The Walking Hat

That left turn I took the other day was the correct way to go.  Sort of.  The blog is not 100% fixed but it's fixed enough for now.  I'm having to use the "jeanniegrayknits.blogspot.com" address rather than my own web address but if I'm understanding all the information/problems/issues, in 90 days I can make it my own once again.  Meanwhile, none of my old pins on Pinterest work and lots of links are broken but I can blog and my Etsy shop is still linked here.  Again, it's not perfect, but it's workable.  At this point, I'm pretty happy with workable.

Meanwhile...

I've been pretty busy restocking my shop.  Sadly, I'd sort of ignored the shop for several years but Winterfest was an eye opener.  I did really well there and was quite pleased with my sales.  I left home with three giant Rubbermaid containers packed so full of knitted items their lids barely closed and came home with two empty containers and the third had so little in it, I could still see the bottom.  Dollar wise, I beat my sales goal by four times!  

Needless to say, I was very pleased with Winterfest and it really motivated me to get back to my Etsy shop.  Granted, it's much easier to sell knitted items face to face when the customer can feel the softness of the yarn and try items on but....  But if I can sell that much at one location, with a limited number of customers (granted that was a pretty large number of  customers,) there's no reason why I shouldn't expect to make the same number of sales online when I'm marketiing to the entire country. Right??  I know it will take time and lots of effort but it should work, right?

So... Pretty much all I've been doing for the last week or two has been photographing and listing items for sale in the shop.  

Meanwhile, I have been doing a little personal knitting.

I've been wanting to learn to knit and walk at the same time.  I can read and knit (knit, not purl) at the same time so walking and knitting shouldn't be that difficult, right?  I figured if I could do both at the same time, I'd (1) be more productive and (2) be more motivated to go for daily walks.  I desperately need daily walks.  So, I bought myself a walking knitting bag.  

This little bag from Knitters Pride's Mindful collection is perfect.  It's a cross body bag which is perfect for walking and knitting.  It easily holds a skein and a smallish project.   At the moment, it's holding two skiens and a few rows of hat.

I also realized I didn't need to "learn" to walk and knit, I just need to practice it.  I think I may need to wait until spring to get that practice in though.  It's been so cold, I can't feel my fingers if I don't wear gloves and I have definitely NOT mastered the art of knitting while wearing gloves.  Perhaps that's what I should be practicing.

Meanwhile, it's supposed to snow again tonight and tomorrow so I'll have plenty of indoor hat knitting time.  This winter reminds me of the winter we had 25 years ago.  It was the year Sarah was born and we had a blizzard every Thursday from early January through the end of March.  Luckily, this year we are only getting one to five inches or so each weekend rather than the foot or more each week we got 25 years ago.  As much as I love snow, a good blizzard and wild weather, that year was a little much.  I'm quite happy with this year's weekly couple of inches.  It's very wintery yet completely underwhelming.  

Happy knitting!