i got a job! yay!!! but i'm taking an 8 THOUSAND DOLLAR a year pay cut. the economy is so bad no one is offering any decent salaries! five and a half years ago, with virtually no college coursework and five years less experience, i was hired on at my old job at $14.65 an hour. over the five years i gradually made it up to $15.94. then the economy collapses and my center got closed down and now i'm laid off. everywhere i was looking for a job in the past few months ranges from 12 to 14 an hour!!!! with most of them averaging around $13!! and that all well and good, but i'm now a ten year veteran with much more education under my belt! you'd think i could at least start off at $15! but NO, no place wanted to even consider it. so i finally ended up with this particular company, which was offering the lowest salary ($12 an hour), but it was the place i really really loved the most and had the most room for growth. i'm actually so so exited to go work for this place.so, now this means i really gotta get up on my game in regards to knitting things to sell. I'm not going to recoup my 8K a year, but if i could even get 2 or 3K, that would be awesome. so i made these three products. i haven't put them up to sell yet cause i want to get really nice pics of everything. i'm probably only gonna ask for like 5 bucks each for these first few things cause i can definitely see areas for improvement. for someone like me, who's an easy going relaxed consumer, minor errors won't bother me. but for someone like my sister, who is very picky and particular, the small errors might make her angry. its not like there are a lot of errors on each piece. it just that each piece has one small stitch error each. one tiny error. a knt where its suppose to be a purl. or the stitches aren't picked up evenly. it makes me angry, but i do it every time!! arg! so i can't ask for any sort of decent price for these things. i'm basically just trying to make enough back to buy some more yarn.

the first one is a raspberry tam.

there's a little string hanging out from the back. that's the drawstring from the drawstring cast on. its cool casue you can make the tam opening large to get it over your hair and then tighten the tam so it stays on your head. but then what do uou do with the hanging string? its not like you can tie it or something. i suppose one could tuck it under. but i don't know how to advertise and make that lone tightening string a good thing. so that's the error with that piece.

the next one is a larger tam in strawberry lemonade
this one is one of my favorites. for this one, i did an i-cord for a drawstring and wove it through the headband and it ties in the back. it actually looks really nice. but the error on this one is on one side of the drawstring, the yarn is loose!
you can see it on the end of the drawstring on the right side. i don't know how this happened! it won't come unraveled, but it doesn't look as neat as it could have! arg!!!

the last one is a knitted visor
i love, love, love, this one. this one has some stitch errors where the visor meets the head piece. i grabbed the wrong stitches on two or three pegs when i was folding over the top of the visor. needless to say, i almost wept in frustration. and, the visor is a little too narrow for my taste. i would prefer if it was a little bit wider. i'll probably make the next one with a wider visor. and this one is adjustable!! the back closes with a decorative button, but there are five button slots in the back, so it could fit a child's head as well. but i like it a lot. maybe i'll be bold and ask for 6 dollars for this one! LOL!!

that's about it. i start my new job next week so i may not have as much time to knit after that. right now i it takes me about one day to make each piece. although i don't actually knit every day. but when i srart work, it might take two or three days to complete each piece. i'll throw these these three pieces on my Etsy page and see what happens. Maybe no one will want them and i'll end up giving them away as gifts for my family. we'll see...