Stickytapeandstring

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commuting

20 May 2018

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Hello 🙂

I have decided to keep a log of my progress as I build my blog and Esty shop.  I will  share my experience here, in case anything I learn can help anyone else. This is my first weekly update post.   I might need to split the content between the nuts and bolts of blogging and the crochet/knitting design work as I am not sure anyone would want to read all of it!   I am not sure anyone will want to read any of it if I am honest but I am putting it out there in hope 🙂

So far I have only written a post when I had a project ready to share.  That makes weekly posts tricky as there are some weeks when I do not feel I have anything at the right stage.   You will see from these updates that I have a bit of a problem with focus 🙂 I tend to work on several projects at once and I am not much of a completer finisher.    Does anyone else have a problem with that?

I work full time and jam my crafting into the corners and spare moments of my life. I generally get a good amount of time to spend on my crafting and blogging at the weekend.  During the week I spend two hours a day on the train travelling to work.   I am normally surrounded by sleeping commuters!  I took the decision when I first started in this job, that I would not waste those two hours a day.

One of my tasks each weekend is to get myself set up with projects for the train.   I need the projects to be small and easy to carry.    I generally get a seat on the train but I don’t get much elbow room so the work needs to be compact and not need laying out.   This week I have been working on little crochet bags.    I started with a basic pattern which I will share in a separate post.    I worked up a number of variations.    I thought that these could be used for wedding favours.   We just had a bit of royal wedding fever here in the UK so that was what set me off!

I am still working on designs for my sample squares blanket.   I haven’t managed to get to a design I really love yet so I put the project on hold.    I started with the layout below then edged a number of squares in black and wasn’t sure I liked that look.

I think I am going to ditch the black edges and join with white instead.   Maybe it is because we are coming into summer and the black just looks too heavy.

I am progressing my Spring Flowers Blanket I completed all the flowers for one row last week.    I have joined them now and I am working on the next part of the design.   These colours really make me happy.    I was going to pick up a row of chain after the flowers but I think it will be neater if I start in the other direction and mirror the panel I just made.    My project for the train this week will be another set of flowers to make a new row across the work.    I am going to put in some zig zag rows this weekend.   It has to be a weekend job as the work is too big now to take on the train!

Every week I like to do a bit of research on blog or Etsy tips.  I read an article this week on Etsy success which said that you need c200 items listed to start to get a higher chance of sales.    I was shocked.   That is a huge number of listings.   I am currently at 10!   I think it will take about two years of work to get me to the 200 listings point

I do have a lot of patterns in draft that I plan to list and a number of those could be projects that people could give as Christmas presents.   It sounds dreadful to be thinking of Christmas in May but given the time it takes to produce items I think it is a good time to be planning and starting to make gifts.    This is a link to my shop in case you want a look.   Stickytapeandstring

One of the problems I used to have with my blog and Pinterest posts is with photography.    I have now invested in a light system and have a small ‘studio’ set up in a corner of my bedroom that allows me to take great photos of small and medium sized work.   I bought the kit on Amazon – it was a lot cheaper than I expected.   Problem solved!!

I have included an affiliate link here to the type of kit I bought, which if you find the link helpful, allows me to get a bit of income whilst not costing you a penny more than you would pay anyway.

The problem I haven’t been able to crack so far is how to photograph really  big items.   My sunshine flower blanket looks lovely in real life but I cannot get a decent picture of it to list on Etsy.   I might take it into the garden on a sunny day and see whether sunlight does the trick!

When I am travelling to work I listen to audio books.   After a phase of murder mystery type books I have moved on to self improvement.   Everything I have read/heard tells me that I have more chance of success if I write my goals down so I am working on a bullet journal page to do just that.     I will post an update on this next week.   I love my bullet journal and have a board on Pinterest to keep all the inspiring ideas that I see.   Many of them seem to need more artistic ability than I possess but a lot of the pages can be copied.   Working on the bullet journal is an exercise in mindfulness all on its own and I find it very relaxing but it is a bit of a drain on time if I allow it to be!  Pinterest board link here – Bullet Journal.

I will share my progress against my goals each week once I have set those goals.   For now I can give a status report.    I have 522 Pinterest followers and 10 Esty listings with no sales.    I do not have any blog subscribers yet but plan to start a mailing list next week.   I rarely get comments on my blog and haven’t really looked into how to improve that yet.    I signed up with AdSense a couple of months ago and so far my cumulative earnings are 16p 🙂   The only way is up!!

I think I had better stop writing now and go and make something.

More next week,

Annie 🙂

 

Spring blanket

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The sun has come out in the UK.  It is April and we have had a lovely few days of really warm weather.  I have been working on a blanket in spring colours and was looking for opportunities to work on this on my commute so I have incorporated some pretty flowers and blocks into the design that can be worked up separately and added to the larger work at home 🙂

Here are the colours I am using and you can see I have made a start with the first few rows in basic stitches.   I am trying Stylecraft DK for the first time as I have seen so many crochet bloggers recommending it.   It is certainly good value and has been very nice to work with so far.   There is a fantastic range of colours to inspire and I am already thinking about the next project and the next…. although that does not help me reduce my yarn stash!! (shhhh!!).

The flowers in the picture below will form a row across the blanket and I plan rows of pale pink and white to follow.   These flowers are perfect for working on my commute!!   I have been working up the centres one day and then adding petals the next so that I only ever have to carry one ball of yarn.

The main blanket is already quite large as I am aiming at double bed size.   It can only really be worked on at home now but it is growing quickly.  I love these colours they are making me really happy as I work 🙂

I am documenting the pattern as I go as I plan to list the blanket and pattern in my Etsy shop.  I will post an update when I get to the next stage and I am working up blocks on the commute.   One day I will get organised and issue these patterns as a CAL but I think I need a few more blog readers before I try that.   I wish I could spend more time on my crafting and blogging but I don’t suppose I am alone in that.  Too many ideas and too little time.   Ah well….

Happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂

 

Sunshine Flower Blanket – update!

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Hello – so excited to report the progress on my Sunshine Flower Blanket.

As you can see I now have all the large flowers added and I am working the final vanilla band before adding the edging.    I am going to edge it with the three colours I used for the flowers but I have a few more rows of Vanilla to work before then.

The blanket is getting quite big now – I think it will be around 1.5 meters square when I finish it.   My earlier posts on this project give you the source for the pattern for the large flowers (A Square A Day by Tracey Lord) and the colours I am using.   I will happily make the pattern available for the smaller flowers and the overall design if anyone would like to see it.   Please just leave me a comment (there is a link above and below this post).

I have already started on my next project so focusing on getting this one finished has been a bit of a struggle!  The rounds get so long towards the end so it feels like you are not making progress and the ends take a long time to weave in.   I am so pleased that I wound most of them in as I was working the squares.   I worked a lot of the squares on my daily commute so always made sure I had a needle with me to finish off the ends as I went.   I certainly wouldn’t like to start on all the ends from scratch when I had finished the blanket!

That is all from me for now – the next time I post on this project will be to show you the finished work which I will probably list on Etsy as a one off.  🙂

happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂

Flower Hats

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These Flower Hats started out as a stash buster project.    I was looking through my stash and found I had a number of balls of lovely soft yarn.  The yarn is a mix of merino wool and cashmere in various colours.   However, there was not enough to make a blanket.  I had no more than two or three balls of any one colour.

I needed a project that would make the most of this beautiful yarn so I decided to have a go at making a hat.   They were very quick to make and are a lovely snug fit.   The hats looked a little plain so I added flowers to the headband.    The flowers were great to make my commute – I made strings of them without finishing off the ends.   Later I used the ends to attach them to the hats.

Flower Hats

These little hats have been very easy to work on the train.    They only need one ball of yarn and they are nice and compact even when finished!    I will share the pattern I created if anyone is interested.

Over the next couple of weeks, I am planning to complete a few more of these hats.   I will also make a scarf to match but there will only be enough yarn for one scarf so that will be a bit special.   Getting creative on my commute turns an hour of ‘dead’ time into an hour of special time.

I listen to audiobooks on Audible whist crocheting away and the journey whizzes by.    Sometimes when I am working over the weekend at home on my projects I listen to Audible because the books from my commute have become hard to ‘put down’!   Audible normally offer a free trial – you can download one book for free without commitment to see whether you like it or not.    I need to tell you that I am a member of the Amazon Affiliate programe.   This means that if you click on this link below or any other link in my blog I might receive a small income at no additional cost to you.

When I am finished I will list the Flower Hats and the scarf on my Etsy store.    I haven’t actually set up my Etsy store yet as each time I try I seem to be missing a bit of information or a photo.   In fact, I will put out a blog post on preparing to set up an Etsy store!    UPDATE – my Etsy store is now up and running but I am still waiting for my first sale!!  You can visit me here – Stickytapeandstring – Etsy shop.  I also plan to check out Amazon Handmade – has anyone used that yet?   Let me know how it goes 🙂

Happy Crocheting,

Annie 🙂

Commuter crochet

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Commuter crochet – I thought I would start to share some of the methods I have of making my commute more enjoyable and productive.   After recently moving jobs I now have a daily train journey of more than an hour each way.    This means that over the course of a year I will be spending the equivalent of about 61 working days sitting on a train!

I don’t know about you, but I cannot afford to lose that kind of time.   I certainly don’t want to accept that that time is lost or will always be a miserable time of the day.

All my life I have loved crafts so it makes sense to me to use the time to craft and create.  However, I am constrained in terms of the amount of kit I can carry.   I also don’t get a lot of space on the train.   Whatever I do needs to be small, easy to work and carry.  Finally, the trains I am on are reasonably stable but not smooth enough to allow fine work that needs a steady hand.

Knitting was my first go-to but my knitting style is a bit anti-social in that I tend to swing the needles out to the sides.  This doesn’t go down well with my fellow passengers!   Crochet however is perfect!!   I have been crocheting flowers to use in my Sunshine Flower blanket and am almost complete on those now.   They have been ideal for the commute as you can build them up in layers.  This means you can work several at once using only one ball of yarn.  Much better than having to carry four different colours every day.    I also weave in ends on the commute – not my favourite job but it has to be done.

Commuter crochet - blocks made during the commute

Use Pinterest boards to collect ideas!

Pinterest is great as a complete distraction from the journey.   I have a board where I keep all the ideas I find for small projects that would work on the train.   You can see my Pinterest board here.   I will work my way through these ideas and show the results here on my blog.

These ideas for small projects are not restricted to being used on a commute.   It could be that you have time on your hands in other circumstances.  I have been known to whip out the crochet whilst waiting for a film or concert to start.  Sitting in the car waiting to collect my children – out comes the small crochet!

The other thing that makes my commute more enjoyable is listening to music or the radio.   Recently I have been listening to audio books and they really help pass the time.   The books can be expensive but signing up to Audible which charges a monthly fee, gives you one credit a month which means one free book a month and there are regular offers to allow you to get books more cheaply.   There is all sorts of inspirational stuff to listen to 🙂  There is a link below in case you would like to try Audible.  I need to tell you that I am a member of the Amazon Affiliate programme and if you click on this link below or any other links in my blog I might receive a small income at no additional cost to you.

When I have more tips for a happy commute I will post them up here so check back in soon.    I would also love to hear any tips you have to share, just leave me a comment above.

Happy commuting 🙂

Annie.