I'm Drea. I'm Meg. I'm Tina. And I'm Jess. And this is Pardon My Stash. Welcome to Part in My Stash, a podcast about knitting, the fiber arts, and how awesome it is. Before we delve into this week's topics, let's share what we're working on today, Drea. I am working on the chemishawl by Isabelle Kramer, and I'm using jeans. I am using Silver Moon fiber arts in fingering, and it is faded jeans.
Literally all I could think of was like the two episodes ago where we talked about frogging. We talked about the possibility of knitting while you're frogging, and I'm just picturing you knitting from jeans. Like those ripped jeans that you can buy. Pulling at the strands of your jeans and knitting with it. The fancy ripped jeans. I don't know if I would want to knit with denim. I don't know if it still is around, but I know a while ago there used to be a denim yarn or
denim blend yarn that you could knit with. And I can't imagine how it would feel. To be fair, nerd fabric fact here. Denim is actually the weave of the fabric. The fabric itself, before you weave it into that, is just normal like threads. Putting that BFA to use. Listen, man. That's how it do. That's how it gets solved. And you're not supposed to wash it nonstop unless it gets really bad because of that. It wears out faster. It has
to do with the way they weave it. Well, the more you know, I guess. Yeah. So all right, Meg. I can't follow that. Jeans. Jeans. I'm still knitting Ocean Stones by Greta Menson, and I'm knitting it in Fiberspace Vivacious Decay in Heavenly. I love that color way, by the way. You know, honest to God, I do too. It's so subtle. It's very pretty. I kind of want to buy more and make a whole sweater out of it. I'll be honest. It's a really cute. I know it's probably not
appropriate for a baby outfit, but that's just horrible. That would be so cute. Why wouldn't it be though? No, I'm just thinking maintenance wise, it would be hard to clean. But I think it's super wash. Is it super wash? I don't know. Let me check. Okay. No, because I'm talking. Yeah, because I'm just if it was like, you know, machine washable, I would say it's like it's a gorgeous color for like neutral, but still like, it has a little bit of everything in it. So it doesn't seem like it's
more of like a boy or girl. It says machine wash. Nice. Okay. It is washable. So yeah, I would, if it were me, that would be like an adorable, like I would make like a little baby vest out of that. This would be a good, like, and it's great for especially if you don't know the sex of the baby. This is a great gender neutral color. It really is. No, I definitely would be like, I did. I saw it. I fell in love with it. I'm like, I need that. I would make a little like floppy hat and a
vest with that 100% or a blanket. That's a really cute blanket one for a baby blanket. It would be with a nice, because it has a really good stitch definition. It would be nice with like the cabling or something like that. Yeah. Keynote? I am still plugging away at my Ingalls sweater by Caitlin Hunter from Boylan Networks. And the yarn I'm using is string yarns NYC Dil Ceto DK in red, gray, and dark gray. I don't know if this is going to change for a while, what I'm working on, but.
I think we're all in that boat pretty much. Yeah. Like, I don't know. It's just like, it's, it's taking it slow. We're having a chill year. Yeah. I feel like, I feel like honestly, I've just been like, when I have time to focus, I've been doing like little projects, like the baby sweater from last week and stuff like that. I've been doing like these little projects in between, but otherwise. This is your main project and everything else are your side projects. Yeah,
pretty much. This is like the one I'm working on when I don't know what to work on or I need to, you know, just chill. And then if I'm, if I actually want to like do something, it's, it has to be a smaller thing. It's not going to be another sweater or something like that. And. Sweater monogamy. Pretty much. Yeah. I am being sweater monogamous right now. My poor, dark academia is in a corner right now. Just crying. You'll get there. No, once I'm done
with this one, I'll, I'll switch. That'll be my next sweater. So I'm, you know, I'm good with sweaters for the next probably like three years. Jess. Yeah. I am also still working on the Alexandra Davidoff studios. I am dragon two and we are just plugging away at that in, oh yeah. Critical hit dies Morgan in ranger. You're going to just knit the whole dragon lion, aren't you? No, I think I'm probably going to be good with the stitch for a little while after this one. Cause it is,
it is a very fun stitch, but I know it now. I've going to have two projects with it for our projects and information, you know, about part of my stash. Uh, you can check us out at our website, part of my stash.com for that info, some picks, patterns and yarns. All right. So this week's topics is going to be, uh, lessons we learned from crafting. So many lessons learned. I was going to say, I wanted to do from crafting because I feel like,
I mean, we all knit, but we all also do other crafts. And I feel like we have learned a lot from all of these. Um, and I'm not just talking about like, you know, cause we've talked about things that we've learned that we would do differently. And when I'm more talking about
like, you know, just, just random, it could be completely random. Like we've, we've come across, like, you know what I have learned that for me, there, there are multiple uses for a certain type of yarn, um, that you can use across several crafts that have nothing to do with knitting. Like we used to use yarns for building forts and you would think that bulky might be good because it's bigger for the blankets and whatnot, but actually a worsted works fantastic. Don't look
at me like that. Like there's things that you're really going to use. Grandma's old, like old, old, old school red heart made out of legit plastic that if a flame goes near it, you're going to get like arsenic poisoning from. Yeah. That makes good for holdups. I don't know. I just hear, I felt like arsenic poisoning needed the do, do, do. Wow. That's, that is not where I thought that was going to go. I'm just saying that is not where I thought that was going to go. It's a broad range.
I wanted to open the floor to that. I was going to say that I learned recently that swatching was important. You still don't do it, Dra. I have done it for the one project that required it. And it was important. I don't need to swatch for the, for a shawl. It's like just wrap it around yourself. If you speak, if you speak to swatch purists, you're supposed to swatch for everything. It could be a fricking washcloth. You're supposed to swatch. I mean, I feel like a washcloth is the
swatch. Yeah. I have seen people make arguments for swatches for washcloths. That seems a little bit ridiculous. That's excessive. Anything else I can kind of like, I don't know. I think I'm going to go out on a limb here and you know me, I'm the swatch defender, gauge swatch defender, but I will go out on a limb and say, if you are the type of person and I feel like you are, I am, you don't
even know what I'm going to say yet, but I am. Okay. I could run with that. If you are the type of person that does not mind knitting for like, God knows how long until you figure out this is not working, ripping it all back and starting over. If you are not the kind of person that minds that you do not need to gauge swatch. If you are the type of person I think you are, but I also know how I knit. Like I'm not going to gauge swatch for a hat. I like, right. Right. And I don't think you
need to like, okay, I have knit so many accessories out of Malabrigo Rios. Yeah. I know like if I am knitting a hat or a cowl out of Malabrigo Rios, I know exactly what my gauge is going to be. Maybe not down to the inch, but I know which needles to knit with and I know how it's going to come out in terms of tension. Yeah. Yeah. So as much of a gauge swatch purist as I, okay, but the washcloth is breaching. Listen, I didn't. That's not me. That's not me. No, I know. So whatever lady asks on
YouTube that was doing the swatch for the washcloth, I'm sorry. Like you're wrong. I really, I mean, I think going in- Swatch the washcloth. In line with the terms of find your joy. If you are the type of person that does not mind starting a project five times and ripping it out five times until you get the gauge right. If that makes you happy, go forth, enjoy yourself. Or if you don't care that it's not exactly the right size that you were going for. Like, cause I'm actually of that mindset.
Like I honestly, like I'll do a, I will absolutely a hundred percent do a swatch if it's for a test knit or I'm doing it for somebody else. Like I measured them and I want to make sure it's perfect. But if it's for me, like nine times out of 10, I will like not swatch and I'll be like, eh, this is going to come out bigger. Cool. And then if it comes out smaller, I'm like,
ah, I can find somebody. I can find somebody. That's fair. But for the most part, I know that I tend to my, because I'm a Lucy goosey, I tend to, um, it comes out a little bit bigger than what it's meant to be. So I also know that I'm a tight knitter. So most of my projects, I have to go up a needle size. Yeah. And that's fair. Yeah. I remember when we were knitting those socks and you're like, yep, I'm knitting them on twos. And I started knitting them on twos and I'm like,
this is a sock for a sumo wrestler. I am going to frog this and go with ones. I did not realize until that point how different our gauge was. I really did not. So, all right. Well, good talk. Did you know? Oh no, I didn't. That face, that face. You knit yourself your own garden fence. I have seen that. I have seen the garden, knit garden fence. It is spectacular. It really is. Fantastic. You need like heavy duty, uh, rope and some big arse needles. What? Yeah. Yeah.
A Scottish lady did it. It's beautiful. It's fantastic. Her name is Ann Jonsson. Jonsson. Sorry, if I'm pronouncing your name wrong, Ann, that's nuts. Oh, I've seen. Yeah. I've seen that. I have seen that actually. Yeah. So learning from that is that you, you can take your knits and just do all sorts of stuff with them. Well, if you think about it, knitting, crochet, anything that you're honestly creating some kind of fabric, you could do whatever the heck you want. You want
to make a, you want to make a fence, go for it. You want to parachute. I mean, I wouldn't recommend it, Meg. They probably die from a knit parachute. Oh, I don't know. Depending on most, most old school parachutes are made out of silk. I'm talking about like open weave lace. No, but I was just thinking like me and you are very Lucy goosey. And I just feel like if I took my
simple lines and jumped out of a plane, I wouldn't be living from that. Probably not. But like, meanwhile, Dre, who I know can knit Kevlar if necessary, you know, we, yeah, I'm not throwing on my simple lines and jumping on a plane. Guys, I'm going to leave parachute making to the professionals. If any of us had to make a parachute, I would trust you, Dre. Thank you. I don't.
So lessons learned, uh, don't trust us to make your parachute. That's all I gotta say. Uh, no, I was going to say, um, a lesson I have definitely learned, uh, from knitting in general is that anything, anything can be, um, can be made into a consumerist activity. If you don't check yourself before you wreck yourself and why that's fair, you know, like in terms of like how we talked last week about knitting with intention, like just knitting random crap or like buying way too much
yarn. And then you have like more yarn that you'll ever going to knit within your life or having like, you know, getting the latest, you know, bags on bags on bags or tools on tools on tools. And then you just have too much of everything. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Like as much as the idea or the principle I would like to think of is this slow fashion, slow knit idea. Um, anything can turn into this fast fashion idea. Well, anything can turn into a secondary hobby too.
Like knitting is a hobby. Buying yarn is a hobby. Oh yeah. Like those are two different things. Yeah. And I, and yeah, and I don't, I think there's a, a disconnect too with the whole idea of collecting yarn because yeah, I definitely have yarn that is just, it's, I have it. Yeah. I have it because it means something. It doesn't, I don't necessarily need to use it. It's okay. Like it's more for me to, oh, there's a memory with that or like, oh, this is like a limited something that
I really wanted because this designer was important to me or something like that. But, um, but yeah, I constantly have to kind of check in with myself on that because it does. Like you kind of, especially honestly, it's been more noticeable for me now that I've been spending this last, I think I'm on month seven or six, I don't know, um, of not buying yarn. I've just caught myself so many times where I would have instinctively like just bought something and now I'm like taking a
step back and going like, hold on. I don't want to buy any yarn right now. I have enough yarn. I don't want to buy any yarn right now. I have enough yarn or I'll even go back to my stash and I'll be like, wow, that sea blue green skein was so nice. And I'm like, I have eight sea blue because I have a type, uh, and yeah, um, similar to Meg's blue. I am also, I have a blue inkling, uh, when I look at yarn, but yeah, no, I definitely it's, it's amazing kind of,
at least for me, my kind of self journey in that. Um, obviously if you want to buy all the yarn, like do it. I'm not saying not. It's just for me personally noticing how, um, how my mind steps mindset is now shifted because, um, I'm not focused on like, bye bye bye bye bye. Now it's more like, well, you're not collecting anymore. No, I am not collecting, not definitely not actively
collecting anymore. Um, and I'm actually enjoying watching the stash go down and giving the yarn that's important to me, to people that will appreciate it, AKA you guys and that sort of thing, you know, patients maybe self control. Yeah. Well, I've definitely learned patience. Yeah. Yeah. You have to be, yeah. Unless you're a speedy, speedy, speedy crafter, any craft,
you have to have patience. It's going to take time. This is not an immediate gratification craft itself, but if you want immediate gratification of having the finished item, Oh, I have news for you, my friend. You will be disappointed. It will take time sometime years to get to the finished, the finish line. Um, where you want to be. Yeah. And you again, as we always say, never know thyself. And if your goal is finishing, maybe you don't make the fingering
weight three X sweater, Tina. Um, yeah. So, um, you know, it just, if, but if you're enjoying the craft itself, then yeah, go ahead. You do the fingering weight sweater cause it doesn't matter when you finish it. Um, cause you're going to enjoy the process. It's kind of in like tandem with, with the idea of consumerism. Uh, one of the things that, and I don't think this was ever something that I really like entertained. Um, but it is something, and I know you guys have heard it
before. I think a lot of crafters hear it. Um, whenever you take up a craft and you show any sort of aptitude for it, there's always going to be that person that's like, you should sell that. And I think like, honestly, something that I, it was never, it never entered my mind. Like I'm like, Oh, I'd love to do this professionally. Like I would love to knit things professionally. Um, but I think that there is something to be said for doing something for the sake of doing it,
for the joy and not for the money. Um, sorry, I don't know how else to say yeah, girl talk. I know that may sound weird coming from, you know, Jess and I who are, who are, you know, dying yarn and selling it. Um, but we, we don't do that. Like we didn't go into it thinking like we're going to die yarn and we're going to sell it and we're going to make big bucks and it's going to become like our full-time job. We do it for the fun of it. And you know, we are doing it
on a very small scale. We're a very small business and we're okay with that. Like we know our, I don't want to say limits. I hate the word limits, but we know what we're comfortable with. We know our comfort level. And I think there's nothing wrong with, you know, wanting to, if you want to find a way to monetize your craft, that's fine. Um, but you need to know what your comfort level is, how much you want to do. And it is okay to just say, you know what, I'm not doing this to
earn money. It's got nothing to do with the money. Knitting has cost me way more than it has ever made me financially way more. It's not even, it's not even a, a drop in the bucket and that's okay. Like it's okay to spend money on your hobbies. It's okay if, if you are operating at a net loss, um, for your, for your hobby, most hobbies are like that. Um, but I feel like crafting is on a whole other level of people who look at what you do and they're like, well, why aren't you monetizing
this? And it's okay not to do that. That comes from a capitalist society. It really does. It really does. And it's, if you're doing that and you're good at it, then if you're not making money, then you're just throwing away. You're not allowed to have fun. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it also comes from that mindset, like of, you know, if you know, when you go to work, like you should find something you love to do and that, that should be your work. And I'm like, well, sometimes work is
just work, but maybe sometimes work is just work. Also, like you, you don't have to, like, first of all, you can have like multiple things that you love to do. Um, your whole life doesn't have to surround from what you work on. Um, and also like a newsflash, uh, one day, hopefully you will retire or not be working. What are you going to do with your life? If you don't find different work? Yeah. Yeah. Find different or do more side money in other ways. Yeah. There's dude that hustle culture,
no hustle crap. I don't want to hustle. Nothing. And there's like literally the disclaimer of if you are making money off of designing patterns or spinning yarn or dying yarn or whatever the hell you're doing with your craft. Yeah. If that is making you happy, fine. But the pressure, I think that people put on crafters of making it a hustle. You should make this your hustle. Like you're so
good at it. Why aren't you making money off it? Um, I learned from a very, very young age and, and this is not to do with, um, with knitting, but if you consider writing a craft, I did not want to be a professional writer because writing was my, my escape. That was my, my stress relief and the thought of a deadline or being, you know, someone taking my writing and critiquing it and telling me you've got to undo this. You got to change this. You got to do
this, that, and the other thing you got to make it marketable. You got to, yeah, you got to market it. Um, I'm like, that's going to take all the joy out of something that I really legitimately love. So that's not something I want to do. And I think that having your, your craft or your hobby for its own sake is so important. But again, if, if you want to do it to hustle, if that makes you
happy, go for it. Yes, absolutely. And there's nothing wrong with that. Well, there's also like, also like, it's not just like having a hustle and like a hustle is like even just that word in itself is such a large umbrella of stuff. Cause it's not just, okay, I make nice hats, for example, or something like that. And then I say like, okay, I'm going to sell my hats. It's not just selling
the hats. That's like one 16th of the process. You have to market, you have to SEO, you have to do a website, you have to do ads, you have to go to markets, you have to pay taxes, pay taxes, you have to deal with accounting, you have to deal with like, there is so like paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, business paperwork. I cannot, oh my God, that's like half the life of an LLC. I swear to God, as someone who has an LLC, that's like half the life of the LLC, but like, um, but
yeah, and not everybody wants to do that. Right. And that's okay. I think it's fair to say that crafting knitting has taught me how to better say no. Yes. Yeah. And that's a good thing. And, and it's okay. And like, I just, I hate this mentality that, um, certain people have of just like, well, if you're not selling it and you're not donating it, then what's the point? Why are you doing it? Yeah. Maybe I just want to sit in my house with my three dozen hats. Yeah. That's
it. That's okay. If I want to make hats, just to make, maybe I want to make the hat and then I'm going to unravel the hat and then I'm going to make it again. Like, no, honestly, like I know people who do that too. So it's like, it's okay. Like that's fine. It does that bring you joy. Find your joy. Do it. Find your joy. Yeah. Like it's the minute it becomes, the minute it becomes an obligation,
it's not a hobby anymore. And, and it stops being fun. And no, like, I think it's, it's okay. And I think the world needs to kind of comprehend to get off the capitalist train and be like, it is okay to be good at something and not sell it. You know, um, I learned from a very wise man, cough, my father-in-law, um, that the, the best money that you can make is easy money. So, and a craft is not easy money. It's, most people do not appreciate the amount of hours that
you need to put into that craft. The, to train yourself, honestly, it's a training process of learning skills, understanding how to perfect those skills, techniques, um, becoming just even how we talked about several weeks ago about like that cardigan I have, like just the betterment of the stitches as it went down in my skill or as it went, you know, as it went down the sweaters, as my skills increased, like that, that you can't just open a pair of needles and just do that one
day. Like you, some people do maybe, but like it took me a while. So like all that training and time and process when there's so many, so many different easier ways to make money. I'm like, if you find joy in that, like you find your joy is to like go to markets and sell those like, cause I actually, I do like that sometimes. Like I do take commissions sometimes, not all the time. The fair we did was so, I had so much fun at that. It's so much fun. I wouldn't want to do that as a
full-time job at all. Like it was exhausting. Yeah. But it was fun. Some people like that. Some people like that. They want to do that all day. And great do it. Awesome. But not everybody has to. And, and yeah, there's just, there's just honestly like people, there are easier ways to make money. Like you want to find passive income. This is going to turn into an economy talk in a minute,
but like, just like there's just so many different ways that you can make income. That's way more passive than aggressively trying to meet all these deadlines and like creating like wholesale orders of like knit hand knit items. Like it's just not or any craft. Yeah. And, and just most people aren't willing to pay. I'm sorry. They're just not that most people are willing to pay for
items that are not paying people enough for the work that they've done. They think that that is the correct price because that's what they've been trained by the stores to believe that. That's marketing. Yeah. That, uh, you know, $20 is acceptable for a crochet bag. It's not, sorry. Um, you know, like, especially a big one, like, no, there's like a lot of time that went into that. And if you want to pay people a respectable wage for that time and the materials,
then you would pay a lot more than that. So that being said, it's going down in a whole another trail that I'm going to just rant about. If I keep going, say we are way off the top. I'm sorry. Well, it's lessons. Lessons I learned is no, I'm not going to monetize like how Meg says, I'm not going to monetize my craft anymore to the degree that I have, which is I make a pattern when I feel like making a pattern for myself, because that's honestly when I make a pattern,
I'll put it up for sale on my website. Yeah. Maybe I'll get like a couple of downloads here and there, like literally like none, like to the capacity of like a livable, um, payment, like the money that I get from those patterns, like no way I could live off of that. Like I don't get enough downloads for that. And then, you know, every once in a while I'll do a commission, but I'm good. Otherwise I have a full time job that I will do. Um, you know, and I will make that money separately.
Um, and my craft is for me to kind of, again, piggyback off of that. And, and I won't, I won't belabor the point, but, um, if you do decide to monetize your craft, um, I think there is a, a false perception of, I don't want to say success. That's a bad word, but like bad word to use for that, but more of like, you're going to jump in and you're going to be like making the big bucks and you're going to be able to quit your job right away. The number of designers, pattern designers
that are living off of their patterns alone is, is very, very tiny. There are very few indie dyers that are living off just the proceeds of their yarn. I think that it's important to be realistic and, and realize that this is not something that is going to be like an overnight success or something that's easy. Um, and there's also nothing wrong with that either, like being a small business, there's nothing wrong with, with doing it the way that you said it, Tina, where it's like you, you
are doing it for the fun of it. And if you make a little money, that's great, but you, you're doing it for the joy of actually doing this thing and, and don't go into it expecting to, you know, become wealthy off of it. Heck the podcast is that we don't do this podcast. Like just so you all are very clear, like we do not do this podcast where we're like, we're going to be a list celebrities and walk in
the red carpet. That's my nightmare. Yeah, that is also my nightmare. Um, and like make all this money and like, no, like we, you know, if we make some money from it, cool. But honestly, at the end of the day, when we wanted to do this, it was to just record our conversations when we do these things, cause we usually meet once a week and we usually have some kind of night and like, and then
we thought, Oh, wouldn't it be cool if like we let other people in on that conversation? Cause sometimes we said really funny stuff that we thought was fun and we're just here to have fun. And we're just here to have fun. And other people think we're funny sometimes too. I am funny. Thank you, Drea. Here's your soap box. That's it. That's the whole thing. I am funny. Thank you. Thank you. Put that on a t-shirt and sell it. Drea, I am funny. Thank you. Thank you.
With a period. I'm polite about it. We had Drea's gauges. We had Jess's for and fence. Don't forget about the fence. Actually back on that point that you made Jess about using acrylic yarn, like really crappy. You can lessons I've learned is that you can take that really crappy yarn, do things like make hair bows for your kids because believe it or not, that crappy scratchy yarn that nobody wants to use,
like they want, don't want to touch their skin. It's durable. It's fantastic for hair. Plenty of crafts. Right. Yeah. But it's fantastic for hair. Just so you know, like, cause like I did those scrunchies in like the crappy yarn and one of, um, uh, my daughter's teachers that got those, one of those scrunchies, she was like, I can never get scrunchies to stay in my hair. This is actually staying in my hair. I was like, yeah, because it's like literally clawing at your hair the way it
would claw at skin if it was on your skin. So negative over here, positive over there. It's great. There is a use for every yarn use for every yarn. You may not want to use every yarn, but there is a use for every year. Let's say on a, on a maybe end ish note though, uh, talking about things learned from crafting, uh, guys, everyone has a craft. You may not have found yours yet, but you've got one. And I know some people are like, no, but I'm not like good
at it. Like I can't paint. I can't knit. I can't do stuff like that. That's not the only craft out there. Some people's crafts are actually legit. Like in spinning the marketing tail, man, my old school store manager used to be able to sell expensive water to people by telling them a fun story about it. Like not even joking. This man had a craft for gab still does. And that's a thing. Shout out to the legend. But yeah, so a craft can be something like that. I mean, it could be in,
um, just like plain leadership. It can be in growing things. It can be like, if you find really that it's like, you know, you're trying to get into these things and this just may not be your craft and there's plenty of options out there. Look around like, and you may think you're like, ah, I don't have a craft and I'm good with that. That's awesome too. You probably have a craft
that you don't realize is considered a craft and, and that's what is going on there. Like people are very simple and they are all drawn to be social and to make themselves feel good and create art for themselves, whatever that art is. Um, we happen to be in a niche of fiber arts. And so we talk about that a lot, but there are plenty of arts out there and we, as people get together and share that and do that. And you know what power on with your bad selves. Like, so basically, sorry, that
needed a whole applause. I feel like that needs to be on a freaking, what's that called? The, the Ted talk videos, put Jess on a Ted talk. So basically, try everything. Yeah. And yeah, if you find something that you like, stick with it and keep practicing because you're doing it. Keep trying different stuff for you. You'll get there. You don't have to do it for anybody else. So long as it's making you happy. You know what? That's your craft. You do that.
You do that. Crafting is a D and D campaign. Yeah. Everybody has a role. Ask your DM. They would know. Yeah. Everybody has a different ability. Sometimes your role is touching the cursed object. My role is to sing everybody is sweet tune while we go on our adventures. Sweet tunes. Anywho. But yeah, no D and D campaign. Keep it like that. And everything that just said time seven. And that's all the time we have for this week for additional content and opportunities to connect
with the cast. Be sure to check out our Patreon or our website at part of my stash.com and remember to tune in next week for more tips, nips and wits at part in my stash.