I made my first custom hat this week for Wispy Threads. I chatted to a family at the market last month about making a hat for a little boy. His mother told me that she found it difficult to buy nice hats for him because he fits a very large size for his age. She spent a while looking through the hats I have and chose a fabric for the inside (orange monkeys) and asked me to find a solid, biscuity colour for the outside. I didn’t take any money because I wasn’t sure I would be able to find a fabric to match.

The day after the market I visited a local patchwork shop and found some fabrics I liked that I thought might work. I took some photos of the fabrics together with the monkeys, and also the monkeys in a different colourway. I sent the photos off to the mother and didn’t hear back from her for several days. Oh well, I thought, that’s what you get for not sealing the deal with money.

However, the mother did write back and told me that she had thought about it for a few days, and had changed her mind and wanted the blue monkeys instead, and wanted them on the outside. So I went ahead and made the hat, and emailed her with photos on Friday to let her know that it is done, and that I will have it at the next market for her. She wrote back straight away saying she was really happy with the hat, and that she’d see us at the market. So I have high hopes that it is sold!

In two days it will be two months since I registered Wispy Threads as my business name. It has taken a lot of work to get the online shop working, but today it went live! No more demo store, it is the real deal. Thank-you Andrew for all the work you have put into this.

I’m now a small business owner! It’s pretty easy to obtain a business name. You just fill in a few details online and hand over $85, and two working days later you get your certificate in the mail. The hard bit is working out what to call your business. We couldn’t have our first, second, or third ideas…..I can’t remember now how many different things we tried, but they were numerous.

I finally settled with Wispy Threads….the ‘Wispy’ comes from Nathan, he used to (and does still occasionally) call butterflies wispy wispy wispy, and the ‘Threads’ relates to sewing as well as clothing. I wanted a name that lended itself to having a little logo that could go onto items and be a part of the design of the item (though a butterfly tends to be a bit on the girly side….Andrew thinks a dragonfly might be more unisex though I am not sure).

The job now is to work out how I’m going to sell the things I make.