Lately I feel like the weeks are just a rush to the next weekend, desperately counting down the hours until I get some free time to work on all things Milkshed and some access to daylight so I can actually start photographing products. Really, once these photos are edited, the last step is to finalize shipping and guys, let me tell you, its the absolute hardest part of this whole thing. I’m so stuck on the idea of people being able to open a package – carefully selected boxes with my stamp on the front, tidily folded tissue paper with an honest note of thanks, all wrapped up with this ribbon I’m so super excited for – not just ripping the tape off an ugly shipping box to find a pod squashed among annoying packing peanuts. With that though comes a cost and at this point I can’t figure out how to make it all happen without absorbing some of the shipping cost myself within the product cost, because the idea of charging like $11 shipping makes my stomach turn. I’ve read myself dizzy on Biz Ladies entries from Design Sponge and Etsy articles from their seller handbook, and, informative as they may be, it seems as though no one is ever really willing to talk real numbers, so I can’t find a better solution and I’m just going to give this a go the way I’ve planned and see how things turn out.
Mister and I don’t talk about knitting and Milkshed often because he likes me plenty, yes, but really, yarn doesn’t interest everyone the way it amuses me and talking small business to-dos can easily turn into me whining about my lack of time/money/energy/etc. Over chinese last week we discussed some updates and I learned that he does actually see/know what I’m doing here (<3) but, ever the man of logic, questioned what you really do with a felt bowl. And, my dear, an excellent question you have there. Because there are people who buy things for function (him) and people who buy things that are pretty (me) so while I was taking product photos I thought I’d actually show you what I do with these here bowls because the prototypes I’ve kept for myself; I cannot bear to sell them.
Primarily, the storage of all things girly
Secondary, a key bowl
My first two bowls set out into the world themselves last week when I left a set at the farm for my mom to donate to an upcoming charity auction. It’s an odd thing to spend so much time and effort creating something then handing it over to someone else. Until now, no one owns Milkshed bowls but me. Now they’re out there for others to see… critique…. hopefully love. I find myself curious where they’ll end up and hope they generate at least some money in the auction.
The weekend was fairly lazy, as they tend to be around these parts. We babysat my little niece nugget Saturday evening. Mister amused her by LEAPING from the coffee table onto the couch and we hosted a Beastie Boys dance par-tay, so I can only hope once she’s old enough to know our names she remembers us as the cool ones. Among adults? Toootally uncool. To a 14 month old though? Yeah, we know what’s up. Everytime we babysit her I come home thinking we’re totally ready for kids, have dreams about having kids, then wake up the next morning all excited about the concept of having kids until I realize we just woke up past noon… and yeah that so isn’t happening with kids around so let’s just keep things the way they are, shall we?
Even though half finish projects litter the house I thought I’d dive into something new on Sunday and found this Quick Cable Slouch Hat pattern on Ravelry. The pattern was so simple and came together in just a few hours and I’ve been wearing the hat, oh, pretty much non stop ever since. I’ve already had multiple requests to purchase ones as well, but I’m respecting the authors instruction and not putting any up for sale. I’ll either create a few as gifts or just write a new pattern for a different hat… we’ll see what free time allows.
milkshed 