My first pattern sale on Ravelry

Last Friday I released my first for-sale pattern on Ravelry.

















Diamond Cap $5.00

I've had a hat something like this in mind for a while.  Last February I met my sister Monica in Portland for a few days.  She was on her way home to Alaska from a vacation in Mexico and, the way her flights worked, she had to spend at least one night somewhere on the West coast.  So she stopped in Portland for a few nights and I took the Amtrak up from Corvallis to meet her there.

We had a fun visit exploring Portland.  It turned out we were there during the REI end-of-winter sale, so of course we had to check it out.  They had some cute cabled caps with bills, kind of like this one, but in brown and with traditional braided cables, instead of my seeded diamonds.  Being good knitters, my sister and I looked at the caps and said "I could make that".

I found some Cascade 220 in my favorite teal color, on sale cheap at a local craft store, and in August I finally got around to making my cap.  I wrote it up, had it test knit in the Ravelry Testing Pool group, and released it last Friday.  And then I anxiously awaited my first sale.

I had fantasies of selling 100 patterns the first day, like most new designers I suppose.  I also had fears that no one would ever buy a single copy.  Worse yet, what if someone bought it and found a bajillion errors?  I spent Friday afternoon anxiously clicking on my Ravelry pro link to see if I had any sales.

The first time, I gasped.  10 sales already!?!  Oh, wait, I had ten test knitters and had gifted the finished pattern to each of them.  No actual sales.  Pooey.  :^(

I obsessively checked back.  Still no sales.  I tried to distract myself with other tasks and got depressed.  Obviously I was a failure as a designer.  It had been a whole 3 hours and no one had bought my pattern yet.

Then, late in the evening, after staying off the computer for a few hours, I checked my email.  And there was a notification from Paypal of received funds!  Huzzah!!!   Someone bought my pattern!  And now I'd learned that I didn't need to look at my Ravelry pro link to see if I had any sales.  I'd get an email from Paypal when I made a sale.

So now, every time I open my browser, I eagerly look.  Do I have any new emails to that account?  Ooh, I do!  Is it a pattern sale?  Pooey, just a library book due notice.  But every now and then there's an email from Paypal.  I expect the novelty will wear off, but for now it makes checking my email an exciting event.