Thursday, January 31, 2008

Squid Pro Quo

I just had a commission on two knitted squids fall apart - I won't go too deep into it here except to say that I'm okay with it, actually kind of happy that it didn't work out. It was on a barter, and I wouldn't have been able to get what I wanted out of the deal. But any scheme that starts out "Squids for (blank)" makes me happy.

Picture me, the urchin on the sidewalk with a sign, "Will Knit Squids for Food."

That's actually a dream I'm starting to follow. I'm building a ladder up to that solar powered hover castle: I've started submitting patterns for publication, and I started selling my patterns on etsy a couple months ago. And any of you long-time friends and lurkers will have noticed (and hopefully not been too annoyed by) the sudden flutter of buy-it-now buttons on my pattern pages - folks can get their download on right here. I bought a domain last week - tattingmydoilies.com is now mine all mine. There's only the shell of a page up right now, but there's a pretty picture!

I'm excited about spreading out into a full-on website 'cause it means I can move all the dollar signs over to a shop page and this here blog can just be a regular old blog again - where I can think out loud and share my prides and progress and foibles and misadventures, and talk up other people that knock my socks off.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the economics of trying to get paid for making things, and about how money for "craft" works vis-a-vis money for "art". But right now I'm totally in love with the idea of bartering.

So: Dear universe - I knit squids, what do you do? Want to trade?

Will Knit Squids for Tatting Lessons.
Will Knit Squids for Massage.
Will Knit Squids for a Bottom Bracket.
Will Knit Squids for Web Design.
Will Knit Squids for _________

4 comments:

Sharon said...

There are lots of place to lear to tat online. All it takes is time and patience
http://www.gagechek.com/slb

Anonymous said...

I wanted to dream an octopus dream in response to the kraken dream, and so I set my brain to fish for one, but somehow the message ("dream related to cephalopod internetisms") got garbled and I redreamed the recent lj gestator post instead:

In the dream I am talking with Silas, who is chatty, manly, eloquent, about five foot eight, and wearing a fedora. However, as we talk I realize that his diaper is...problematic...and the rest of the dream was all about poop!

Congratulations on your growing underwater knitted ark of seacreaturation!

Daniel Yuhas said...

oooh - grown-up silas diaper dreams - i love it. Tonight I'll try to dream you one back.

Daniel Yuhas said...

I tried for a silas-in-a-fedora dream and got silas jumping off the radiators in my bedroom when he was supposed to be getting ready for school. Then later there were crocodiles.