Wherever She May Be, It Will ALWAYS Be the Emily Hat

You may not know this about me, but my go-to Very Sage model has been my best friend since we were 12. Emily is lovely, of course, and she has always been wonderfully amenable to letting me take hat pictures on a moments' notice. She is even the inspiration behind a Very Sage hat style.

After a few years of living wonderfully close to each other here in Brooklyn, Emily is now on a trip around the world! (You should really check out her blog.) As happy as I am for her, I miss her like crazy. I also found myself in a bind when the time came to photograph my new inventory.

Luckily, I have lots of gorgeous friends -- although I still plan on telling Emily that it took three ladies to fill her shoes during our recent photo shoot in Madison Square Park. Here are some highlights.

Val rocks the Organic Cotton Sapphire Blue Emily Hat (left). I'd been wanting to make a cotton ear flap hat for a while, but cotton is kind of funny. It has a stretchy texture that doesn't lend itself very well to hats, and the actual yarn ranges from slippery to bristly. Also, the color selection is usually terrible. I guess the assumption is that people only make cotton things for babies, so unless you want to sport a cotton hat in rubber ducky yellow you're up a creek. When I found this silky organic cotton in an actual grown-up color, I pounced. I only wish they had had more colors! I would have loved to make one in green. 

 

This may be the greatest picture I have ever taken of anyone, ever (right). Zehra is glamorous and elegant, but she's also a total bad-ass. If this picture doesn't make you want an orange hat of your very own, you must be blind. It obviously imbues the wearer with a special brand of awesomeness. I could use some of that awesomeness for myself.

And what is a Very Sage photo shoot without a Jaunty Newsboy or two?

As you may have noticed, I love bright colors. I think New Yorkers are entirely too interested in neutrals. Why not take a leaf out of Morgan's book and spice things up with a bit of bright red (left)? 

Then again, I also think that a really great hat doesn't have to match your outfit, and that idea shows no sign of catching on. The first Jaunty Newsboy I ever made was a mix of three different shades of green and two purples. It goes with absolutely nothing, and I wear it all the time. 

Last but not least, here is my favorite from the day. Many thanks to my lovely ladies! Check out the shop for more new stuff.

"So, what do you do?"

Is there anyone who actually enjoys being asked that question? How did it become a staple of polite conversation? I lost all fondness for the what-do-you-do line of conversation when I joined the legions of unemployed law school graduates.

Right now the answer is simple: I crochet. A lot.

I have spent most of my time since taking the bar exam in July working a variety of jobs, some of them fairly demeaning, while looking for a "real" job. When you're sending out enough resumes each day to wallpaper an Upper East Side co-op, sometimes you need to do something that makes you feel good about yourself. I crave activities that make me feel productive. If it involves using my hands to create something beautiful, then it's more likely to help me forget the stressful thoughts that are dancing around in my brain.

While I'm still actively seeking a law job, I am also working hard to make the transition from hobby crafter to professional artisan. As far as I can tell, this transition is largely mental. I've always made art of one kind or another. I majored in it in college and have even had some pieces in small exhibitions. However, my artwork never became compatible with my tiny-apartment lifestyle (let's just say that the term "studio" apartment is a complete misnomer). When a friend first taught me to crochet, I sniffed a bit: I was an artist. This was craft. Make something that people would use and wear? How perfectly plebeian.

But something must have stuck, because I have been crocheting with increasing regularity and (I hope) skill for eight years. When I started making hats as gifts, friends and coworkers encouraged me to start selling them. I opened an online shop on Etsy.com, a marketplace for handmade and vintage items, in January 2009. Like many new Etsy sellers I expected the sales to roll in. I mean, my friends loved my stuff, right? And my prices were reasonable, right? And I always got compliments when I wore my hats around New York City, right?

Well, it turns out that none of those things is enough to create a successful online craft empire.

Etsy is enormous. As of today there are 271,433 active shops, and new shops open every day. Doing business on Etsy boils down to one simple fact: if your work doesn't stand out, you don't make sales. While blogs like the hilarious Regretsy.com poke fun at lackluster Etsy items, most of the work on Etsy is impeccable. Furthermore, gone are the olden days of posting a few dark pictures of your friend wearing that cute necklace you made -- many Etsy sellers now hire professional photographers, models, photo editors, copy writers, and graphic designers to make their shops stand out. Online crafting is big business.

Where do I fit into this? Well, I'm still muddling through nearly two years after opening my shop. With the exception of sending my very patient boyfriend on occasional trips to the post office, I do everything myself. I'm still waiting for that magical morning where I wake up to 100 sales in one day. I get excruciatingly frustrated at finding my items buried beneath 10 pages of other hats within minutes of posting them, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. That's one of the reasons I started this blog. Hopefully by writing about my experiences as an aspiring professional artisan I can figure out what I'm doing right and where I'm going wrong. If I'm lucky, maybe people will even read my ramblings and talk about their own experiences. You know, kind of like a virtual stitch and bitch club.

Next time I post I'll bring a box of wine.