A TNNA Recap

Last weekend, I was at the summer TNNA (The National Needlearts Association) trade show. I had another great year having a booth with the Stitch Sprouts crew! Here are just a few of the pictures I took throughout the weekend.

I really love how my booth space came together this year:

 A blurry photo of my Kelsey Hooded Scarf from Stunning Stitches on the TNNA runway:

I did a couple of book signings. They were some of my favorite parts of the weekend. I love getting to chat with yarn store owners about the new book. I'm happy that they were excited about the book as I am!

I brought a few of the samples from Stunning Stitches to display in my booth. They got a great response. Yay!

I attended the Business Creative Services event on Saturday night. It was great to meet new people who work in the same area of the industry. And, we got a great goodie bag with lots of amazing products from companies that support designers.

I walked away from my booth for 5 minutes, and my husband met Vickie Howell. I'm completely jealous. Many of you know that she is my A-Number-One knitting celebrity. Her show, Knitty Gritty, taught me so many things. Alex assured me that he told her that I loved her. Maybe next year I'll be able to go fan girl on her. :)

 

Part of the fun of being with the Stitch Sprouts designers, was making Facebook Live videos! Here's Heather Zoppetti filming Angela Tong doing a pin loom demo!

I had to go check out the new Knitter's Pride needles. Their Dreamz and Karbonz needles are among my favorites. I think I might need to get the new Zing needles. I really liked them!

It was such a great weekend. I always come home so inspired and ready to work. And, it was so amazing to have Alex there with me this time. He really knows my business better than anyone else and it was fun to have him there helping me sell patterns and books. He loved hanging out with everyone. I think he'll be volunteering to help in my booth again next year!

Design Your Biz: Keeping the Books

Today I'm back with another Design Your Biz post. Let's talk about keeping the books as a full-time knitwear designer!

I'm not an accountant (obviously). So what you need or don't need for your particular business, I can't tell you. I just thought I'd share a little bit about what I do to keep track of things so that when I am going to my accountant with all my business finance stuff at tax time I'm not going insane. Maybe it will help you too!

Track it. REGULARLY. Every Monday (or every other Monday if I'm feeling lazy one week), I track my business finances. That might be way more than you want to track this stuff but, for me, it works. Tracking my business finances means pulling data from PayPal as well as looking at my bank statement online. I have formatted my spreadsheets so that most of my tracking is a simple copy and paste.  If I have a random receipt that I didn't use PayPal or my checking account for (this is a rare situation), I manually add it to my spreadsheet.

Why do I do this so often? There are a few reasons:

1. It's a good way to track my progress on Ravelry. By looking at the sales coming in every week, I know if I'm having a good month or a bad month. Simple as that. :)
2. By looking at the numbers every week or two, it's a way smaller set of data to get through. If something is messed up, it's easier to catch it 7 days worth of information, rather than 365 days worth of information. 
3. I pay myself every week. I have a set percentage of money I pay to myself (i.e. into the household checking account I share with my husband). If I've received a royalties check from my books or payment from a yarn company in the last week, it's on the following Monday that I transfer the money into the joint account. The only exception is Paypal. I pay myself monthly on the Paypal sales, just because some weeks are better than others and I found it easier to look at the total on the first Monday of the next month and pay myself then.

So, yes, I use spreadsheets. Currently no fancy software for me! Since the money in my business comes primarily from PayPal and from checks sent to me from various companies, it's pretty easy to keep track of on a spreadsheet. I'm currently not selling any kind of physical product, so I don't need to worry about inventory or anything. The spreadsheets work great!

If you can, keep the money separate. Even if you are operating as a sole proprietor like I am, it's way easier to keep track of the funds coming and going if you keep the money separate from other money that may be coming into your household. I also like keeping the finances separate because it's easier to keep track of how much I'm actually contributing to the household finances versus what goes back into the business. Again, I get that this might not work for everyone. I had it set up this way when I was working a full-time job, and when I went into business full-time, I just kept doing it the way always did.

The most important thing is to figure out a way that works the best for you!

Also, if you're curious about how to pay yourself, check out Tara Swiger's class, Pay Yourself.* Worth every penny!

* Disclaimer: Tara Swiger has nothing to do with me talking about her class in this blog post. I paid for the class, took it, found it extremely helpful and thought you might too. :)

Sognare

Earlier this week I released a new shawl pattern. This is Sognare:

 

Sognare

 

So, the way this shawl came to be is a new one for me - I had a dream about it. Crazy, right!? I took a nap one afternoon and had a dream that I designed a shawl with a variegated garter stitch body where I used wrap & turns to add live stitches along one side to be used lady for the solid lace border.

I emailed Lindsay at The Fiber Seed to see if she would like to collaborate on the project. I knew her Sprout sock yarn would be the perfect yarn for this shawl. Her color sense is amazing and she does perfect variegated yarns. We messaged back and forth and landed on this beautiful color combo. It's amazing!

Sognare

This shawl is proof that my mid-day naps are a good idea! I hope you enjoy the new pattern as much as I do. :)

(Mostly) Ready to Go

I'm mostly packed up for TNNA.

There's still a few things to gather from around the house. Shawls are still blocking, more booth furniture is in the basement. I'm excited to have a booth as a part of Stitch Sprouts for the second year in a row. I look forward to having a great weekend with lots of great friends!

Going to TNNA? Come say hi! I'll be in booth 212/213 all weekend! :)

Design Your Biz: Working from Home

Over the last year or so, we've talked a lot about the various aspects of my business in my Design Your Biz series. I've discussed some of the challenges in finding a workflow, or the fun of living the dream. Today, let's talk about working from home.

Working from home is awesome and challenging all at the same time (mostly awesome though). It took me a little while to get into the groove of working from home, but here are some things that I've found to be helpful for me, my mental health and my business. Maybe they'll help you too!

• Get out of the house. When I first started working full-time in my business, I rarely left the house. It got depressing and overwhelming pretty quick. Now, I start most days going to a boot camp workout class and then come home and start my day. That little bit of social interaction has made a big difference in my mood (not to mention that working out is good for you, lol). Not a workout person? No problem! I also will go work at a coffee house about once a week for a couple of hours. The change of scenery always makes me a little more productive. Don't want the other coffeehouse patrons to catch you slacking off and on Facebook, right? :)
  
• Take a Day Off. I get it, it's hard to do. I try very hard not to work on the weekends. It doesn't always work out that way, but I do my best to at least stay off the computer. The emails can wait until Monday.
  
• Create a Routine. When I was working in the lab, everything was so routine. Certain tests were done on certain days. Schedules were made saying which lab tech was doing what. Again, when I first started working at home, there was no routine. There was no schedule. It was chaos! These days, my routine means starting work between 9 and 10 in the morning. I try to batch my tasks together as much as possible (write all my blog posts for the week at once, for example). If I need to go to the post office of something, I go in the middle of the day, to give myself a little break. And now that I recently started using my Kanban board, I know what I need to get done and when I need to get it done. My husband works from home most Fridays. I know I don't get as much work done that day. We end up chatting. We go to lunch. But, I've worked it into the routine/schedule, so it's not a problem!
  
• Learn to Say No. When you work at home, especially in this business for some reason, there will be people in your life that don't think your job is a job. Seriously, someone in my life referred to my business as my "cute hobby" recently. Yes, the beauty of working from home is flexibility - I love meeting my mother-in-law for breakfast once a month and going to the pool with my nieces once a week in the summer, but you don't have to say yes to every invitation that comes along during your normal work day (whatever that is for you). Things greatly improved for me when I started kindly reminding people that I can't do x, y, and z all the time during the week - I'm working just like most other people.

If you're struggling with working from home or are thinking about working from home, hopefully this will give you a little guidance in how to make it work!

Do you work from home? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!