Yesterday I had a thought about the “tr” abbreviation in crochet. I know that some people call it a triple crochet stitch, and others call it a treble crochet stitch, but I haven’t seen any clear differentiation for why or when you should use one or the other.

This is one of those occasions when I really wish there were universal crochet standards! In this internet age, it seems so arbitrary and confusing that what I call a ‘single crochet’ stitch is known as a ‘double crochet’ stitch in the UK and Australia (and similarly for almost every other crochet stitch).

My initial guess was that ‘treble’ was the UK name, and ‘triple’ the US name, but my go-to site for these questions, YarnStandards.com (a US site) states that tr is the abbreviation for treble crochet, so that can’t be right…

Time to turn to Twitter to poll my network of crocheting friends! I tweeted:

and within seconds the replies started flooding in (here’s a sample):

Thank you to everyone who responded! With all the votes counted (37 total), my results were 22 votes for triple vs 15 for treble. From what I can tell, UK folks say treble, and everyone else seemed split between the two options. @ThingsBright said that vintage US patterns use treble, and the new US convention is triple – which sounds right to me (although YarnStandards.com hasn’t made the change to triple).

So, should you use triple crochet or treble crochet in your crochet patterns? Apparently, unless you’re writing in US/Aus crochet terminology, the choice is yours!

I’ve decided I’m going to cast my vote in the triple camp, but write triple (treble) crochet in my patterns, to avoid confusion.

I always like to base my patterns on solid research so they look as realistic as possible, and when I started to investigate, I found a huge number of really interesting-looking cacti to crochetify: I started out sketching 8 different types, and then had so many great ideas for how to create them, I couldn’t decide which to cut!

I spent a lot of time developing different techniques and effects for each cactus, so I hope you can see that it’s not the same basic pattern with tweaks for size and shape here: each cactus is completely different from all the others.

8 plant designs plus 2 pots seemed a bit excessive for one pattern – that’s almost a book, not a pattern! – so my solution was to split the patterns over two cactus collections: you can buy your favourite collection without breaking the bank, or buy both (at a huge discount!) and mix-and-match cacti from each collection to create your perfect cactus garden.

Cactus Collection 1

Cactus Collection 1

Each collection comes with both the individual-sized pot pattern and the larger cactus garden pot pattern:

• An individual cactus makes a quick and sweet gift – or you can anthropomorphize it with some eyes and a smiley mouth to make a super-cute version!
• Two or three (or more) individual cactus pots look great arranged in a line along your windowsill.
• The larger cactus garden makes a beautiful decoration – and you’ll never have that problem where one of the collection dies and you’re left with a big empty space in the pot!

Cactus Collection 2

Cactus Collection 2

If you’d like to buy either or both of the Cactus Collection patterns, you can find them all in my shop. Don’t forget that there’s huge savings to be had if you buy the set of both collections.

As a special bonus for my newsletter subscribers, Twitter followers and Facebook fans, I’ll be giving out a special discount code to use with these patterns this week – so look out for that too!

Collection 1 includes (clockwise, from top left): Notocactus, Moon Cactus, Mammillaria, Echinocereus.

Collection 2 includes (clockwise, from top left): Micranthocereus, Cephalocereus, Opuntia (Paddle Cactus), Ferocactus (Barrel Cactus).

Which is your favourite?

UPDATE: adding some clearer links to where you can find the patterns:
Buy Cactus Collection 1
Buy Cactus Collection 2
Buy Cactus Collections 1 & 2 (at a bargain price!)

• Waiting for my new book to be released (less than 6 weeks to go!)
• Waiting to see an advance copy – they should be printed by now and I can’t describe just how nervously excited I am that I’ll soon be able to hold a copy in my hands… (And then I’ll be able to finally share some details with you!)
• Waiting to announce my new secret project that I’m busying away at behind the scenes…
• Waiting to finally complete my 2 new crochet patterns that I’ve been working on for weeks – they expanded in scope far beyond what I originally imagined, so it’s taking much longer than I’d anticipated to write and photograph the instructions.

These yarns have morphed into something special – I hope you’ll agree when I reveal my new designs early next week!

In the meantime, I’m working on so many projects at once, it feels like nothing is getting finished, and I miss that satisfied feeling of having completed a project. It’s made doubly scary as August is always a quiet month for sales (if you have a business, do you find that too, or is it just me?!), so I’m working hard with nothing to show for it yet and not that much money coming in either.

Ah, the perils of self-employment…

Normal service will resume shortly, I’m sure

Since I’ve been through the process of getting an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) I keep getting people referred to me for information about how to go about getting one. It wasn’t easy for me to find out the answers, so I’m sharing them here so that fellow non-US freelancers and contract workers can find this post through Google and figure out how it’s done without having to go through all the hassles I did.

This is how I did it, as a Canadian resident, but this information should apply to all other non-US contract workers and freelancers too; just substitute your own country for Canada throughout the rest of this post.

Note: I’m not a qualified tax professional and this information is based solely on my experience in late 2009. Please check with irs.gov or a certified acceptance agent (see below) to see if anything has changed before you submit your application.

Why do I need an ITIN?

If you’re Canadian and have no tie to the US, you should be paying Canadian income tax on your earnings, not US tax. However, if you want to do contract work for a US company, the IRS (the US Internal Revenue Service) requires the company to withhold 30% of your earnings to submit towards your US taxes, so you’ll only receive 70% of your money. (You then have to pay your Canadian taxes on that income as well.)

Although you can claim the withheld US tax back at a later date, there’s an easier way: if you submit Form W-8BEN to the company you’re working for, they don’t need to withhold the 30% US tax, and you’ll receive 100% of your payment (which, of course, you’ll report as income on your Canadian tax return).

To complete Form W-8BEN, you need to have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). Your ITIN proves that you have no US ties and therefore do not need to pay US taxes.

How do I get an ITIN?

To apply for an ITIN, fill in Form W-7 and submit it, together with proof of identity and foreign status, to the IRS. (Let me warn you: Form W-7 is a minefield and it’s very easy to make a mistake on it and have it rejected.) This also means you have to mail off your passport to the US as proof of being non-American. You’d probably prefer to avoid that, right?

Okay, so here’s the best way around that: there are IRS-authorized Acceptance Agents outside the US (in Canada, and internationally) that you can visit. These agents can certify that they’ve seen your passport (so you don’t need to send it anywhere) and will also help you complete and submit your Form W-7 without making any mistakes.

It cost me about $120 (plus tax) – it’s not cheap to visit an accountant! – but it was well worth the money. Mine found and fixed a mistake I’d made on my application and wrote the letter certifying my identity and proof of foreign status. My application was approved and I received my ITIN about 6 weeks later.

How do I use my ITIN?

Once you have your ITIN, it’s yours to keep – it’s like a Social Security Number, except it proves that you’re not required to pay US taxes. You can fill in your number on Line 6 of Form W-8BEN and submit that form to each US company you work for, and you’ll be paid 100% of your earnings, without any US tax withheld.

Recap

If you’re not a US resident or citizen, you can receive 100% of your US earnings without the 30% federal tax withheld by following these steps:

1. To get an ITIN, find an acceptance agent to help you submit Form W-7 to the IRS and to certify that they’ve seen your non-US passport.
2. When you receive your ITIN, fill it in on Line 6 of Form W-8BEN.
3. Submit a completed W-8BEN to every US company you do contract/freelance work for.

Yes, getting an ITIN is a hassle, a long process, and an expense (unless you’re willing to mail your passport to the US), but it’s worth it in the long run if you plan to do contract or freelance work for US companies: once you have your ITIN, you’ll never again have to claim back US taxes.

It’s pretty ambitious, and even more so than I first imagined when I decided on the size: as the fabric will be curved after punching it, the loopy stitches will end up splaying further apart than usual, so I’m punching my stitches very close together so you (hopefully) won’t be able to see the fabric between the stitches after the globe is assembled. It’s sloooow going, but also quite nice to have a ‘mindless’ project I can work on – designing projects all the time is tiring, and, now I’ve completed the design for the globe, this is a soothing project to work on when I’m watching TV, just filling in each area with the right colour.

As you can see from the picture below, I have completely finished 2 of the 12 sections of the southern hemisphere, and I’m partway through the rest. And – hey – is that Australia I spy?

Here’s something that’s made it more fun though: Jessica at How About Orange linked to these cute printable floss bobbins designed by Wild Olive, and I thought they’d inject a bit of cute into the process.

I printed a sheet of bobbins onto white cardstock and cut them out (yes, I did pick the 4 shades that were closest to my floss colours – silly things like that make me happy). In contrast to the globe, they were a very quick and satisfying project!

Here’s a little papercrafty tip for you: to cut a smooth curve like these bobbin edges, hold the scissors steady and rotate the cardboard as you cut.

As I punch with 3 of the 6 strands of floss at a time, I usually cut a 1.5m length of floss, split it into two, and then leave the other 3-strand length languishing in my project box until I need it. Now I can wind the spare length onto the bobbin, and it’ll be neatly stored until I need that colour again. And I’ve even pre-cut and split an entire skein of the blue floss and wound all the lengths onto my blue bobbin, so I won’t be interrupted with cutting new lengths during my next punchneedle session. (As I’m working on the southern hemisphere, there’s a lot of blue ocean to fill in!)

Printable cardboard floss bobbins: recommended! They may not last forever, but they make me smile and I can always print more when these wear out. Or – shock horror – use the other shades that I already printed… but I don’t know if my matchy-matchy self will allow me to do that: green thread on a red bobbin? That’s just crazy talk!

Can you spot which is the real apple? Haha!

Give one to your (or your child’s!) favourite teacher, make a bowlful in red and green as a decorative centrepiece, or add a pair of safety eyes and an embroidered smile to make a sweet-as-apple-pie toy.

It’s so realistic I almost want to take a bite

The apples crochet pattern is free for you to use. If you’d like to thank me with a donation, you’ll get a handy printable PDF version of the pattern as a thank you

Enjoy!

Go to Amigurumi Apples pattern >>

It’s about an hour’s drive from my house, through farmland and Mennonite country, and today I had an added surprise: the highway was closed for a stretch, and I got to take a scenic diversion through even more of the countryside. It turns out that the drive is so much nicer in August than in February: I saw 2 hawks perched on a signpost, skipping lambs following their mothers, countless cows with calves, and big horses with adorably fragile-looking foals. If the sun had only been shining, it would have been a perfect drive!

And then when I got there, I discovered that the yarn sale is also better than their winter sale! They put up a huge tent in the parking lot, filled with huge boxes of bagged yarn, 3, 4 or 6 balls per bag (same shade and dye lot in each bag) with crazy prices on the bags and then, on top of that, if you buy 3 bags of the same yarn, you get the 4th for free!

Despite the gloomy day, it was stuffy and humid outside, so you can just imagine what it was like inside the crowded tent. But it was worth it. Everyone was handed an extra-strong black garbage bag on the way in, to use as a shopping bag, which I thought was overkill until I started shopping. 24 balls of yarn is large and heavy, and the deals were too good to stop at only 24!

I managed to restrain myself and only bought 4 bags (24 balls) each of Patons Grace and Bernat Satin. And that took some serious willpower – seeing yarn that usually costs $4-5 per skein being sold at $4 for a bag of 3 skeins… Ah, the temptation!

My haul!

The only downside was that I didn’t have any cash with me – the cash-only till had no queue at it, but the two debit/credit tills moved very slowly. I ended up spending about half an hour shopping, and another hour standing in the stuffy tent waiting to pay. But when I finally got back outside, there was a little refreshments tent, selling hot and cold drinks and fresh baked goods, so I got myself a little energy boost before the drive home

Today was the first day of the sale, and it runs through to August 21st. If you live in driving distance of Listowel, Ontario, I highly recommend you take a trip to the Yarn Factory Outlet this week or next. You won’t regret it!

I used my detail stuffing tool for the first time today… I bought it ages ago and haven’t made any amigurumi lately, (it’s all been big projects and house moves) and when I used it today to make a penguin baby toy, I WAS AMAZED! It’s absolutly brilliant and does exactly what June says it does! Thanks June! You are a GENIUS!!!

Congratulations, Cheryl – you win a free pattern of your choice! (And thanks for the lovely review of my Detail Stuffing Tool too!)

I’ve faced a dilemma about the reviews in my shop and I’d like to explain my thoughts and my decision here, in the interest of transparency. I had my first bad (2 star) review last week, but it transpired that the reviewer hadn’t actually bought the pattern – she was only commenting about her opinion of my design:

This judgement was based on my photos alone – the ‘reviewer’ has not seen the pattern.

When you leave a review in my shop, the purpose is different: a review is there to help other customers to decide whether they should buy the item you’ve reviewed, or not. As such, leaving a review giving your opinion of the look of the finished piece isn’t helpful – you’re not telling the reader anything she can’t see for herself by looking at the photos in my shop! I believe that the only really useful reviews are ones where the reviewer has purchased the pattern and can give an opinion based on reading (or having made) the actual pattern, for example:

• “This is a well-written pattern”
• “I found it really confusing and hard to follow”
• “The step-by-step photos were really helpful”
• “I found a bunch of errors and the designer didn’t reply to any of my emails about them”
• This is the most realistic design I’ve found, and the pattern is very clear

(These comments are for example only, although the positive ones are loosely based on real reviews – I hope nobody will have cause to leave those negative comments about any of my designs!)

Now, whether the rating attached to these is 1 star or 5 stars, or something in between, they all give you valuable information about what you can expect from the pattern, and as such are helpful reviews.

I’ve decided (after a lot of thought) to delete the above 2 star review from my shop, as it will harm my sales but it offers no information that would help anyone else make a purchase decision. In fact, the ‘review’ is actually misleading – when I mentioned it on Twitter, several people assumed she was leaving her review of the pattern itself, as she does say “I like the simplicity of the pattern” (which, let me remind you, she has never seen) – they thought she was saying that the pattern didn’t live up to her expectations and didn’t include enough detail – which would be a valid criticism, except that it’s not true! [FYI, my T rex pattern contains 2 full pages of assembly instructions, including 5 photos - I don't think anyone could call that a lack of detail!]

If the comment had been posted on my blog instead, I wouldn’t have a problem with it: of course not everyone will like my style! I have no problem with that, or with people telling me that they would like my T Rex design more if it had teeth and claws (for example). But it would insult your intelligence to suggest you need a review to tell you that my design doesn’t include a lot of details like that – you can see for yourself whether you like my design style based on my photos, and choose to buy the pattern (or not) based on your own opinion.

Let me be clear about this: I’m not deleting all negative reviews from my shop! If you truly feel, having bought a pattern, that it deserves 4, 3, 2, or even 1 star, and you explain your reasons for feeling that way in your review, I will leave that review intact for all to see. But reviewing a pattern without ever seeing that pattern is like reviewing a book after just looking at the cover – how could you possibly know what it’s like without even looking inside?!

So, please do continue to review the patterns and products in my shop, but please limit your reviews to items you’ve actually experienced for yourself. The reviews aren’t there for me to read (you can email me or leave me blog comments if you want to tell me your opinions!) – they are there to help others, so please write the sort of information you’d find helpful to read! Thank you

I was commissioned to make a very interesting project for publication, but the actual publication process has gone through some twists and turns, and it’ll be a while longer before it sees the light of day, so I don’t think I can talk about it yet (or share a picture ). This is one of the reasons why I find the immediacy of self-publishing so satisfying – I completed the piece in December 2009 and I still can’t talk about it, whereas if I’d self-published it, I’d have been able to share all the details before last Christmas!

But my latest punchneedled piece is just for me, and it’s somewhat ambitious (aka large), so it’s going to take a while to complete. I have a tendency to hide my work until it’s ready for the big reveal when it’s completed, but I think that in this case it might spur me on to keep making progress if I share it as a WIP (work in progress) every now and then.

I was inspired by 3D papercraft models to try something unique: using a combination of punchneedle and sewing to create a full 3D shape. I’m punching the design onto a flat piece of fabric, and then stitching along the lines where you’d glue a tab from one piece to the next in a paper model. I think it’ll work very well, although I’ve never seen anyone do anything similar, so I won’t know for sure until my piece is ready to assemble!

I assembled these paper models for a tutorial I posted at Folding Trees with tips on how to cut and assemble models like these. I’m using the same concept (turning a flat design into a 3D shape) for my punchneedle project!

I invested many hours into it before I even started the embroidery: figuring out the flat shapes I’d need to embroider, so I could eventually cut and stitch them together to create the final 3D shape, and then drawing my pattern in Illustrator. Now, I have no idea if the subject of my punchneedle will be very obvious from this photo, or a bit cryptic – can you tell what it’s going to be? (This is the reverse side, by the way – the side I look at while I’m punching. The other side will look much prettier!)

I hugely underestimated the amount of embroidery floss I’d need to complete this project – I initially bought 10 skeins, but my revised estimate is now 28 skeins! That’s a lot of embroidery, even with the speed of punchneedle (which is much faster than conventional embroidery). This is definitely going to be a long-term project…

If you’re saying “huh? Punchneedle – what’s that?”, you might like to check out my eBook, The Punchneedle Handbook: Miniature Punchneedle Embroidery Basics & Beyond. This eBook includes everything about punchneedle from the absolute basics for those who have never heard of this craft, to my techniques that will allow absolutely anyone to create beautiful punchneedle embroideries. I’ve also made an excerpt from the eBook into a free tutorial so you can get a taste for what punchneedle is about.

So, how about it – any guesses as to what my giant punchneedle project is going to be?

I also want to do my part to protect the environment (you’ve probably already guessed this from the subject of most of my designs, but animals and the natural world are really important to me), so I try to follow the ‘environmental 3 Rs’ principle: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Reduce: I’m continually refining my packaging process to use the least material while still being secure and protecting the contents. I’ve gone from using one sheet of bubble wrap to pack 4 orders, to cutting it in such a way that I can safely package an average of 7 orders using a single sheet of bubble wrap – that’s a big reduction! This little stack will package 12 orders:

Reuse: I do use plastic bubble wrap for packaging because there’s nothing like it for protecting my little goodies as they travel across the world to their destinations, but I don’t feel too bad about that because I advertise locally and collect clean, tape-free bubble wrap from people who’ve just moved house and have bags of it sitting around after unpacking all their ornaments and tableware. (Speaking of which, I’m running low – if anyone around the K-W area has a bunch of bubble wrap going spare, please contact me.) Clever, huh?

Recycle: I use recycled Post-It notes to make the thank you notes I send out with each order.

And this isn’t quite recycling, but it’s a step in the right direction. I went out to replenish my stock of envelopes today, and I made the decision to switch from smart-looking white envelopes to blah-looking kraft coloured envelopes.

I’m hoping that nobody will mind the colour change – it’s just an envelope, after all; you only glance at it for a second before ripping it open and discarding it (into your recycling bin, right??), so how could anyone object?

But the added bonus here is that my new envelopes are FSC certified. Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certification guarantees that the wood used to produce paper products is taken from responsibly managed forests.

Many species of animals and plants (including my favourite, the orangutan) are at great risk from deforestation, so using FSC certified paper products is an easy way to do your part to help protect the environment – just look out for the FSC logo when you’re shopping.

My envelopes are FSC certified as “Mixed Sources”. The wood used to produce FSC certified products with a “Mixed Sources” label comes from FSC certified well-managed forests, controlled sources and/or recycled material.

This means that, while my envelopes may not be fully recycled, at least their productions hasn’t deprived any endangered species of their natural habitat, so you can feel good about ordering your crochet supplies from me!