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Tinking Turtle Raverly Profile

Tinking Turtle

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Tinking Turtle Raverly

Interview with Sarah Jane, from Sarah Jane Designs

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As part of the Indie Designers KAL, which is soon coming to a close, various designers have been interviewing each other about their projects and designs.  Sarah Jane is from Australia and makes some of the most innovative and textually interesting hats and accessories I’ve seen.  The way she works her hats in crochet is facinating, and I have to admit I got distracted looking at the construction of her patterns as I was preparing to interview her.  You’ve got to take a  look at her Frostberry Hat, which nearly looks like two different hats depending on the perspective.  Without further ado, Sarah Jane:
How/why did you begin designing? I’m not really sure, I’ve always designed my own stuff and when I
stumbled across Ravelry it just seemed to be a good fit.
What’s your design process like? My design process is pretty organic really, I usually

Frostberry Hat, from one side.

have some  idea of what I’m after ie…a textured hat.
Then I just play around until I come up with something. Although sometimes I
have a stitch pattern I really like and want to use and I work from there, this
was how I came up with my Frostberry Hat pattern. Other times it is a yarn I have that I know I want to
use……. so it really depends on my starting point.

You like to specialize in accessories. 
What pulls you to that form? I mainly make
accessories at the moment because I am time poor and they don’t take as long as
garments. I am hoping that as the kids grow up and take less of my time I’ll be
able to incorporate more garments into my collection. Also I love hats and am
actually able to wear them from time to time here in Brisbane J
Frostberry Hat from the other side.
Why indie patterns? Why do you publish them,
and why should crafters buy them? Indie patterns
because at the moment it suits me to be able to structure my own time and not
to have too many deadlines other than the ones I impose on myself. I also like
to be able to be involved in the entire process from start to finish, that way
I am responsible for the quality of the finished pattern.
Crafters should buy
indie patterns and support the designers because it means that there will be
more diversity in the market place if small designers are able to continue to
create and support themselves. It also gives crafters access to patterns that
you may not see in the usual range of books/magazines etc due to some of the limitations
faced by publishing in those formats. I personally think that there is room for
everyone in the market.
Do you have a favorite tool or yarn? I may be weird but I love my cheapo aluminium hooks that I bought in
China! As for yarn I love most yarns and can find a use for them all but I am
particularly fond of working with Colourmart Yarns
from the UK.
What’s your favorite thing you’ve designed? So far my favorite is Frostberry Hat

Asperous Hat and Cowl

but I also love Asperous Hat
and Cowl they both have lots of texture which
I love.

What has been the highlight of the GAL for
you? The highlight has been meeting and
working with so many other designers to make this happen. As you can imagine
there are only a few crochet designers here in Australia and I don’t know any
so it is wonderful to be able to meet others through Ravelry.
Quick, you’re an animal, what are you? A cat
What’s one skill in crochet that you are
really proud of? No idea at the moment.
Do you favor inline or fathead hooks? 
Are you a knife holder or a pencil holder, or something different? The hooks I use are inline hooks…although I have used both and don’t
really have a preference. I don’t like hooks with handles though as my
movements are too ‘big’ and the handle tends to pull me up short.
Who taught you to crochet? I was taught a few very basic stitches when I was maybe 4 or 5 by a great
Aunt who was blind….amazingly enough she did the most wonderful crochet work
that I was completely fascinated with and she was patient enough to show me a
couple of things at a family gathering. I only ever met her once or twice
though, the rest was self taught.

What’s something you like to do when you
aren’t stitching? I love to read and bake.

Beginnings: The Origin of Tinking Turtle

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As we bring 2013 to a close, it’s time to take a look back at the path we’ve taken to get where we are this year.  The holiday season is often a time spent with friends and family, each with their own special traditions and holiday moments.  For my family, one of our favorite traditions is setting up a model train layout in the garage, all decorated up for Christmas, and spend hours driving the trains through our small town.  In this town, it’s important for everything to have a name, from the grocery store named after my younger brother to the boarding house and bakery.  This has been a tradition that Jennifer and I have carried on through the years.

Trains and naming things have found their way into our lives outside of just the holidays.  In September 2011 after settling in Washington, DC we embarked on our first long-distance train journey to the windy city of Chicago.  We travled for several days, including our first overnight on the train.  While in Chicago, we visited Loopy Yarns. Jennifer was just setting out on building the framework for the business that has become Tinking Turtle and, as a stitcher, she couldn’t visit the city without stopping by the store.  During the trip, the topic of discussion kept circling back to Loopy Yarns, the name, and if we had a store, what it would be named.

Over a delicious dinner of Knockwurst, Wiener Schnitzel, and Sauerkraut at The Berghoff, we began to bat around some funny names for the various buildings in our own model train town, with a yarn bent.  Grabbing the closest piece of paper at hand, a class schedule from Loopy Yarns, we recorded all of the names that came to mind.

Given that we were now living in Maryland, the turtle as a mascot came to mind, and then playing off of the alliteration, tinking was a natural fit.  I’ll confess that at that point in time I had no idea what tinking even was, but it sounded cool.  Ye Olde Tinking Turtle was originally going to be a combo yarn store/tavern, perhaps influenced by the German atmosphere, however it was a name that stuck with us.

Tinking Turtle was not the initial name for the company; Jen was contemplating running it under a company named after herself. Unfortunately however, when she was looking to register a trade name and website, there were several other businesses with similar sounding names.  Falling back to what was originally an amusing name for a train town pub, Tinking Turtle has stayed with us, becoming the business that it is today.

Hat’s For Cats? This is amazing.

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My sister Rosemary is visiting from my parent’s home in New York.  I’ve been busy working on proposals and end-of-year deadlines.

She decided to distract me with cat pictures.

Specifically, cat’s in hats.

Cat’s in knitted hats.

I don’t know how I had missed this phenomena.

Sara Thomas

Apparently, there are whole businesses based around hats for cats (and dogs).  This is amazing.

There are even Ravelry Patterns – for knit and crochet.

I think my favorite is the Bear Costume.

So now Rosemary is distracting me, saying I should make a cat hat for my boys.  I think this is a great idea.

Stay tuned – I’ve got plans.

Traveling, Knitting, Repair

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A couple of weeks ago I looked at my calendar and realized that every week until New Years I was committed to something that involved traveling.  And I realized that I needed to have a plan if I was going to get all the knitting and crochet I needed done by Christmas.
For this last week this meant traveling with a half blocked sweater (that got spread out in our Amtrak room to dry as we went to get dinner so I could finish sewing it), and two other sweaters in need of repair.  Then there was my sock knitting (a design!) and hat knitting (another design!).  Needless to say, we brought the big suitcase.

Michael and I were heading to a wedding.  We got on the Amtrak train in Washington, DC Friday night, ate dinner, worked, slept, ate breakfast, and got off at the station.  The wedding didn’t start until 4, and we didn’t have a hotel room, so I camped out in the Amtrak station to work on a sweater repair.  I got some odd looks.

Picked up stitches on circular needle, unraveling part that will be patched.
The sweater was possibly one of the most challenging patterns I’ve had in a while.  The tag said it was an “Irish Hand Knitted” sweater, and as far as I can tell, I believe it.  There’s simply no way to make that many cable crosses on a machine and make it cost effective.

The sweater had suffered from some poor storage, and had a hole about 4″ wide about a 1/2 from the left side seam.  The pattern was a doozy: a variation of a slipped puff/bobble stitch that involved using cabled slip stitches on the wrong side.  Normally I’d try to reconstruct the fabric around the hole, but in this case, it was more time effective to pull the section out and knit a patch.

Wrapping yarn around new patch yarn to create “retroactive intarsia.”

The old yarn, since it was on the edge, was long enough that each row, as I knit back and forth, I’d work a type of retroactive intarsia, wrapping the patch yarn around the old yarn, then weaving/skimming the old yarn into the original fabric.

At one point I had more than 45 locking stitch markers in play, holding various ends out of the way, holding live stitches, marking future holes to repair, and marking where I started.

So much fun!

Detail of “retroactive intarsia.”

I could kick myself though: while I got pictures of the process, because I had to turn this project around quickly, I neglected to get pictures of the finished repair.  Suffice to say, that when I handed the sweater to my husband to take a look at, it took him a good 3 minutes to find the patch.

I call that success.

The Holiday Season

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Somehow, I’ve managed to book every weekend between Thanksgiving and New Year’s with traveling/big event.  Which is not particularly bad, as I’m going to get to visit with good friends and family.  But it does mean that my weeks have to be incredibly productive, as I try and get everything that needs to be done for the business done.

It also means that things like tidying up and cleaning?  Have gone right out the window.

Yesterday I had to stop and take a look around the guest bedroom, which seconds as my workroom (for things like finishing, yarn storage, and storage of teaching materials).  It is a disaster.  And since I have no shame, and I figure there are other people out there who value things other than tidiness, I thought I’d share.

Below you’ll see the state of the guest bed.  Blankets and pillows are thrown to the top of the bed, as I had some rush blocking last week that I needed to get done.  You can see the towels I used to block (thankfully dry) folded near the pillows.  On the left is a tree that my husband brought home from work.  There’s the open Canon box, as my driver for my camera cards that is installed in my laptop isn’t working, and I now have to download my pictures off the camera with the cable.  There’s an open box of holiday decorations, as our attempts to put away Fall/Halloween decorations and pull out Christmas ones has gone in fits and starts.

Looking to the left of the tree, you have my dress form (with padded shoulders as I was blocking something that needed more room around the shoulders), a trash can where not quite everything made it to the can, and an overflowing bag of fabric.  Most of the yarn is tucked away in the shelves, thank goodness.

On a Rubbermaid container, I’ve got a random assorted pile of my hand-knit socks, pulled from the washer (as I don’t tumble-dry my socks), and haphazardly tossed in the room, with the vague intention of hanging them on my sock blockers.  This was about a week ago.  The socks are dry.  They never made it onto the sock blockers.  Next to that we have a half pot of tea that I’ve since remembered to bring into the kitchen and empty.

On the right of the door is my work desk.  A few days ago I covered it with the paper I use in my lightbox, with the intention of setting up the lightbox over it.  That never happened.  Instead, you’ll see an electrical cord running up in the back of the picture?  That’s going to one of my two work lamps, clamped to one of the two tripods I have.  Both lamps are shining on the table, so I can take pictures.  As long as I’m careful of shadows, I don’t have to set up the lightbox.  It’s also been where I’ve been working on finishing, so you’ll see a various assortment of tools exploded about, along with a pile of yarn scraps.

The one shining beacon is the bookshelf, where I’ve managed to stay organized, mostly out of necessity.  This is where I keep finishing projects that are in the queue.  See them all tidy?

The Importance of Customer Relationship Management

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This is the second edition of a semi-regular series From the Business Desk I am writing to look at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber arts Business.  This month’s feature revolves around using technology to grasp one of the key factors in the success of a business: your customers.


Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a huge buzzword in any business today.  With more and more technology at our fingertips, it is easier than ever for the informed customer to make their purchasing decision, go shopping through e-commerce, or conduct their own research irregardless of advertising mediums.  Businesses can and should be doing the same things with regards to their customers.

In theory, CRM revolves around tracking and recording every interaction a business has with their customers, from email conversations to support calls to purchasing history to who is prompt on payment.  This is a lot to aggregate and understand, however by doing such, a business can derive significant information from this data.  In larger businesses, there are dedicated CRM systems such as Salesforce that can be leveraged for that purpose; for small business however, many times these records live on post-it notes, sales receipts, and excel spreadsheets.

The Tinking Turtle facebook page lets us track who likes the company,
and who corresponds and interacts with our brand.

I wanted to take a moment to share a couple of good, and extremely cost effective resources for Small Businesses to use to be able to better track their customer information.  The first is through Social Media.  Like it or not, Facebook is the wave of the future for businesses, and by being involved in this network of potential customers, every interaction is recorded and available for review.  Not only can you communicate directly with friends, family, and interested parties, you can document who is liking your page, their likes, and record shared content among them.  In this way, you have a track record, a history of what brings your customers to your brand, and can use this to further development your business strategy.

We use Insightly to track the status of our
design projects among other uses

The second tool I would recommend every small business check out is an online CRM application.  There are countless review sites out there to cover the good, the bad, and the ugly of a whole world of CRM applications that are cheap or free to use for beginners.  There is honestly no “best” site out there; a lot of the choice boils down to what you are doing as a business, and what features you value most.  Tinking Turtle uses Insightly as our CRM.  What drew me to implement this for the business earlier this year was its’ integration with Google Apps, a plus for the IT side of me, as well as its’ focus both on Customer Relationship and Project Management.  In Insightly, it is easy for us to not only track who we do business with, and the data surrounding those relationships, but as well we can track opportunities and projects.  Insightly’s “web of links” approach makes it easy to associate which design calls tie back to which publishing companies, for instance, and which projects were submitted for each call for submission.  The best part about Insightly is that for the just starting small business, it free for a limited number of contacts and items.  This lets any business use the system to get their feet on the ground, and then once they have reached a size where they have the financial strength to begin evaluating more features, they can easily continue that through the system.

No matter what your business does, be it fiber or yarn production, designing, or a LYS, having a method to aggregate your customer information is an excellent step to take to further your business success.  I want to stress here that there is no right or wrong answer; if you have a card catalog and Rolodex that works for you, all for the better.  However, as the customer moves more and more into the digital arena of the internet, I would encourage all business owners to consider some of the online tools discussed above.

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