted handbag patterns. I’d quickly surmised that people might not be inclined to buy patterns that featured pre-bought handles. So I settled on coming up with something that was yarn-only and cool. But what to do?

Don't I look ridiculous trying to be serious?

I attest the rest of my inspiration for the Rhiannon Tote on subliminal messages because none of the thoughts for why I carried out this project the way I did were from my conscious memory. They were somewhere far down on that rope. In this case, you could say I started this project based on an inward motivation to do something, anything, and that I was moving towards my inspiration (Not the predictable order of things I suppose).

Braids. I had them in my head. Why? I didn’t know (at the time). I thought it would be cool to make a braided handle. It’d be sturdy. I could pad it for comfort. And it would be unique; I’d never seen a braided handle before.

Fast Forward to three days ago, I was struggling for a name for this newly created tote.

Inner dialog: “Green. GREEN!”

And then it was like weird science. I saw green. My brain spit out, “Rhiannon.” And then the lyrics came swirling in my head causing an earworm:

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn’t you love to love her?
Takes through the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?

All your life you’ve never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you Heaven?
Will you ever win?

But why? GREEN! The cover of the Fleetwood Mac album is green.

And the braids? Rhiannon was a Welsh goddess. Celtic art is filled with knots and braiding. And why was this all on my mind? My step-father. He loved Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks. He took me to see her once when she was playing solo. It was one of the few concerts I recall going to as a child but I remembered how much he lusted over Stevie. His birthday would have been two weeks ago. He would have been 60.

Love ya Joe. Miss you lots.

Twins! I had twins folks!

Two patterns in one day. What a busy day.

First up is the Rhiannon Tote, which I’m pretty stoked about because the graphics on this pattern are just fabulous (if I do say so myself). There are two stitch diagrams,  slew of step-by-step photos, and one additional illustration to accompany the text. Here are some product shots that my awesome husband took of me carrying the tote downtown. Click on the thumbnails to expand.

As well as the Dandelion Neck Cuff. Which for some crazy reason I can’t seem to put pictures of it in it’s own image gallery in the same blog post with the tote bag. Oh well.

Birthing.

That’s what I call it. I don’t make patterns. I don’t write patterns. I birth them. When I’m done, I’m exhausted, wishing I had opted for that epidural, and happy the screaming is over. It’s the closest thing to real live birth I’ll ever experience. No, really.

Yes, self-publishing patterns – the way I do things anyways – is quite challenging, tedious, and epic (Epic because it doesn’t seem as though I do much of it these days.) My design process is probably different than most because, for the most part, it’s not consistent. The inspiration portion isn’t anyways. But once I get going on something tangible, it is.

I’m usually married to the computer (iPad these days) during the writing portion because I need to design and type at the same time. This saves me frustration later in trying to read my chicken scratch handwriting after I’ve crossed out too much text that it’s unreadable. While I’m writing the pattern, I have to be thinking 12 steps ahead what’s coming next so that if there are any unique step-outs I have to shoot (step-outs being those pictures I use in my patterns to illustrate the text), I can do it as I’m working and not have to go back and try to fudge it later on. It’s a real time saver.

So last night at about 1am – yes, I was up, weren’t you? – Mr. NexStitch took the last batch of step-outs for me (You know, because I can’t take pictures of myself and demonstrate at the same time. There’s no app for that yet but I’m working on it along with a Dinner that Cooks Itself app). I figured some readers (read: designers) might be interested in seeing how I take the step-outs. I know lighting is an issue for some doing the same thing.

This is just a basic set-up:

3 Tungsten lamps

1 Photo tent

1 Bounce

1 Adjustable table

1 Tripod

Really, there’s no big set-up here with a million lights.

I set up a large photo tent (the big white boxy thing that I’m sitting in front of) on a short, adjustable table. I have a small stool I can sit on to lean somewhat comfortably into the tent. There are two tungsten suns, I mean lights (they’re so hot!) set up to the left and right of me outside the tent, and an additional one hanging above the tent, leaning far over the tent. A camera is positioned on a tripod and placed right up against me as to appear as though it’s looking over my shoulder.

Sometimes these step-out shots can take awhile. It’s taken a couple years to get a good rhythm going to pump them out quick enough that they don’t waste anyone’s time in having to wait for the next picture to be taken. Or the bulbs. The bulbs are expensive. $8.00 a pop and they don’t last a long time either so they can’t be wasted.

Or burn. Burning my face on tungsten lights that are placed mere feet from my face is not fun. Not fun at all. In the end, this set-up works for me as I’m able to put out some nice quality pictures that need very little manipulation after the fact (another time-saver).

So, what’s your set-up?