Hooked for Life (10 page)

Soon, yarn started arriving in big boxes—not just yarn for swatching, but for the various designs I had sold. You always ask for the amount of yarn you think you need, then a little bit more just in case you need it. No one wants to have to do that interstate (or depending on where the warehouse is, international) dye-lot chase. Often the shipper will throw in a little extra, too—they get the worst end of the dye-lot chase if it happens, so they
really
want to make sure you have enough yarn. Because of this, you have leftovers too nice to throw away, but you are probably sick of the color by the time the project is over with, so it goes in the stash closet to mellow for a while until you think of a use for it. As I went from working on one or two designs at a time to six or seven or twelve designs at a time, the yarn deliveries increased. But I was still fine—I had a nice stash and it was getting nicer all the time. So what if sleepover guests couldn’t hang any clothes in the closet? Isn’t that what their suitcase was for?

And then it happened. I agreed to design a book of afghans. I thought choosing the colors and estimating the yardage was the hard part… and then the boxes began to arrive. Over three hundred skeins of yarn in a three-week period—and that was on top of my regular, everyday stash that was several hundred skeins all on its own. Yarn was everywhere. Even when I sent some of it out to friends to make the models for me, the pieces and leftovers came back. I went from stalking the UPS driver to praying he wasn’t stopping at my house whenever I saw the big brown truck come up the block. A neighbor went on a catalog shopping spree and I nearly had a heart attack for a week when her deliveries came by!

What do you do with too much yarn? My daughter would happily take it, but she is even less organized than I am if you can imagine such a thing, and that doesn’t really get it out of my house. It simply moves the clutter from one room to another. So I engaged on a campaign to lower the yarn density of my house.

Plan one: Pawn it off on a friend who does not have quite my stash problem.
I set up a day and invited my buddy to go “shopping in the dining room.” She was delighted with all the goodies, and I believe caught a wicked case of startitis, which I feel sort of bad about, but not bad enough that I wouldn’t do it again.

Plan two: Find someone who would be happy to take the odd balls and partial skeins.
I implemented this plan by adopting a local senior citizens crochet and knit group that makes blankets for shelters of both the human and animal variety. They can incorporate single skeins into works of art and my donations mean they can produce more while spending less of their own money. And there have been no records of cats complaining about the color choices in their blankets.

Plan three: Get real about what will and will not conceivably be wanted in the future and increase the amount of yarn that goes to plan one and plan two.
It doesn’t matter how much I give away, more always arrives, so keeping the pipeline flowing might avoid another meltdown on my part.

Plan four. Buy high-rise beds for all of the residents of the house, including the dog.
It might be harder to get in and out of bed at night for all concerned, but imagine how much larger I could make the underbed storage crates. Meaning more stash for me! Hey, I want to declutter a bit, not go cold turkey and stashless. That’s just crazy talk.

I
t all starts in the ether—somebody, somewhere has a glimmer of an idea. It may be inspired by a yarn or a stitch, by the stars and the moon, a breakfast cereal, or anything else. But somebody somewhere has an idea for a crochet design.

1. To sell a crochet design to a publisher of some sort, you need a swatch, a sketch, and probably a schematic. You swatch, you sketch, you rip out, you erase. Lather, rinse, and repeat as necessary until you get all of those three things to look like you want them to—a crocheted fabric you are happy with, a sketch of what the final garment will look like, and a schematic of what the pieces are and their general shape. You whomp all this stuff together with a designer bio (that says how wonderful you are) and a paragraph or two about your genius design and why it needs to be shared with the world, and you decide to send it off to an editor.

2. You download the designer guidelines, look at the calendar, and realize that you have swatched something that would keep an Eskimo warm … and the editor of your dream publication is currently reviewing summer. Darn. You can submit it anyway and hope it doesn’t get lost, put it in your file cabinet until the appropriate time (and hope it doesn’t get lost), or decide to publish it yourself. In the meantime you had better swatch something summery, don’t you think? If you decide to self-publish, skip to number 8.

3. It’s time and you mail off or e-mail your submission packet. You know it will take six to eight weeks at best to hear back from someone, but this does not stop you from obsessively checking your e-mail, starting about twenty minutes after you think the packet has been received. Surely your piece is just so darn wonderful that the editor will have to accept it within seconds of its crossing his or her desk, lest your genius get away. This does not happen.

4. Wait and wait and wait and wait. Six weeks go by, then eight, now you are frantic. You know that pestering the assistants at the magazine is unlikely to make you any friends, yet you consider calling. You go online and ask everyone you ever knew who ever submitted a design for consideration anywhere if he or she has heard anything about this particular issue/deadline. No one knows anything more than you do.

5a. Sometimes, you get a “thanks, but no thanks” letter. Rejected—boooooooooo … Sometimes you don’t hear anything at all, but find out via your trusty Internet sleuthing that those whose designs were chosen have already gotten contracts and gotten
started so you know this wasn’t your time. You might now decide to self-publish; if you do, skip to number 8. You might also decide to submit somewhere else (although you now have missed the seasonal deadline) or rework the piece before shipping it off again. Or,

5b. Your design was accepted—yaaaaay! And then quickly boo when you realize how much you have to get done and how little time you have to do it. You get a contract in the mail, some of which makes as much sense to you as a foreign language in which you are not fluent. You ask your cousin the real estate attorney for help. He laughs and says it doesn’t make any sense to him, either. You do as much due diligence as you can and then sign it and send it in—you are so happy to get published, it isn’t as if you are going to say no, is it?

6. Now you have to tell the publisher’s office how much yarn you need so they can get it shipped to you, and by the way did they mention they need the sample crocheted and the pattern written in 1,200 sizes about forty-five minutes after the yarn is expected to get to you? That’s not a problem, is it? No, of course it isn’t—all will be well.

7. You have to get the model made now, either by doing it yourself or hiring a contractor. So you stalk the UPS man, waiting for your yarn to come in so you can get started. As soon as the sample is finished, you fly to the delivery service of your choice and ship the model off. Amen. The pattern gets e-mailed and passed along to the tech editor. It will be a few months before your pattern hits the newsstands, so you are free for a while—maybe to get started on something else. Skip off to number 9.

8. The joys of self-publishing. You have to do (or pay someone else to do) all the things that a big publisher would do. However, the upside is that you should get a larger share of the profit from the pattern sales, should there actuallybe any sales. You don’t get to call someone to order yarn—you pretty much have to go buy some. You still need to get the sample crocheted and the pattern written in 1,200 sizes, but you can be a little flexible about the deadline—hey, you’re the publisher.
    So you make the model, take the photos, write the pattern, send the pattern out for technical editing or test crocheting or both, devise a layout, investigate internet pay-per-download delivery systems, and check out printing hard copies to sell either at wholesale or retail. Then you, too, skip off to number 9.

9. The tech editor has a question, or two or three. You go over whatever he or she has “clarified” in your instructions, but they aren’t any more clear to you so you ponder and reread until it all makes sense. Often you find that the technical edit did in fact make things better in the long run, so you are happy. At least you hope things are better, because you wrote the darn pattern so long ago now that you aren’t completely sure what it was that you did.

10a. If you are being published by someone else, the magazine or book finally hits the public eye. You are very excited to see your name in print, and in such good company. There are some really great things in there along with yours! You drag the magazine around to show everyone you know, even the ones who don’t crochet. Some are more impressed than others, but all of your friends are excited for you. You feel like a big dork but you might even get a copy framed—it is a big deal. Or,

10b. You publish your design online and it finally hits the public eye. You are very excited to see your name in print and in such good company. There are some really great things out there in indie publishing world! You drag the pattern around to show everyone you know, even the ones who don’t crochet. Some are more impressed than others, but all of your friends are excited for you. You feel like a big dork but you might even get a copy framed—it is a big deal.

11a. You wait for the check to come in. You wait and you wait, and you stalk the mailman the way you stalked the UPS guy for the yarn. Eventually it comes and you are very happy—you actually made money from your passion for crochet. Of course, by the time you figure out how many hours you spent, both in preparation for selling the design and in getting it all done, you realize that you could have made way more money flipping burgers. But what the hell, you are now a professional designer. Cash the check, take your family and friends (provided you don’t have too many of either) out for a decent lunch, and start all over again. Or,

11b. You wait for the orders, and therefore some money, to come in. You wait and you wait and you check your PayPal account constantly. Eventually some orders come in and you are very happy—you actually made money from your passion for crochet. Of course by the time you figure out how many hours you spent, both in preparation for selling the design and in getting it all done, you realize that you could have made way more money flipping burgers. But what the hell, you are now a professional designer. Cash the check, take your family and friends (provided you don’t have too many of either) out for a decent lunch, and start all over again.

If you are serious about working as a crochet designer full-time, the minute you submit that first swatch, you submit six more, and then start planning the next six. You seed the clouds of publications by spreading submissions far and wide, because if you don’t get a bunch sold, then you are not going to make enough money to buy cat food, let alone pay any of the big bills. The same goes for independent publishing—one down, a bunch more to go, to get some cash flow. Plus, you keep submitting to the magazines anyway because if you get a pattern in one of the bigger ones every now and again, it’s good publicity—it gets your name out there.

Now instead of one pattern in development, you have a bunch—yarn is piling up in your living room; you are begging people you know to work as model makers, or even models; and you just pray you get the right yarn matched up with the right pattern as sample garments come and go.

You’re probably still not as rich as Croesus, but you’re having a great time. People warned you that getting into publishing would take all the fun out of crocheting, that it would then be a chore rather than something you do for fun, but it’s all fun. The first time you see someone out there in the real world, wearing something she made from one of your designs, is an unbelievable feeling—all the aggravation was worth it.

When aspiring designers ask about getting into the business, they are often told not to bother. It’s a lot of work, often for little remuneration, and you will work 24/7 to get established. And that really is true. But have you noticed that there are a whole lot of crochet designers out there? That’s because when the designs come to you, they demand to be set free—best not to stand in their way.

S
imply by being a child of mine, my daughter spends a fair amount of time surrounded by yarn. It’s here in the house (as in everywhere in the house), turns up in the car, and I am rarely without a project stuffed in a tote bag when we are out and about. But she always had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude with yarny crafts—yarn was fine, but other things were equally fine.

I started dragging her to sheep and wool festivals because I wanted to go to them. I didn’t have much arm-twisting to do after the first one because there were animals to pet, and she has always loved animals. Then she was drawn to the colors and textures of the different yarns and she always, always wanted to try every craft she saw. Which is why we have a
kumihimo
braider, a spinning wheel, a rigid heddle loom, and a box of acid dye colors stuffed in the various niches in my home that are not already full of yarn. I just knew that something, sometime, would awaken the yarny goddess within her. But no luck.

I taught her to knit; she could take it or leave it. Ditto the crocheting, the braiding, the spinning, the weaving (the soap making, the scrapbooking—you get the idea). It isn’t that she couldn’t do any of these crafts on her own. Her desire to do any one craft long enough to get fast at it just wasn’t strong enough. And I always wondered if she would turn sort of anticrafty so as to establish her own hobby identity as separate from mine.

I tried to encourage her but only a little bit, so I wouldn’t turn into the yarny equivalent of a stage mother. As she got a little older she would point out patterns in the books or magazines or pull a particular favorite yarn out of my stash and ask me to make her a garment to wear to school.