Making Space

My craft room before New Year's Day:




My parents will recognize this as the natural state of every room I have ever occupied since birth.

"After" pictures to come when I have finished compulsively labeling everything in the hopes that this will help. I am optimistic! Yes!

I spent the morning alone with the snow falling outside, knitting myself something:

• Stockinette tube to be used as cowl. Yarn: Mystery ball of something pretty from the thrift store. From the very lovely and unexpected color changes, I suspect it of being something expensive. It is almost definitely wool, and very soft wool too. I'm using big old size 15 needles and it is just mesmerizing. I love it.

This pig is something I made this week. I wanted to write up a pattern for my old Aerial Pig crochet pattern (I just now realized I still haven't replaced those pictures from the Slimy eBay Incident; better get on that) for knitters. I have the notes and everything written down for the pattern....but then I did a few searches, just on a whim, and guess what? I'm not the first the think of it. There are already some lovely, and very similar, patterns for small knitted pigs out there to be had on Ravelry and Knitting Pattern Central. Some are free and some are not.

This spearheads a dilemma I ponder often. The crafting world has absolutely exploded while I was out of the loop. It has grown from a small, badly photographed and rabidly enthusiastic community to a mangrove swamp of gorgeous designs, books, and talented, dedicated people. This is AWESOME.

It does, however, lead to a lot of overlap and it's part of the reason I hesitated to get back in. What do I have to offer anymore? If there are already many similar designs, is it a waste of cyberspace to offer up my own, even when mine was created in complete ignorance of the already existing one? This is really a moot point when it comes to selling, and it is definitely worth the time to research what's out there already before putting work into an idea you have for a product. That's happened to me several times already; someone else came up with it first! For free things, though, I'm not sure. I think it's worth it. Maybe mine is just exactly what someone was looking for, someone who's not quite willing to fudge things yet and would like some really specific instructions. I don't mind putting some time in for that person. After all, others did it for me.