WIP: Baby Cocoon

Well, it's happened again! I was browsing Hobby Lobby while waiting on Pete to be groomed and saw this yarn, so I decided to feel it. 

And then I bought it. I could see it as a finished object already! I really need to keep my hands off the yarn. 

It's Yarn Bee Soft Illusion in the "Softly" colorway, and it's going to be a baby cocoon! It's a "super bulky" yarn, but it's not as bulky as other "super bulky" yarns like the Lion Brand Hometown USA yarn. 

The yarn is an acrylic/polyamide blend with TONS of halo. It is insanely soft, but the washable part is the most important. Baby items tend to become covered in some sort of bodily product at one point or another. 

This is what I have so far:

I think it's about 14-16 inches long at this point. 

Here's a close-up. Look at that halo! 

I do worry that all of that halo fuzz will become icky when washed, but it should be OK as long as it is dried carefully. 

For the cocoon, I found a stitch pattern I liked in a hat (check out the Gnarly Hat by Diana Troldahl on Ravelry) and estimated the number of stitches I'd need to cast-on by checking the pattern I used to knit a cabled cocoon (more like a tube). 

I haven't decided if this is going to be a tube like the other cocoon I made or if I will decrease and make it into an actual sack.

I think I'll call this work my "Traveling Ribs Baby Cocoon" since "Gnarly Baby Cocoon" sounds a bit like it's in need of a diaper change. 

Item Labels

(I meant to post this yesterday, but I closed the phone app before it was finished uploading. Oops!)

I've been doing a lot of research about Etsy stores.

I have original patterns prepared, and I have a spreadsheet calculating materials costs, time costs, listing fees, sales tax, and material shipping costs, among other things. After I figure out shipping options for customers, I think I'll be ready to open up shop. That, and a shop name. Those are always nice to have.

I'm having a lot of fun figuring out how many items I can make per skein of yarn.

I've been thinking about packaging a lot, too.

I found a tag punch on sale at Hobby Lobby today, so I went ahead and bought it. I think it's pretty cute!

The top tag is punched from a greeting card, but the others are just plain cream-colored cardstock. I found a random square of hot pink cardstock, so that's in there, too. Yay, neon! 

I'm thinking about getting a custom stamp label for one side. I'll write a note on the blank side or use it to display prices if I'm at a craft show. (Thinking of the inventory needed for craft shows is intimidating!)

I'll probably punch a hole in the side of the tag and use scrap yarn to tie it to the item. I wonder if there are regular-sized hole punches that aren't simple circles. I guess I need to spend more time browsing the paper craft section of Hobby Lobby!

New Shelf

I got a new shelf!

It's a cookbook shelf. I have a growing cookbook collection. Even though I have extensive dietary restrictions due to health reasons, I LOVE cookbooks. I love looking at the pictures of food (I'm getting hungry...) and modifying recipes. To me, it's a bit like modifying patterns. 

I still have a few Taste of Home magazines to find and put away, and I definitely need to rearrange the cookbooks themselves into some semblance of organization, but for now, I'm just happy about my new shelf!

Phil the Philodendron (original, right?) is happy, too.