16 More Knitting Days in 2012

 I haven't been here to blog around lately since I've been busy knitting.  That's what I should be doing right now, too.  Really, I have been knitting all day on and off.  It's the Custom Order before Christmas syndrome.  I'm slowing down.  After I finish the pair I'm working on right now, there's 3 more socks to knit and it's back to normal.  

 Three socks you say?  That's right.  A customer is creating something using little socks so she only needed three.  After I knitted the first three she requested three more - aha!  Now, it's 3 pairs of socks.  Just waiting for the ball of yarn to arrive from Annie's.  There was a pattern that I wanted and prefer the heavy-stock paper versions instead of having to print it out myself.  

The three pairs of socks above are also custom orders.  I have actually knitted more than those as one customer ordered a pair in the black and the white.  I have an additional pair of white still for sale on my Etsy site.  

Going forward in 2013 I'm promising myself to take better care of my Etsy finances.  One should not instantly spend every penny that comes in through PayPal or Direct Pay.  Today, I discovered that the Etsy option to print postage labels works real well.  Not only that, I was only .10 off in my estimate on a package travelling to Canada.  I'm getting better with this.

In my early years I was paying more for the shipping than my customers were.  The additional costs weren't rolled into my items, either.  I don't like that when it's done to me, so I don't do it to others.  ;-)

My pricing formula is going to change as well.  I'm going to keep track of the starting weight of the yarn, calculate the per gram price, knit the socks, and calculate price then mark the price up afterwards.  Several pairs of socks have put me in the red as I didn't buy the yarn on eBay or get a special price.

Back to my knitting!  

Happy Saturday and don't stress over those holidays!  They do come around at the same time every year so we shouldn't be surprised.

My Etsy Shop