Since April

Quite a lot has been going on here since I last posted in April.

I now have five knitting patterns available (one free and four to purchase) in my Ravelry store and on my website. I have two patterns currently in test knitting and one pattern soon to enter test knitting. And I have a number of ideas for new patterns (it's been hard to decide what to work on next!). So there's been a lot of progress on the design front.

I'm also learning a lot more about designing, both the actual design process as well as the business of design, especially as an indie publisher. I've been watching a lot of Craftsy courses and reading books and blogs and some very helpful forums on Ravelry.

I'm also hoping to expand the availability of my patterns so that they can be purchased as hard copies. The first step there is to actually get them into hard copy form. I looked into a number of options for printing but was getting discouraged as many of the places I looked at had minimum runs of 250 copies, which would mean a huge investment up front and me with 250 copies of each pattern not yet knowing if I could even need that many copies. Fortunately, people have gone before me and I can benefit from their experience. A thread on Ravelry produced some great suggestions and I followed up with a print-on-demand publisher. Not only can I get smaller runs of each pattern, the per pattern price is actually less than I had calculated with my other options. I went ahead and ordered a small run of one pattern (Lady Bertilak) and I was very happy when I received it to see it printed exactly as I had wanted it to be. So now I just need to make sure the other patterns are formatted for this printer and order copies of them.

My first planned test run with the hard copies will be in September at Blackland Prairie Artisan & Fibre Faire (BPAFF). I'll be at the MAFIA booth (Mansfield Area Fiber Inspired Artisans) with some other lovely ladies in my local knitting group (they'll have dyed fiber and yarn, spinning wheels, projects bags, and some of their patterns). If you're anywhere near the area (DFW, Texas), I hope you'll come see us September 20-21. (We'll also be at the DFW Fiber Fest next year.)

My goal beyond that is to see if local knitting shops would start carrying my patterns. I need to do a little more research here to find out exactly how the shop owners should be approached and what to expect. Plus, I want to get my pattern library to be a bit larger before I work on this goal.

So there's been a lot going on with the design business. My other business, my copy editing, has also been going well. I've had steady work from my regular clients and I've picked up an odd job here and there with new clients. But my most exciting news is still to come. As soon as it has been officially announced, I'll write up a post to announce that news. But it should help me expand my editing business and also take it in the direction that I really want to go, with editing fiction.

Luke is growing up so fast. He'll be three years old next month (I need to start planning his party!) and although he's still being a super picky eater and still quite stubborn and throwing tantrums, he is communicating better and is using complete sentences more often. He's also enjoying building his own train tracks and working on puzzles and, of course, playing with anything that has wheels. He also loves being in the water although we haven't gone swimming as often as we probably should be. Sometimes I just sit and watch him play and it makes me so happy to see him working things out for himself and also just having fun. He's also made a new friend--the son of one of the ladies in my knitting group who is about 8 months younger than Luke--and actually asked the other day to go play with this little boy (it happened to be a day where we could go to a toddler activity where the other little boy was also going to be so it worked out).

I'm trying to carve out more time for reading these days since I've gone from reading 200-250 books per year to less than 10. That's just crazy for someone who is a professed book worm. But I've just been feeling this itch with my hands and if I don't have something in them (usually knitting related), then it feels wrong. So I do some reading while knitting simple projects, but I want to get to the point where I can just get lost in a book again. Perhaps that won't happen until Luke gets a little older anyway (it's not just the feeling that I need to be knitting that is a distraction), but I am doing better. I've started using my GoodReads account again.

There's a lot more that is going on or that has happened (such as our vacation last month to Maui!), but I think that's enough of an update for now.