where do i get started with pinterest

click to enlarge any image

Mind you it’s nearly two months late BUT here it is: my promised follow-up post to ‘what’s the scoop with pinterest‘.

Make a Board

As I explained in my first post, the power of pinterest is in keeping all of your links and images (“pins”) organized in one place and grouping them into categories, or “boards” — so let’s start by creating a few boards for ourselves.

1. To create a new board, click Add > Add a Board on the top toolbar on Pinterest.

2. Type in a board title, choose a category, and then click Create when you are finished.

I have 27 boards that include “all things crochet”, “whimsy and faeries”, “craft fair displays”, etc.

Start Pinning!

Now we’re at the heart of the matter. There are three primary ways to add pins to your boards, with the most common method being first: 1) repin other users’ pins, 2) use a bookmarklet to pin a web page you’re viewing, 3) upload an image from your computer (advanced user feature).

Re-pin other users’ pins
1. Browse through pinterest by choosing a topic such as “Popular” from the toolbar at the top of the page (I will cover advanced methods of “following” people in a future post).

2. Hover over the image, and click ‘Repin’

3. Choose the board you’d like to organize this pin in from the drop-down

4. Enter a description for this pin (or leave the description from the previous pin)

5. Press ‘Pin It’

Use a bookmarklet to pin a web page
In order to use bookmarklets to pin web pages, you first have to install the plug-in for your browser by going here one time and following the instructions here. Once your bookmarklet is installed, you will see a ‘Pin It’ button at the top of your browser.

1. When you are viewing a web page that you want to organize, click the ‘Pin It’ button. This will show you all the images available for you to pin

2. Select the image you want to pin, choose which board the image belongs on and type a description

So… there are the how-to basics. I know that still leaves quite a few questions – especially for you advanced users, but good heavens! It takes a long time to write one of these tutorials!

Please tell me what questions you still have in the comments and I’ll try to cover the rest of them in my next Pinterest blog post.

Thanks for reading! ~~

packaging, sales, and memory loss…

This morning I made another etsy sale, so I woke up with a “new sale” email in my inbox and my happy face on!

I sold one of my favorite items – the “bitty bump” raspberry cashmere sweater for an 18-24 month girl (pictured) that ties with satin ribbons. Along with this sweater, I also sold a custom version that I’ll be knitting up this month in a smaller size and different color.

I’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into upgrading my packaging this month — making my packaging look as professional and “high-quality” as possible. I made a big order of very awesome packaging pieces – including brown kraft boxes, washi tape and twine – from fellow etsy seller who has been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, Martha Stewart and more: leboxboutique

So… this is all good. But I’m finding that when I package my items, I walk around aimlessly, unable to figure out the steps of the process. This is one of the things that makes me particularly nervous about my MS diagnosis — that I am having some significant cognitive decline. My neurologist said that sometimes we don’t have any problem with old memories, it’s the new ones that are difficult.

For me, I’m having a hell of a time figuring out anything that has multiple steps. Like, driving directions. Or tagging and packaging gifts.

Since every time I have to package something, I flounder about and walk back and forth from the kitchen to my studio/bedroom fifteen times, looking confused… I thought I’d write out the process. I think that the only way I’m going to survive this cognitive loss is to write everything down and hope for the best. So here it is:

1. Make clothing label, attach it
2. Add optional “emergency kit” (extra buttons and/or yarn)
3. Put colored tissue in the box, put item inside the tissue
4. Add a hand-written thank you note with 2 business cards inside
5. Close and wrap the box with ribbon, washi tape, etc
6. Ship the package
7. Email the customer to let him/her know that you’ve shipped their item, and request positive feedback if appropriate

Am I missing anything? Do you ship your goods to clients, or have advice that you think would help me with this process?

7 reasons i am i love with flickr

I am in love with flickr – come friend me. Here are 7 quick reasons, just off the top of my head, why I want to french kiss the people who made that awesome web site. If I actually spent any time at all thinking about it, I could easily come up with many more!

1. Their new uploadr is seriously UH-MAY-ZING
You just drag and drop a bazillion files onto the uploader and away it goes – SUPER FAST. And then, you can tag and otherwise edit as many of those images as you want all at once before you upload them. There’s a whole web site just talking about how cool the new uploader is!

2. I can save my pictures in sets
Sets are like photo albums, and I am an organizational nerd

3. I can add as many tags as I want to any picture
See above note about being an organizational nerd

4. I can pretend to be cool
… and add belong to groups of like-minded people, and add my pictures to those groups. For instance, I belong to a group called “Arts & Craft Fairs & Shows” – where I can browse through tons of photos of craft booth ideas AND add my own photos to the mix!

5. I can tag “people” in my pictures
See note in numbers 2 and 3 about being an organization nerd… I love it!

6.  Flickr retains the meta data (“Exif” data) for my photographs
I  just got a rad new camera for mother’s day, and I’m playing around with the shocking amount of settings available. When I click on the details of any photo I’ve uploaded to flickr, I can view its’ Exif data (“Exif data is a record of the settings a camera used to take a photo or video. This information is embedded into the files the camera saves, and we read and display it here.”

7. You can download the original high-resolution file of my photos
I get so annoyed by photo sites where you can’t download family photos… when I am looking at my family photos shared by other family photos, I like to download copies for myself! I would like to know that other people can do the same on my site. If I didn’t want people to download family photos, I wouldn’t give them access to my flickr site. (Note to self: double-check my privacy settings)

There are a million more reasons… do you use flickr? Do you love it?

our babies, pixie hats and monkey crochet

our babies

My sister and cousin visited this weekend, and it was so fantastic! I don’t travel much these days, so everyone has to come to me for little short visits. It makes me feel like a huge pain in the A-double-you-know-what. But when people come over, I feel eternally grateful. And this was definitely one of those times.

I’ve only seen my baby niece and cousin a couple of times since both of them were born… and although I get to see lots of pictures and videos, it doesn’t feel the same. So it was so great to see everyone, and have babies in my house!

Do you ever sniff baby necks? Ah! It’s nearly the only time I miss having babies. They smell just like… babies. Sweet and sour and perfect.

On the knitting front, I have a couple of fun projects I wrapped up last week… I sent the custom cardigan off with my cousin (I’d mentioned it a few posts ago, mohair stripes and 3/4 length sleeves).

custom pixie hat

I finished up a very fun custom adult pixie hat last week, and I’ll take some good pictures of full completion once it gets to its rightful owner. The person I’ve knit it for is a creative person herself, in fact she has her own etsy shop, ourhousegaia.etsy.com. Because she has a flair for the creative, I’ve saved a couple last decisions until she comes to pick up the hat… like, whether she wants a pom-pom on the top of the pixie tip or not.

skein queen

I have an incredibly kind friend that I’ve made on ravelry - she lives in the UK – and she had a skein of the most gorgeous, scrumptious, yummy yarn sent to me! I’m going to pick something really special out of my {crazy-enormous} stash and ship it to her today…

I’m also working on a super-cute crochet monkey hat! It’s only halfway done, but I can tell already that it is going to be cute as pie… cute as a monkey? Hm….

monkeys!

teeny rainbow nugget o’ bunny

It’s an ice cream-stealing, teeny-weeny rainbow bunny nugget! This little cutie is only 3-1/2 inches high, so don’t ask ME how he is able to get all the way into the freezer in the middle of the night and steal the rest of the Phish Food ice cream… but he does! So buy one of these little guys at your own risk.

This one is available to ship out today, and I can also make custom bunny nuggets in colors of your choice. They’re designed by the local legend (and my personal hero) Rebecca Danger of Danger Crafts.

I’ve been making these bunny nuggets for ages… but for some reason, it never occurred to me that I could actually sell them! They’re available now for only $3 – and if you decide to buy one and have it shipped directly to your sister or mom or grandma for mother’s day, I’ll package it up in tissue paper and ribbon, along with a handwritten card with a special message from you ~~

fabric drape in hand knits and photography

Well… I’ll give you the very short version of my health summary, but I’m still sort of getting my game together, so I’ll write more on this topic as I’ve gotten my head around it.

alpaca

The very short version is that we don’t know anything for sure yet. My doctor believes, based on my MRIs (which have shown new lesions over several years) that I have very early MS. If this is the case, it’s great that we’ve caught it this early – so now my husband and I have to decide whether we are going to start the disease-modifying medication that my neurologist recommends, or not. We have a lot yet to think about.

In the meantime, I’m still knitting away. And I think I’ve made a kind of fun discovery!

I take billions and zillions of pictures of my projects. In fact, I am sort of embarrassed to say that when I look back over my digital photo albums, they are about 80% yarn and knitting projects and 20% family. My kids will probably tell their therapists about that someday.

silk and wool

Anyway, one of the problems about trying to sell (or buy) hand knits online is that you cannot feel the fabric. I don’t know about you, but when I go to a yarn store, or a fabric store, or a clothing store – I walk through the aisles with my hand outstretched, feeling every single skein of yarn or bolt of fabric. That’s how I decide which ones come home with me! This is a real disadvantage of buying online.

But… as I have been experimenting with my (not-so-great) photography skills, I think I’ve made an interesting discovery.

If you smush the knitted fabric together into a sort of ball, you can get a much better visual idea for the fabric’s drape and texture. Let me show you what I mean.

Take a look at this picture. The vest is knit from 50% wool and 50% llama – and it’s worsted, so it’s thick and sort of stiff, can you tell?

worsted wool and llama

but this cardigan is knit from merino, microfiber and cashmere – so it’s incredibly soft and drapey. In fact, the yarn is called “baby yarn.”

merino, microfiber and cashmere

I am going to keep experimenting with this theory. I am in the process of re-taking photos of every item I have for sale on etsy, to increase consistency (and also for the practice). While I’m at it, I think I will take a “smushed” photo of each item to show its drape, as well!

I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on this — what do you think? Do you know of any other tricks that help substitute for being able to run your hands along the items themselves?

P.S. I finally got myself a “company” facebook page, so that I can stop harassing all my friends and family with my incessant knitting photos and dialogue. If you want to follow me, I would be ecstatic to have you “like” me (like me, like me, please!) on my new facebook page! I’ll be your best friend.

waiting isn’t easy… but knitting is!

DH (“dear husband” – an internet nerd moniker for those less nerdy than myself) and I just got back from the most heavenly weekend. At the very last minute, we decided to hit the road and get out of town.

Photo courtesy of TripAdvisor

We didn’t go far — we just went to Anacortes, Washington, which is a beautiful town out near the San Juan Islands. I wanted to visit an antique/craft festival they were having, plus it’s just a cute town to visit. We stayed at a hotel and ate out for every meal. Every hour or two, we would go back to the hotel so that I could rest for a little bit, and then we’d head back out… it was heaven!

The best part of all of it was that I got my mind off of everything. I’ve been waiting for some big news — I’m waiting on test results.

Island Chicks Vintage and Craft Fair

Thanks to one of the many competent and helpful doctors I see now, I have been going in for MRI scans regularly for several years now – because the first time I did so about 4 years ago, there was an abnormality that no one has been able to explain. A spot.

Because I’ve had migraines my whole life, there are lots and lots of little teeny spots – I guess that when you get really bad migraines, it causes actual permanent damage in there. Horrible, really. But this one is different – it’s much much bigger, and looks sort of like scar tissue, except that I haven’t had an accident. It’s not a tumor (insert Arnold Schwarzenegger accent here), but that’s all they’ve been able to ascertain.

my new hat stand!

Well, I had another MRI a few weeks ago, and it has yet another abnormality – this time, behind my left eye. So, my neurologist feels confident that this all adds up to mean that I have MS (multiple sclerosis). The words she said in my appointment were “probable benign MS.” Mind you, she said a whole lot of other words, too. She also gave me three pamphlets to take home regarding what it means to have MS, and several options for medications that can slow down symptoms when it’s caught very early.

But the appointment seemed to be in slow motion, and although she undoubtedly told me lots of very important and helpful information, that’s all I came away with. “Probable benign MS.” I was sort of in shock.

She drew some of my blood, and there is a brand new test that they developed in Israel – available in the U.S. for only 4 months now – which is more than 90% accurate in determining whether you have MS. Apparently, before this test was available, there was a whole lot more guesswork involved in MS diagnoses. They will also run one other test on my blood: if I do have MS, it will tell me how quickly will it progress in the next 5 years.

This new information all unfolded in my neurologist appointment 2 weeks ago, and I will be finding out the test results tomorrow (Monday) afternoon. Needless to say, I’ve been getting more and more anxious as the day has gotten closer. So by this weekend, I was unspeakably grateful to get out of dodge, and take my mind off of things for awhile. It absolutely worked!

vintage stand with a baby hat

Anacortes is an adorable town, and the craft fair was a complete success. I’ve been looking for something to display hats on for pictures, and found the cutest vintage wire hat stand… plus I bought an old burlap sack to use for a backdrop for my knitting pictures… and of course, we got some birthday gifts (we have one kiddo turning 5 next week and one turning 26, how about that for an age range)?

We spent a fair amount of time just lounging in the hotel, since I have to rest so much… but while we were resting, Kelley (DH) played his guitar and I knitted… I finished up a custom cardigan order, 4T size with 3/4 sleeves. The yarn is to die for (Dream in Color Classy) and I used pink mohair for embellishment. I’ve bribed Clara (4 years old) to model the cardigan a teeny bit before I ship it away to its rightful owner!

the cardigan modeled by clara

All in all, it was a perfectly perfect weekend, and our mission was accomplished – my mind was taken elsewhere. And I will report back once I have results for tests on Monday.

this is me in real life, baby

my tree

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about my business, and this blog… what I do with my days and how I interact with people. The past 2 years have been full of changes for me. I had to leave a 15+ year career that I loved in the computer industry, where I’d been doing web and database development, computer support and training, SEO, social media and anything else I could get my hands into. I turned one of my favorite hobbies (knitting) into a business. I married to my soulmate, and I gained new and amazing kids out of the deal. My life-long “normal” migraines turned into disabling daily headaches and chronic migraines which have become so bad that I often can’t leave my bedroom for days at a time… You probably get the idea – the last couple of years have brought with them many changes.

One of the most difficult things to deal with has been how to go from being a young woman and an active mom to being being this chronically ill person who has extremely limited energy and oodles of pain. I’ve spent so much of that energy trying to project the image of a person who is still relatively healthy, and trying to hide the parts of my life that aren’t “normal.” I’ve tried to buck up… but frankly, it’s exhausting. And I don’t have the energy anymore (read “the spoon theory” for more on chronic illness and energy).

clara's custom ring by bellinghamartists.com

So… I’ve decided to take a different approach! I’ve decided to be ME. Just plain old goofy, sick, eccentric, knitting, usually-cheerful-but-sometimes-crabby me. Just the thought of it is exciting to me.

And as a side benefit, who knows… maybe there will be other people out there who are fighting their own battles against illness or depression or something else, and maybe there will be something here in my ramblings that will be helpful. On my good days, I actually think that might be the Reason I’ve become sick – so that I can somehow help other people who are destined to have similar struggles in their lives.

I am in the process of creating a new facebook page where I can post pictures of my knitting until I’m blue in the face (and let’s be honest, I probably will). And I’ll try to post more frequently to this blog, but I will worry less about hiding my sickness and my bad days. I’m just going to talk about my real, crazy life – and let you intelligent people decide whether you’d still like to come along for the ride!

I hope you will, because I can use all the company I can get.

with love and gratitude,
~~ syd

craft fair display

I’ll be doing my very first craft fair (pdf) tomorrow, and toting along all my ready-made knits!

Craft Fair Festival at the Parkway Chateau, Old Fairhaven Parkway in Bellingham, WA
Saturday, April 21st. 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Because this is my first time around, I’ve been doing tons of research, and it took me a very long time to tag everything and print out business cards, etc. I can see why everyone says this is a lot of work — it is! And I haven’t even done the fair yet.

I made myself a banner (some call it ‘bunting’) with my etsy name, sydneypaige, on it. It took me almost a full 2 days to make, but it’s lovely and I’m quite pleased with it. I followed an online tutorial – there are bazillion, you can find several on my sewing pinterest board. I’d love to hear about any that you like!

My 11-year-old daughter, Joy, had her own fantastic business idea! She and a friend are going to have their own little booth to offer gift wrapping. It’s a fantastic idea, all her own — and they are learning all sorts of things about business, inventory, giving change (math) and learning about your audience. I’m so proud of her!

Wish us luck… stop on by if you’re in the area!

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