My son’s birthday

My son just turned 7. Every time we celebrate one of my kids’ birthdays I feel my heart crack a little. I peer inward and compare my childhood to theirs. I look at their growing bodies and hope I’m savoring the moments the way I’m supposed to. I wonder which memories will become treasured as they grow old and which mistakes will be forgotten.

You may think I’m being dramatic, but I find each birthday season to be really hard. I get overwhelmed with the plans and the visitors and the noise and the chaos. I get nightmares and headaches. This is who I am. This is the ‘ugly’ side of me that I try to hide. I would much rather have a ‘normal’ response to all of it and you’d think that after years of the same response I would be better prepared for it. But, no. Once again, I’m taken by surprise by my complete meltdown.

I also know that this kind of story can be considered ‘oversharing’. And I truly hope that I haven’t scared too many of you away by sharing a piece of my reality. Perhaps I should have two newsletters - one for people who want business info only and another for people who like seeing some of my inner-workings.

Poll

Table of Contents

• My son’s birthday

  • Poll

• Moon Fairy Update

• New blog post: Joining Squares for a Bag

• 50% Off Promotion for Newsletter Subscribers

• 4th Designaversary Coming Up

• Technical Problems

• Project Request

• In Conclusion

  • I hate AI

  • Life has been a struggle bus lately

  • Thank you!

Moon Fairy Update

Oh, how I hate these updates that remind everyone how imperfect I am.

I wish this update was for a new adjusted, solid overlay mosaic crochet option. But it’s just an error-fixing update.

Row 13 in the overlay mosaic crochet option of Moon Fairy had a ridiculous error. It said, “… (dc1, sc1) x2101…” which is simply impossible. It should have said “…(dc1, sc1) x20, dc1, sc101…“ which is daunting enough.

I’m fixing the file and will be uploading it to Etsy ASAP. I’ll also search through my records and attempt to email those who have previously purchased this pattern. This design is not available on Ravelry.

New blog post: Joining Squares for a Bag

The blog post I published a few days ago is my second tutorial on joining squares for a bag. I’ve created a few helpful graphics (well, I hope they’re helpful, anyway). I do hope this blog post is found helpful even though it’s not a new pattern.

50% Off Promotion for Newsletter Subscribers

If this is your first time reading my newsletter then let me explain what this section is all about. Halfway through each month I change the pattern associated with our special newsletter code. The special newsletter code allows you to save 50% off the selected pattern (on Ravelry only) until the next month when it’s changed again.

From now until mid-April you can save 50% on 2020 Father’s Day Throw when you use the special newsletter code above. This all-in-one blanket was originally published after we finished the 2020 Father’s Day CAL. That Crochet-A-Long was a series of scarves or panels that you could join together to make a blanket. This blanket pattern is written so that you don’t need to join anything at the end, it’s all in one piece.

4th Designaversary Coming Up

How many of you are eager to see what kind of promotion I’ll be doing this year for my Designaversary?

I am eagerly waiting to find out too. 🤣

Eep, I have been so overwhelmed by things that I truly have no plan yet for what I should do. Any suggestions?

I’ll probably end up creating a giveaway thing on Rafflecopter again.

Technical Problems

This section is not about black text on a purple background. If you’re having that problem can you please email me? Beehiiv insists it’s not happening and most of the people I’ve asked have also agreed it’s not a problem but I know there was at least two people out there.

I’m throwing out a call for help: my technical skills are insufficient to solve my current dilemmas! Most of you can probably skip this section - it’s not crochet and it’s not a common skill-set.

As some of you know, I not only design all my crochet patterns, I also design my own website. There are a lot of updates that need to happen on there because my skills have increased in leaps and bounds. I’m definitely enjoying the learning process but I sure wish I could have a few more Ashlee’s to get all my tasks done (one mom-Ashlee, one drawing-Ashlee, one website-Ashlee, haha!).

So, hive mind, does anyone know why I cannot find my RSS feed anymore? It seems to work in the RSS Feed Reader extension I added to my browser window but it hasn’t been updating my Ravelry list for over 6 months and when I do a broken link check it pops up as broken.

Second problem: I’ve tried using Cloudflare for my CDN but my website becomes inaccessible as soon as I turn it on. I currently have my A record set to DNS only instead of proxy and that kind of defeats the purpose.

Project Request

If you’ve started to crochet any of my patterns, would you take a moment and create a linked project on Ravelry? Adding a ‘heart’ to my patterns helps too.

First, find the pattern you’re doing and then click ‘create project’. Upload a photo of your progress (please use one of your own photos - don’t reuse one of the listing photos).

In Conclusion

I hope this newsletter was informative, interesting enough, and not so personal that you’re annoyed at me but personal enough that you remember I’m a real human. Please use this link to find me everywhere else: https://ashleeslint.com/link-in-bio

I hate AI

One of the things that has been a thorn lately is all the AI stuff. I do not use AI. I am sick of seeing AI images. I’m disappointed that there are people out there trying to make a quick buck on AI. Why this little rant? Keep reading.

Life has been a struggle bus lately

This week, while trying to draw the next dog square I grumbled a lot about how I’m not a real artist because I’m not as good as (insert anyone here) and what’s the point if people can just use AI to sell patterns or they can steal my stuff and claim it as their own through AI.

But I don’t have time for any type of ‘creative block’ because I’ve pre-sold these dog squares and people have expectations. My brain was being extra harsh on me and it was a struggle to even convince myself to sit down and try. I’ve been trying to draw May Dog for the past 4 days and I’ve cried every single day because of how horrible my brain has been speaking to me (see paragraph one).

I feel a lot better today.

Today when I looked at the past few days’ worth of drawing and files I was actually amazed that it looked good. It sort of feels like someone else drew May Dog.

I will get that into my testers hands within a week so that they have at least a month before it’s published.

Thank you!

Thank you for continuing to be my support group through these relatively quiet and slow months. If you compare my first year of designing to this last few months you’ll see a marked difference. And it’s not because I’ve quit being creative. And I desperately do not want to quit making patterns for everyone!

So thank you! Thank you for continuing to post in my Facebook group, thank you for watching my YouTube shorts, thank you for reading my newsletters. Thank you for sharing your work, for telling others about me, thank you for every purchase.

With love,

Ashlee