The first half

The year is half over. July and the second half begins tomorrow. The first half has been pretty good. I hope the second is even better.

We met with the electrician yesterday. He will start wiring next week. The plumbing and heating instalations are suppose to all be done next week. We now begin out part - finishing.

I got my color card from Frangipani yesterday. I have now chosen yarn to the Beadwork sweater designed by AS. I am going to join the KAL that starts this fall. I need to finish Rogue soon as well.

I also have the Wedding Ring shawl that I'm going to start this winter. I have a pattern for another Shawl that I am going to knit to warm up for the Wedding Ring Shawl. I have the yarn for the second one - a lovely Schafer hand dyed lace yarn. I need to order some cobweb shetland from J&S for the Wedding Ring shawl.

I also have to order some yarn that was backordered the last time I ordered in order to knit the swatches for the Fair Isle I have designed in my mind. I was going to design it as a fund raising pattern for Northshield but after reading one of my knitting lists I'm concerned about whether or not it would even sell. I'm still going to design and knit it, but selling it might not happen, except for those few people who have already expressed interest.

The topic on the list was why so few Fair Isle type sweater patterns are available. The concensus from the designers on the list was that people don't buy them because people don't want to put in the time required to make them. They want projects that can be completed in a couple weeks at MOST.

I was also rather distressed to learn what designers are paid. The average magazine pays $500 for a design and the designer must write the pattern in all the sizes, knit the sample, and have a sample knit from the pattern in 3-5 weeks. HOLY SHIT. It takes longer than that for me to knit a sweater from a pattern if I'm not writing and vetting it, let along working full time at another job too. I am no longer surprised at the number of errors or the lack of quality from magazine patterns. Those types of deadlines are just NOT reasonable and the amount of time it takes to design and knit the sweater are not adequately compensated at $500.

Self publishing on the web might be the way to go.