My first paid knitting commission

A lady with 'very little' English skills (Spanish) came into Beverly's and wanted to know if anyone would crochet a hat for her son. He wanted grandma to do it but she is in Spain and in her 90's and it would take too long etc.
I pointed her to Shar but Shar said she had two other projects she had to finish first, and besides the lady actually wanted a knitted cap.
I gave in and discovered that her son was 15 years old and only wanted a dark brown hat.
Bingo... 2x2 rib, Red Heart Soft Yarn (picked out by her) and then she wanted to know how much I would charge. I finally told her $35. I think that's reasonable given how easy the project is and nothing fancy. She gave me twenty as a down payment, paid for the yarn and I got her name and number and wrote down the details of the commission on the back of a business card.
I'm about a third done and I only started it on Thursday. I should have it done by next weekend and likely will have yarn left over. Which I might use in combination with the peacock blue color and do another hat to sell.
Woot!
For a change, my lone student on Friday had learned how to knit when she was little and picked it up quickly. I showed her how to do a purl stitch, which she hadn't learned to do previously, and she was on her way. She says she'll be back to start on a scarf, which I am looking forward to showing her the 2x2 rib pattern she wants to do.
She picks up on the terms and concepts of knitting quickly, which makes my job much easier. Almost too easy. But it was fun anyway.
So more on that later.

New Store Front Opened!

I discovered another artisan site similar to Etsy, only better!
Art Fire is a similar set up but they have two levels of buying and selling. You can register as a free seller, but have limited avenues for promotion and advertising and the other, at $12 per month, you get your items automatically listed over at Amazon and several other places. If you refer ten people to the site, you get free listings for life!
I don't have ten people that would be interested in going there but if you are, let me know and I'll start a list.
The shop name is the same, and I'm getting used to the idea of not having to pay every time I list an item. That (and not having enough photos) was what kept me from listing over on Etsy.
New shop will mirror my etsy store for now, but will be adding newer stuff on artfire.
www.TheKnotSpot.artfire.com
woohoo! Pretty color customizing for the store front too! I also like the fact that it's a 'Green' site and has more views available for each item.
Woot!

I made a sale!

Actually three sales.
Two sets of stitch markers at the store, two pairs of earrings to a coworker and one pair of earrings on etsy.
Yay!
Hopefully this is a sign of things to come soon!
I'm in the process of sending off the etsy sale and can't find my thank you stamp I was going to use..going to have to go to Michaels on lunch tomorrow and do that before I mail it. Going to try and print up a thank you card on my printer, but don't know how that's going to turn out.
And then I went out and spent $15 on beads. Well that's what the money is for isn't it?

As for knitting, I'm surprisingly sticking to the one project, it's satisfying my need for a medium size lace project that isn't increasing but staying the same and isn't very complicated. Although, my brain is thinking I need to work on the socks I started.
Pretty much doing the shawl and beading right now... hope to start making more sales soon and give me an excuse to make more.