If you missed Episode 1, you can find it HERE.
For those who read Episode 1 last week, a quick refresher: Grandma tried to teach me to knit, I painted for many years, needed to stop because of a health issue of sorts.
Again I don't have any photos of my first crochet projects on this computer, so I will just show some photos from my favorite patterns. If you click on the photos you will go to the pattern listing on Ravelry.
Where was I in my story..... Oh yes! I quit painting, was wondering what to do, had a conversation.
One day at the local post office I was chatting with one of the women who worked there at the time. This must have been 2010 ish. Not 100% sure. We were chatting about how our husbands liked to watch tv in the evenings but we weren't interested in what they were watching. She happened to mention that she had purchased a ball of yarn and a crochet hook a while back and was crocheting scarves to donate to missions in the city.
Crochet?! I have done that (once a very long time ago). I had found it fairly easy when I made the one blanket.... I'm sure I could learn to do it again and learn more stitches. Thankfully one of the local stores had some cheap metal crochet hooks and some cheap yarn. So the purchase was made. Thank goodness for the internet and free patterns! lol
I crocheted so many scarves and eventually hats to give to the homeless. My oldest lived in the city and would take bags of donations along when he went to college. Eventually I tried to sell some of the finished products, but it didn't go well. The community we lived in didn't think handmade was worth the cost. They wanted to pay less than the cost of the yarn. It's the same in a lot of communities.
In 2015 we moved 1/2 way across the country to Valemount British Columbia. It is impossible to buy yarn in Valemount. We have a grocery store lol. Because crochet was just a hobby I couldn't spend a lot of money on yarn, so when I ordered it was a few skeins here or there. If we went to a city I would check Walmart & Michaels for yarn but that wasn't often as the nearest citing is 3.5 hours away. Finding a place to donate was impossible. My stack of items was growing and taking over the spare room.
At this point I noticed that I was changing patterns to suit my style of crochet, or because I didn't like the way it was written, or some of the stitches were boring. Maybe I could learn to crochet my own designs?!
In the winter of 2017 I was asked if I would work for the Valemount & Area Recreational Development Assoc. In the winter they groomed trails for people who came to town to snowmobile. At the start of each of the 3 trails is a shack where we would sell the passes for people to go on the trails up into the mountains. It was 5 days a week and I could take along my crochet!! There were days I might see 2 people, some days no one, other days I could see 100 different people. It was an interesting way to spend the winter :)
Here is a photo of one of the shacks I would spend my day in. Thankfully it had a really good propane heater :)
And here is a video I made one of the days I was at work:
Since most days I had a lot of time to myself and it was very quiet out there, I had a lot of time to think about what I might like to design. I had purchased some really nice bulky yarn in pretty colors, so thought I would start with a beanie.
I created the set above, The Crystal Ridge Collection. For the longest time I was "hooked" on making beanies. Loved to create them in all the stitches and stitch patterns I was learning and seeing. Making different sizes with a "bottom up" beanie was easy, but figuring out how to make different sizes with a top down beanie took me quite a while longer. Now that I have that figured out I will start updating some of my older patterns with new sizes, and make some of the bottom up beanies top down.
So in January of 2018 I published my first pattern on Ravelry! Had no interest in having a blog at this point. Needed money to pay for my yarn addiction, so paid patterns were the way to go. After the first bunch of patterns I took a pattern writing course from a well established designer. Best money I ever spent. It helped me immensely. I'm still using the same template for my designs.
Over the next years I expanded my crochet designs to include fingerless gloves, ear warmers, shawls & blankets. If someone had told me at the beginning that I would love making shawls and blankets I would have laughed and laughed.
If someone had mentioned all the work that goes into the designing to publishing of a pattern I might not have ever designed that first beanie lol. Between coming up with an idea, deciding on what yarn to use, starting the project, unravelling, trying again, unravelling (etc), then getting the pattern written and tested..... oh my gosh! It's a lot of work, but I still love it :)
The last few years I have been a designing machine it seems. Once you start down a path of thinking that you need to release as many patterns as you can to sell so you can buy yarn, crochet hooks, stitch markers (where do they go?!), and any number of "tools" you may need.... it's hard to stop.
I'm starting to feel like it's a job almost. The pressure to produce is starting to get to me. Some of the fun has left. How do I get it back?
Episode 3 coming soon.
I love reading about how you started. Thank you for sharing your story.