I mentioned in a previous posting about the fact that I have OCD (both the actual compulsive disorder and the obsessive crochet disorder) and how they can come together in a perfect storm to cause me to fixate on things. This has been especially true for the past week with patterns.
Before I got sick, I went through my Google Drive and did a mass clean up and organization of my patterns: Put them in folders by designer, got rid of those that I wasn’t going to use, and just tried to make life generally easier for me. Even prior to this re-organization I knew I had a ton of patterns – more than I could probably make in a year’s time, if I didn’t duplicate a single pattern. And the sad thing is, for as much as I talk about needing to work on patterns and make sure the designer fits your style, I find myself purchasing multiple patterns from a new designer if something looks cute and then potentially regretting it.
In recent weeks, I’ve thought about expanding some of what I offer in my Etsy shop, so I looked to find patterns with different techniques; only to find that I either didn’t have the patience for those techniques or because the skill didn’t come to me immediately, I got frustrated and gave up. However, I still have that pattern that I’ve now added to my (ever growing) collection.
Over the weekend, I found myself almost hourly going over to Etsy to see if any of my favorite shops had any new patterns in their stores. Most of these individuals just posted a ton of patterns before Christmas and are probably recovering and taking some much needed rest, but there I was…refreshing my feed like a looney tune hoping to find a new pattern from them. A couple times I got lucky and there was a new pattern posted, and then it was something that didn’t really rock my world and then I was more dejected than I had been before.
The other thing I’ve been noticing with some of the patterns I’ve gotten from newer designers recently is they look super cute, but some of the instructions are not user friendly. I mentioned earlier that I had found a new squirrel pattern:
The instructions were so vague. Like have you seen “The Great British Baking Show” on PBS or Netflix? They have their second challenge each episode as a technical challenge where they have a pared down recipe to work with, but it is primarily based on their own baking knowledge. That is what I felt like this squirrel was. It didn’t even give me a recommended crochet hook size. And some of the terminology it used was either antiquated, specific to a different country or region, or was what they called it and not common terms. It’s almost like there needs to be an ability to preview a pattern before buying to make sure it is going to be something that you can work with. I know I was giving Google and YouTube a good work out last night when I was trying to look up some of those terms.
Even despite me sitting here and sharing with you (maybe in the hopes of shaming myself? I don’t know) how many patterns I have and how few I have used, I feel the pull, and so I leave you now as I go back to the magical world of Etsy and see if anything else new has popped up in the last half hour.
Hugs and cuddles,
Elisha
Lil' Luvvies 