Omnifariously Knotty

Crafty Bits of This & That
Browsing Uncategorized

EU VAT

Dec 272014

As most of you probably are not aware, there are major changes in the collection of VAT in EU nations that go into effect on January 1, 2015. Previously VAT was determined based on the location of the seller and I, as a US citizen didn’t have to pay attention to VAT unless I was buying something from the EU. Starting in 2015 that changes and VAT will be determined and collected based on the location of the buyer. Since I have a couple patterns for sale, and people in the EU have bought them in the past and may choose to buy them in the future, this makes VAT something I have to collect and remit to the proper countries.

Fortunately for me, Ravelry has been amazing and has worked out a system for handing EU purchasers off to sites that are set up to handle VAT. I had a few options to choose from, and for now I have chosen what seems like the simplest: I am hosting my patterns on Ravelry and EU buyers will be given a link to PayHip should they choose to purchase. Since PayHip is not an EU only platform I have gone back and added PayHip links to my pattern posts here as well, for those that do not wish to use the Ravelry links for whatever reason.

In the interests of transparency, right now my sales are low enough that Ravelry does not charge me for hosting my patterns and the full price you pay goes to me. Sales through PayHip are not free, but the commission rate is fair. So if you are outside the EU and this sort of thing matters to you, please use the Ravelry links.

Thank you for buying my patterns.

The elf with no face…

Aug 22014

Is faceless no longer!

Talar - New Face 1 Talar - New Face 2

My first, and so far only, attempt to give a doll a face.

I did a layer of pastel shading (which the camera mostly ate) to contour her nose/eye sockets and the sides of her face/behind her ears. Then, in a move I almost regretted, I did her lips with a pastel that looked like a good lip color and painted it on damp rather than dry.

Hello lipstick. I wasn’t sure Talar was actually a dark lipstick sort of girl though, hence the near regret. I decided to keep on with it though, and gave the pastels a coat of sealer.

Then it was onto the tubes of water color, raw umber and burnt sienna, for her brows and eye liner. The brows, those were a major pain. I tried sketching them on with powdered pastel… nope, not enough color stuck for me to see it and it was way too imprecise. I tried with an orange pastel pencil about a half dozen times each and was only managing to polish the brown bone as I erased them to redo (and tinted the area orange as well). Eventually I said “screw it” and grabbed a dark brown pastel stick and sketched them in with the corner, it only took about three tries to get her right to match her left close enough. 😛 Then I attempted to brush the paint on like individual hairs and the 10/0 brush immediately showed that it was not fine enough for that, but it gave a reasonable brow texture so I went with it.

After all that the eye liner was almost a let down for how easy it was.

The lower lashes made up for that.

I then tackled the lips. My paint set has a tube of “flesh tone” paint, it’s basically an opaque pale peach color, so I did a wash of that over the lips to tone down the color. Getting that to the point of “not too streaky” was a whole lot of fiddling and frustration. Then the crease between her lips was too pale, so I had to go in with the 10/0 liner and some of the raw umber to darken that up again, and then fiddle with the lower lip and the streakiness again to blend that in. Finally I felt enough was enough and I patted on some powdered terracotta pastel to even out the lower lip and called it good.

I really like the color I ended up making there.

Fingers were crossed when I sealed it; I was told, after I was in the middle of all this, that applying sealer over tube watercolor can make the watercolor blur.

After all that I figured “why the hell not?” and glued in some orange lashes I bought ages ago for her and my other redheads and had never got around to sticking in their eyes.

Now I just need to get my hands on a small bottle of acrylic gloss to add a hint of shine to her lips, but I’m happy enough with the matte look that I’m not going to worry about it.

Impressing Myself

Mar 182014

I started this in December, not long after I saw the still from Catching Fire that made all the knitters on the internet want to knit That Sweater.

Talar - Mockingjay Front Talar - Mockingjay Back

Every single stitch in everything but the white ribbing is twsited, both knit and purl, including decreases both left and right leaning. For the knitters that will mean something; everyone else: suffice to say that it slowed me down a bit.

I’m so happy with it that if I had other colors of this bamboo thread I’d be seriously tempted to start another one.

Clearing out the cobwebs

Dec 102012

Since I have a pattern that will be posted soon I thought I should clean things up a bit here. Most of it won’t be visible to you, there were a lot of Word Press related back end things to get straightened up, but hopefully all the cleaning didn’t break anything.

Setting up Semagic

Oct 262010

Hopefully I got it right this time, it only took about a dozen tries. It is definitely way past time to go to sleep.

Hello world!

Oct 262010

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Omnifariously Knotty is where I plan to collect my various crafty patterns, tutorials, and projects. Most of the knitting and crochet patterns will be hosted on Ravelry and will be available through my storefront there as well as by direct links here. However, this will not be just a mirror of my Ravelry storefront, I will also be including things here that will not fit on Ravelry. Those things may include sewing patterns, crafting projects, and tutorials.