Goodbye January 31, 2008

I made a decision yesterday. I’m shutting down my jewelry website. I’m not quitting, but the website is probably on the 1,000,000,000th page of Google results, and I’m just not getting any business. I’m going to put everything up on Etsy, and let people know that if they want to custom order anything that we can do so.

What brought this on? My domain name expires next week. And I don’t see any point in paying $25 for a domain name that doesn’t bring in any money. And it hasn’t for about 5 years. The first two years were fantastic. I got so much business from wedding message boards that I could hardly keep up. But when my daughter was born, I had to take a break from it all, right in the middle of wedding season. I lost my momentum, and therefore lost my word-of-mouth advertising. The next year, I advertised in a BC wedding magazine. That ad brought me one customer, who only ordered one set of jewelry. And you don’t even want to know how much it cost me.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while. My best friend hosts my site for me, so I’m not paying for hosting, but I see no point in paying for a domain name if I am not making any money.

Etsy, here I come!

Knitting Bag January 31, 2008

I’ve been wanting to make myself a knitting bag that stands up nicely and can go places with me… unlike the large green plastic salad bowl I’ve been using. I was going to knit myself a Booga Bag, but decided I really want pockets. Besides that, the pattern makes a fairly small bag, and I have no idea how much bigger to make it.

I’ve scrapped the idea of knitting myself a bag for my knitting, and decided to sew one instead. I’ve had a pattern sitting around for ages that I got for free (I don’t remember why or how now) and it is perfect.

I’m doing the bag in the top left corner. I have some lovely purple, pink & black tweedy fabric, and some wine fabric to line it. I’m modifying the pattern a bit. It is supposed to have a zippered top, but I’m not doing that since I don’t want my yarn to snag on the zipper. I’m also lining it, and adding a small zippered pocket inside so that I don’t lose small things like stitch markers. The outside pockets will be perfect for storing crochet hooks and extra needles, and the inside is roomy enough for my yarn and project. The bag measures 13″ wide x 12″ high x 6″ deep.

I cut out the fabric last night, and used some fusible interfacing on the fabric to stiffen it up a bit. I might add a second layer of interfacing since the fabric is pretty drapey. And yes, I’ll be sure to post pictures when I’m done!