Hello everyone! I’m Amy. I look forward to “meeting” all of you, viewing your projects and exchanging ideas with you.
I’m both a professional textile designer and a freelance writer; when I have down time from paid writing assignments, I enjoy sharing (mostly free) crochet patterns and tutorials plus other types of craft tutorials on my websites. Here’s a photo collage showing just a few of the many patterns I have made available:
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I learned to crochet as a child of maybe 6 or 7 years old. As a teenager, I went to the library and couldn’t find any crochet books I was interested in, but all the knitting books looked appealing. So I taught myself to knit, but made a ton of mistakes with that – for example, somehow all my stitches were twisted stitches. I also unknowingly taught myself to “knit back backwards”, because the first project I chose was stranded colorwork, and I couldn’t figure out any other way to make that work.
Later I earned a degree in textile design and had a knitting teacher who set me straight on how really to knit – but I still do a lot of wonky things in my hand knitting. Whatever! I double dog dare the knitting police to investigate, haha. But seriously, this is the main reason why I share a lot of free crochet patterns, but not nearly as many free knitting patterns. I’m totally proficient with machine knitting but have a lot left to learn when it comes to hand knitting.
I graduated from design school in 1997 and then worked in the textile industry for years after that. I had a job coloring prints for apparel fabric; another job designing circular knitted fabrics; and yet another job designing upholstery fabric, and then later managing the same company’s entire design department. In 2005, I got a job teaching textile design and trend forecasting to fashion design majors at a design college in Los Angeles.
In late 2008, thanks to the “great financial crisis”, my husband and I both lost our jobs. At the time, we were living in Santa Barbara, CA. I was working as a textile designer for a local apparel manufacturer and my husband was working as a sales and marketing manager for a local company. We realized that we couldn’t stay where we were; we weren’t able to find other viable jobs available in the area.
We made a list of all our options and chose the craziest one of all of them: moving aboard a sailboat and going cruising. That was an adventure!
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I had already started messing around with freelance writing, but that was the point at which I switched from textile design to freelance writing as my primary career.
From 2009 – 2014, I was About.com’s “crochet expert”, which basically meant that I managed the crochet subdomain on their network – writing most of its content, posting free crochet patterns, and managing some other contributors who also posted patterns on the site. When I started working with the About.com network, the New York Times Company was the owner. In summer of 2012, the network was acquired by IAC.
The transition began at about the same time my husband and I were sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. We crossed the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea together in a 34’ sailboat and then spent about 3 years exploring Europe and the Middle East.
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In 2013 I started a knitting and crochet website that I will be retiring shortly because hackers destroyed it. I am now in the process of moving all the content from that site onto a new domain with better hosting.
In 2014, I stopped working with About.com and started doing freelance writing for a variety of other clients including digital marketing agencies. I also got more serious about growing my own network of websites.
I’m now at yet another crossroads in my career. The client I worked with most frequently has decided to transition into doing something different, so I have to decide what’s next for me. Do I want to keep freelance writing? Do I want to get more serious about digital marketing? or do I want to do more with crochet, knitting and / or textile design?
I would really love to get back to working on designing crochet patterns full time, but so far I’ve had a bunch of setbacks with that. I was originally trying to use the same sort of business model About.com did – free patterns supported by advertising revenue. However, along the way, I have realized that is not going to work for my own much smaller, but growing, network of craft sites. I took down all the Google ads on my sites, because I decided that is NOT the user experience I want for my website visitors. So I have to figure out a different way forward.
I contributed some patterns to a pattern book, and that was a fantastic learning experience. I have been giving serious thought to whether that’s a business model I want to pursue further. I am not sure about it.
I’m thinking that what I might try next is continuing to give away free patterns, but offering paid upgrades like symbol crochet charts and PDF downloads. If you have any feedback /insights to share about this idea, I’m totally receptive. I’m also hoping to learn more about whatever other opportunities are available out there for pattern designers; I look forward to learning more about where you’re all buying / selling / sourcing patterns. (And since I have 12+ years’ worth of free patterns and tutorials to share, I hope many of you will be able to take advantage of that – I am eager to share them with anyone who is interested).
I look forward to participating here and getting to know you all. I am glad you’re here!
Best wishes,
Amy Solovay