Tucking Tails

Oh, did you think this was about the fallout of Tuesday's election? Nah. It's another peek at what I've been up to with my crochet projects in the last several weeks. The bottom picture illustrates the status of the tail tucking. Lots and lots have been done but I continue to create more tails at a steady rate. Besides the average of 1 to 2 bookmarks per day which could have a minimum of 2 and as many as 22 I've started work on what I was intending to be a set of four place mats with matching napkin rings and coasters but may just stop at one and call it a vase mat.

I settled on 18 by 11 inches and two basic stitches--the half-double and the cross stitch based on a similar pattern of stripes I used in a bookmark last summer. It turns out that each row (and some of those stripes have as many as four rows) takes me 45 to 55 minutes to crochet and there will be over 50 rows before it is done. That navy blue stripe at the top is the half way point. Every stripe generates 2 tails so there are going to be around 60 tails. Tails take me 1 to 3 minutes to tuck depending on how much the needle eye fights against the thread.


Hmmm. I started imagining it as a book or notebook cover too. It's a bit big for this book though as I had to tuck two inches on each end inside the cover and that's a waste. It actually appears to be the perfect size to cover my netbook.

Or I could keep on going until it is six feet long by 18 inches wide and I'd have a runner for a table, piano or bookshelf top.




I'm getting a lot of encouragement to start making my bookmarks available for sale and it just might be feasible as from first chain to dressed in tassels, ribbons and beads there is an average of 60 to 120 minutes of work in each one so I could conceivably expect to get something close to minimum wage for my efforts.

Another type of item that might also pay to make for sale is cat toys. I mean if my Merlin's interest in the bookmarks is any indication, cats would go gaga. After it is string and ribbon. Attach a bell instead of a keyring or bead...

But when it comes to projects the size of the place mat and bigger it isn't likely I could get my time compensated enough. So my mind wandered to another possibility. What about a PDF of some of the patterns that I've created? Could there be a market for that?

I know that to make something like that useful I'd have to start keeping better track of how much thread of each color it takes and which hook creates the best gauge. And I'm still struggling to read patterns so I'm not sure if I'm qualified to write them.

Any thoughts?