At Last! I'm a Published Knitting Designer

I've been knitting for ... well .... let's say a long, long time. Most of that time, I've been either designing my own patterns or heavily adapting patterns I found elsewhere. I write them up as if they were published patterns, and take them with me.

I thought about selling my patterns, but the work of printing and marketing them to yarn stores across the country (or getting paid peanuts for meeting crazy magazine deadline) seemed like too much trouble. So I gave up on the idea, and eventually took a break from knitting altogether.

Well, people need mittens, and old ones get lost/outgrown/worn out. Both my husband and son needed new pairs, and I was not about to buy inferior products! So out came the needles again. My son's came straight from my favorite mitten book (_Flying Geese and Partridge Feet_, by Robin Hansen, unfortunately out of print), but my husband's are an original design.

I wandered over to Ravelry (a large, friendly social web site for knitters and crocheters) for the first time in a couple of years ... and they now allow designers to upload and sell patterns. Cool! I puzzled out the instructions for setting up a shop and posting patterns for sale, and put up a couple of old patterns I had ready to roll — one sold within 3 hours of posting! You can bet I'll be putting up a lot more in the future.

So, for any knitters out there, cruise on over and see if you like my work. As with my other online shops, my Ravelry shop is under the name Cartesian Bear.