And I'm up and running...er, walking...er, limping along

BellaLinda Designs is now part of the MomsWhoThink Member Stores. Yay me. I have four items up right now...A total of 223 views...And not the slightest nibble. Sigh. I could lower my prices, but I don't want to. I work damn hard on my pieces, 99% of them are original designs, & the ones that aren't are so modified that they might as well be. I'm not going to undersell myself. Which, of course, means that I run the risk of not selling at all. Ah well. I'll have to take it if it comes down to that. At least I will have tried.

I've been working my butt off to get the store stocked, too. My latest projects are the Blue Bubbles Purse already in the store, and this:
This was a total pain in the ass to come up with. I am so anal about how I want my stuff to look. Especially with toddler clothes. I am violently allergic to "prostitot" clothing, so when I make stuff like this I have to make sure it's something I'm willing to let my daughters be seen in. That, and it's got to look good.

I started out crocheting it from the bottom up, using the block-and-offset-shell stitch. But I frogged that--and I honestly do not remember why--and started crocheting it from the sc portion so I could get all the shaping out of the way. I made the front, the straps, and the back (in that order), then sewed it all together and did the bottom portion in the round. Of course, that required frogging it multiple times until I got the stitch multiplier just right (it did not match what was given in the book!), then frogging it yet more multiple times until I got the pattern down. It actually moved rather quickly from there.

Now, technical info for those of you who are curious: This piece is crocheted in Caron's Simply Soft, using a 4.5mm hook. The top part is plain ol' single crochet, the bottom a ripple stitch done in the back loops only. Since I'm doing it all in one color, I wanted it to have some good definition to it, thus the ridged effect.

I will be writing the pattern up and posting it for sale along with the actual item. There are a few other crocheters on the site, with some luck I can make a bit of money off selling the patterns, if not the actual items.

Today also brought a trip to the bookstore, but I'll go into that more tomorrow.

Next project: a circular baby blankie in camouflage yarn.