In Which the Pirate Sketches.

This designing stuff is harder than it appears! I sketched out what I’d like to knit, and then realized how much of it I don’t know how to do. The thing I want to make has raglan-ish sleeves, but because it’s a baby outfit, it also has some extra buttons around the neckline to make it easier to get on and off – and I’d like to put them at an angle to match the sleeve seam, rather than across the top of the shoulder. I’m not quite sure how to make the legs, either. Seamless would be nice, too.

I looked up some patterns on Ravelry and found one that had the sort of neckline I am thinking of. It’s in a book that my library system has, so I put it on reserve. Hopefully that will help me get some idea of how this thing goes together! Fortunately, I have at least a year to come up with something. Baby clothes are so adorable; I’m glad that there will be another little one to knit for! Maybe I will crank out a bunch of small sweaters… but probably not.

Someone suggested to me that I could sell my ‘practice knittings’ to make a little extra money, much like a pen-and-paper artist might sell sketches. I am running out of ways to say that I don’t have any ‘practice knitting’ and that my hourly rate would be prohibitively high or I’d be cheating myself. Selling PDF versions of patterns seems like a much better idea; I only have to do the work once, and Ravelry has a nifty way of handling sales. That, and handspun – I think I could speed up my spinning to the point where I could get a reasonable rate for it on Etsy.

I had a moment of weakness yesterday and bought three braids of fiber from someone who was destashing at super-reasonable prices. She will be mailing them out today. Maybe I will get them before Pennsic!