Good afternoon!
What a beautiful day… cool, in the 60s; this is my kind of day! I am just loving it.. and today has been a pretty productive day so far. I pretty much have the last 5 patterns edited and ready for the deadline to be sent out for publication.. More on that soon when I sign the contracts!! (You all are going to love them!) I cannot wait to tell you more, I truly want to burst with it.. but alas, I must wait. But I can say- I think this is going to be huge! So let’s hope the paperwork goes in and out fast so I can let you in on what is soon coming!
I want to give a thank-you, to all of my testers. Many have been laboring hard with everything that is going on.. My admins keeping tabs on posts and organization of the board.. testers testing and really working diligently..
Something on the Crochet Garden Testing Board is a point system. Testers get points for testing, posting, etc. With these points, there is an arena area where these points can be redeemed. It is really, truly a neat system. One of the areas is “Guess Events.” A photo is posted, and each guess is a certain amount of points. Another area, are regular events, usually one posted per week, and “tickets” for those can be anywhere from 10 points to 1000 points. The more “tickets” one buys, the more chances to win. Those can be either known or unknown.. Like for example, one event may be 50 points per ticket, and it is a surprise of what the winner gets. Then there may be another event where there is a photo posted of the winnings.. It really adds a fun element to the testing board.
Here is one of the latest things for grabs in one of the events: 6 hanks (440y each) of Alpaca Cloud, 100% baby alpaca. Oh my it is soooo soft.. and the color is just absolutely gorgeous!! I love pale, almost icy colors.. One of the lucky testers will be winning this lot!
Closeups:
And oh my, it is so soft. Not scratchy at all. It is a laceweight.. I am imagining a beautiful lacy shawl or stole.. or maybe even some gorgeous lacy baby dress.. OR even a dainty young miss cardigan. When I get through all of these publications and through the winter launch for the website.. I will be getting more of this yarn to work up a pattern or two with. What shall I make with it? It is just so beautiful and ideas storming through…
But one lucky tester will be winning this.
Next time I go up to Chicago, and visit my sister in Wisconsin.. I am going to hit that store and get some yummy Yerba Mate for some events! (See This Post on Yerba Mate Tea)
Ok, so in my last post I talked about designing patterns for women. I would like to make both regular sizes, as well as plus sizes. I know about a year and a half ago I was going to work on plus size crochet wearables, but unfortunately, the time never presented itself. I am now wiser, in that time will never come to you! One must make the time. So this coming year, I will be treading into this new territory of designing. I even have some goodies to help me along in this adventure- will delve more into that on future posts and keep you all posted on the proceses I use as I develop these new skills. I already have a zillion sketches.. some awfully cute camisoles.. some dainty but classy looking tops… and a few sketches of some skirts. One of these though I think I may send in for publication.
In the meantime, I am doing much needed research for myself in this area. A lot can damage a great design.. for example, when it is best to have a dropped sleeve.. when to have set in sleeves.. Even the sleeve length can impact the overall success of a design. And of course, the material used.. I have pretty much sworn off anything bulky-wise for plus sizes- we do not need all that excess! But then, I really do not like bulky yarns anyway, at least for most of my designs… They are fine maybe for a baby hoodie.. but for tops, I do not think I will be using them. For majority (both plus sizes and regular sizes) I plan to use from size 3 to a worsted weight)- depending on the project, style, and stitching used.
Fingering weight- a maybe… depending on the sizes and what the item is… same thing for size 10 thread. I do not want to make a garment that takes so long many never finish.
On the same note of material weights.. The Craft Yarn Council has now redone their pages.. There is a new, or well, updated yarn labeling system. (For example, worsted always termed as a 4, etc.) There are now weights 0-6. Check out the yarn weight system through the CYCA!
They now have sections for designers! If you design.. check out: Submitting a Project Idea: Where To Start, and Designer Pitfalls (A great read!). There are many other great articles and sections.. so go check it out at all the revisions and updates at the CYCA (Crochet Yarn Council Of America)!
On another note, a dear successful, published and well known designer friend of mine began a blog on blogger oh maybe a couple months ago. I know many people out there use Blogger, so I figured I would throw this out there to my dear fellow crocheters who have blogs on Blogger.
In correspondence through email, she told me she changed her blog to another name, because the old name was similar to another person who crochets and she did not want the two blogs and designers to be confused (valid reason). So, she deleted her old blog about 3 weeks ago and began anew with an entirely new name.
This morning I was doing a search to get to the new blog using Google, and I clicked on what I thought was her new blog, but was her old blog. And oh my, it was quite full of explicit adult material. I emailed her straight away alerting her to this. It did not looked hacked, since she had given up the old name of the previous blog.. but what is bad, is that when doing a google search, that name is affiliated with her name, but just different content (very different!).
I did some research.. and I came across someone who had the same thing happened. He warned, never ever delete and give up your blogspot address/name/account. See, many of these blogs have people out there in the world wide web linking to them. So unscrupulous people take advantage of this known fact- basically, knowing they will get instant traffic. So they wait and snatch up any deleted blogspot names, and put there content in, and just watch the traffic go on.
The gentleman on this site suggests leaving the site there and simply making a link to your new site. Anyway, this is just a forewarning so this does not happen to anyone else- nobody deserves to have their name associated with things they not wish to be associated with. I have to look into it, and so does my dear friend, maybe there is something that can be done.. but even for the time it takes to get something done, it can be unnerving and unsettling waiting for it go away…
So I leave you with that heads-up if you have a blogger account.
Time to get back to work… Take care everyone 