April 2024 Pattern Roundup!
Feel absolutely free to skip over these words and jump right down to the patterns. Words on the internet are not actually written for people and are written for search engines after all.
I'm feeling extremely fatigued by social media and blogging and also...yarn, in general. I don't want to wax poetic about it too much, but I'm getting very discouraged. My craft business used to be sustainable and now it, simply put, is not. I've been doing this for years and the last couple of years it suddenly got extremely hard to drive traffic anywhere and people also don't want to pay me for my time. They want my things, but they want sweatshop prices (and yet they'll shell out $75 for Stanley cups, for example, because of the "brand" so don't say one word about "the economy" because the problem is that people don't want anything genuinely unique and handmade is no longer valued). Yeah, I know some people can't afford stuff right now, and that's totally ok. I can't support other crafters and artists nearly as much as I'd like to by any means. It's the people who can afford it, who are like, "Ugh, why does this handmade item that took you 8 hours to make cost so much? I can get something cheaply made with child-labor for 5% of that price."And yet they don't bat an eye shelling out money for over-priced on-trend products.
Resellers on Etsy are undercutting the handmade stores and ruining Etsy even more than it was already ruined by it going public. Meanwhile, I can't figure out how to get people interested in my Ko-Fi memberships, which would be consistent monthly income. It didn't used to be this hard and I've tried to change with the times, but maybe I'm not changing fast enough? Don't get me wrong, I don't mind working hard, but it should not be THIS hard. I work and do work-related things 8+ hours a day, every single day. I don't take days off because I feel like I can't. I have to constantly post content or my Facebook reach gets worse than it already is, but it isn't like Facebook does me any good at all. This is all just getting so insane and above all it disappoints me. I'm not a content creator. I do not want to create content. I want to make fun things that make people happy and I want those people to pay me a fair price for them based on what they are and the time I put into them. I don't want to spend my time trying to figure out how to trick algorithms into showing my posts to people.
Rant over, but believe me, I could go on. I could write essays and cite my sources and everything, but I don't have time and that is also insane. Check out last month's round-up because I did an important rant at the beginning of it too. Also, check out my Etsy. I'm sorry for being grumpy. I'm just very tired. I may never stop being tired at this rate.
All images featured are from the websites that are referenced unless I made the thing and I'll say if I made the thing and the photo is mine.
Pillar and Spiral Cable Stitch
Jasmine Scarf
Mixed Wave Cowl
This is a really cool pattern that I've wanted to try and I think about it sometimes, but I don't have a reason to make it and thus I can't justify making time to do it. I think it would be really fun in some bright colors like sherbet, but that's just me. This post also includes some information about short rows and links to other patterns that are cool too. Overall, good blog. It's worth checking out beyond this cowl for sure.
I only felt like doing three patterns again because, as I said, I'm tired. I've put a good dent in my bookmarks at least and I've provided a lot of words for the search engines. And it happened to be all knitting patterns this month! This sort of makes up for the several months in a row that were all crochet. I thought about organizing my bookmarks folder by type of craft and I might just do that after I post this.
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