The GK YouTube Channel is here :)

November 10, 2021November 24, 2021Leave a comment

Last week I talked about making some changes to GK. Probably the biggest one after closing the online shop is I officially started the Gynka Knitwear YouTube Channel and I have just uploaded my first video! These videos will always come with some explanation which you will find in the main menu under the title tutorials. The explanation for this particular video is here.

If you check my channel on YouTube, you will see that there are two videos there (if you are reading this at the beginning of November 2021, of course…). That is because I had one uploaded about a year ago but that was quickly made for someone who asked for help and I realized the best I can do for her is to film how I do it myself… I don’t count that video to the series I am filming now but it was a milestone for me in a way that it was the time when the idea of a GK YouTube Channel first came to my mind, so I left it up there.

The reason for the YouTube channel and the video series is that in my experience, most of you, Lovely Knitters, are visual-minded like me, so I believe demonstrating a solution for a problem for you is a better way than just telling you what to do. After almost 5 years of experience in designing, writing and supporting knitwear patterns I know the points where almost every beginner knitter needs help with my patterns. All the questions I am asked are concentrating to the same part of a pattern and every pattern has its own “problem part”. Most of the time it is a knitting technique that knitters are not familiar yet. I tried to help to all of those who got to me for assistance with an already existing video on YouTube (there are plenty of fantastic ones) but in many cases they are not helpful or they not the exact technique I use in my pattern (for example I haven’t found a video that is using the exact same method for joining an I cord to a knitted piece that I use) and it can be rather confusing.

I also know that many beginners are not asking their questions, they try to find a solution on their own and if they don’t succeed, they put the project aside and probably never return. My aim is to go ahead of this problem and create a visual aid to all beginner knitters and link these videos into the patterns so they will be right there when they are needed. This way all the help I can possibly offer will be right there in the pattern without making it too long (or over-explained for the advanced knitters if that is a word…).

I struggled a lot about the structure of these videos. They would probably be more informative if I talked you through some parts but since English is not my mother language I believe it is better for everyone if I don’t talk :D… Let us stick to subtitles and you tell me if it helps or not.

For now, my plan is not to post videos on a regular basis but to publish them in line with the new patterns. So there may be no videos for a longer period but then there’ll be more of them at the same time when I release a new design. I am making a series now for my existing patterns and when I am finished with the series, I will update all of my patterns with the links. Everyone who purchased my pattern through Ravelry will get an automatic update when it is done but I will also inform you through the blog.

I really hope you will benefit from these videos. I am always willing to listen to your thoughts about them, so if you have something to say, please do in the comments and I will try my best!

Happy Knitting!

Mici

It’s been a while…

November 3, 2021November 3, 20214 Comments

…since I last posted here. I am so sorry I have neglected all of you. But there are times when life puts so much weight on your shoulders, you must decide which to carry on and which to drop. I don’t want to make excuses because I don’t like them either but if you are interested in what happened to me, please go ahead and read the story of my last three years… If you prefer not knowing anything about me because you are so angry at me, I totally understand, please just skip this post then, I was struggling writing it anyway because I don’t like to take my family-related stuff out to public. Just know that I feel terrible guilt to neglect you.

If you decided to stay with me for the rest of this post and get to know the reason for my absence, let’s jump into the middle of it… About two years ago my daughter was diagnosed with ASD and it was quite a shock for my family. The thought that something is not right with her wasn’t new to us, life had always been hard with her, she literally never slept, someone (usually me) had to be awake with her through the nights, too and she hadn’t started communicating with humans like other children do (by communicating with humans I mean she didn’t even seem to notice anybody. But she did notice dogs… in fact that is how she finally learnt to speak: with the help of dogs… but let’s not jump that far ahead in the story just yet…). The year prior the diagnosis was extremely hard with more and more frequent meltdowns, therefore I had less and less time and energy to focus on work. We needed to do something about it so we started to investigate the problem. After about a year, at the beginning of 2019 she got the diagnosis. We started to search for educational possibilities immediately and we soon realized that we need to move to the capital city to be able to provide her with the help that she needs. So we packed everything – including my mother 😀 – and sold both our house and my mother’s house to buy one in Budapest. We found a house that had a small apartment attached to it (for my mother – this way she would always be around if we needed help…). They were cheap (by cheap I mean according to other real estates in the capital city. According to our budget it was the only thing we could afford) but they needed renovation badly and the previous owner had a huge amount of bank depth on the houses, so they were in a state before auction. We decided to make a deal with the bank and buy the houses even if that meant that we need to do construction works while we are living in the house.

A few days after we signed the contracts in March 2020, the pandemic reached Hungary and everything was shut down. I don’t know if you have ever tried to sell two houses and buy a third one at the same time with all the stuff being moved from the two houses to the third one. Top that with a pandemic, a renovation (during a pandemic), a child with ASD (who doesn’t like changes, during a renovation, during a pandemic) and the struggle with bureaucracy to clear the depth of the previous owner in the estate records (during a pandemic). This was the worst. There was a misunderstanding between the bank and the land registration office and even though we settled all payments towards the bank, the land registration office didn’t want to delete the mortgage from the papers. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget about the problem that the previous owner had nowhere to live anymore so he tried to stay in the house as long as he could with his daughter, two huge dogs and a huge cat… and we let them live with us in the smaller apartment for months because we couldn’t bear the thought that they haven’t got a home any more because of us (I know. It was not because of us. We payed their depth, and their depth was not our fault… the bank would have taken the house from them anyway… but still. We wanted to move in a house that we payed for – and that meant they have to leave at some point. By now they managed to find a small apartment nearby and took out another loan to pay for that apartment but they are not homeless at least…). All in all, I don’t want to say we have tough two years behind us but WE HAVE TOUGH TWO YEARS BEHIND US…

Some photos of the renovation for you to get a picture of what I was talking about… 🙂 (the last of the works were finished in March 2021, that is when we could finally took over all parts of the house):

With all the above going on, as much as I would have loved to continue working on Gynka Knitwear, I just couldn’t manage. All my yarn, needles and even my computer were in boxes in a garage for months. At first I tried to read and answer all mails and Ravelry messages at least but after a while I had to let go of this too, because I couldn’t keep up and I was tired to excuse myself all the time for being so slow on reacting. If you happen to be someone who hadn’t got an answer to a question, I hereby apologize and please feel free to contact me again via email: gynkaknitwear@gmail.com. I will monitor this email daily from now on and start to catch up.

As to our struggles, we are over the worst part now and everything is settling down. We cleared the depths from the estate records, construction works are finished (inside at least. But before we start the works outside we have to take a deep breath to forget the hell of the last two years…). We were able to find a kindergarten for my daughter which she finally loves and she slowly starts to communicate with us (she is 5 now). She has also learnt the difference between night and day so she started to sleep 6-7 hours at night and we couldn’t be happier because if she sleeps, we can sleep, too.

Now that life is getting back to normal (if life can be called “normal” nowadays…), I would like to slowly get back to work, too. I decided to stop making ready-made items, so I shut my online store down. It is too much work for me right now and I had to choose between knitting and designing. I will continue writing patterns and I am currently working on something totally new to GK… I hope to announce it soon because I am very-very close to being ready.. I also hope you will like it. I am also planning to continue to write new posts to this blog biweekly or so, this way I can keep you updated about what is happening. It is hard to promise anything at this stage because you know… we have good weeks and bad weeks with my daughter… it is hard to tell whether I will or won’t be able to do any work regularly. But I will try my best, as I always do. I know some of you are relying on me, and I won’t let you down.

I also won’t spam you here with my private life anymore but in case you are interested in the end result of our new home, I have an Instagram account dedicated to my hobbies (creating our new home, indoor gardening and knitting) I would be more than happy if you joined me there, too! Please follow my account: @plantaknit on Instagram to see updates.

At last but not least I would like to say a huge thank you for being here, for reading my blog, for knitting my patterns, I can not tell you how much it means to me! You are the best! Hope to welcome you back next time!

Happy Knitting!

Mici

The 1st Birthday of GK and of a new me

January 28, 2018January 28, 2018Leave a comment

Usually Saturdays are my blog post-days but today is different as Gynka Knitwear turned 1 year old exactly today! Which means, I created my Instagram account a year ago 🙂 .

I had Gynka Manufaktúra before, where I shared my WIPs but I wanted a different account for my own designs. It became much more successful and had more followers and likes in quite a short amount of time.

A whole lot of things happened this year… it seems it was much longer than a single year and yet it was gone so fast. I have many achievements to be proud of and I feel I have learnt many things. Not just as a knitter but as a person as well. I don’t want you to be bored of my knitting successes, I listed them a few posts back in my end-of-year summary, I won’t repeat myself. I would rather write about my personal improvements.

The most important lesson I learnt from this past year as a person was to handle critics and offences (I am thinking about those nasty nay-sayers and not the constructive ones. I like the constructive kind, which I can improve from). I always had a problem with showing up. That is why it was a really hard decision for me to step out of the crowd and show my art to others. The critics are always there watching every move. So I didn’t move for a long time.

But being locked in a house alone with two little babies made me want to have some attention. I could be the mom posting cute pictures of the kids all day to every social media sites possible but that is not really me. It’s the kids. It was me, who wanted that attention. And I wanted it really bad. So I got it. And very soon I got my @ss kicked for it. My first reaction was I must have done something wrong. The second was disappointment and anger, and the third was: “OK, I should do something about this issue before it starts influencing my creativity”. So I started searching for motivation.

What I found was a speech of Theodore Roosevelt, held in 1910 (the exact day was April 23 which is actually my birthday – so this must be meaning something 😉 ). I share it with you because I know there are plenty of makers struggling with the same thoughts as I was. I hope it helps putting things back into place, like it did for me. It is called The Man In The Arena:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

OK, so here am I in the arena, showing up. My face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who am I? I am an enterpreneur. And so here is another one of my favourite motivations for all of you, my maker friends, an excerpt of Common Sense by Thomas Paine:

“I do not choose to be a common man.
It is my right to be uncommon … if I can.
I seek opportunity … not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen,
Humbled and dulled by having the State look after me.
I want to take the calculated risk,
To dream and to build. To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done.
All this is what it means to be an Entrepreneur.”

Conclusion: I have the creativity in me. I have the power to make new things, to transform yarn into a whole new piece of art that hadn’t existed before. But I am human and I make mistakes. And I am really proud of this, too. Should I care about the ill will of those people who doesn’t even know how to knit? NO. It is that simple. Learn to design a knitting pattern and knit it up yourself, otherwise I am in no way interested in your feedback. This was the lesson of 2017.

And this, my dear friends, is a H.U.G.E. lesson! Life is much more easier, more beautiful and I can use my spare positive energies for creating. I am pretty sure the year ahead will be even more prosperous than 2017 was.

So let’s celebrate! I am hosting a giveaway on Instagram: the winner receives any 3 digital copies of knitting patterns of The Enchanted Forest Collection! Anyone can enter the giveaway until midnight (January 28, 2018). For further details please check my Instagram account: (link).

If you missed the giveaway, do not worry, all patterns in my Ravelry Pattern Store are on sale until Sunday February 4, 2018! To shop GK patterns, go to: (link).

Aaaaand, if you happened to miss my Birthday Pattern Sale on Ravelry, too, I still have something for you 🙂 : grab your 15% discount on your first GK digital download by joining Gynka Knitwear U-Knit Club here: (link)! This way I can guarantee, you will never miss a GK Pattern Sale any more! 😉

KNIT. WEAR. SHINE.

XOXO,

Mici

Holiday Mode: off

January 20, 2018January 20, 2018Leave a comment

I tried so hard to stick to the Christmas tree and the holidays but let’s admit: we are in the middle of January… holidays are over… I should have some work done here…

Anyway, I wasn’t completely inactive during the past few weeks. I was knitting for family, friends and of course myself – only… There are still some WIPs left but I hope they will be FOs soon… 😀

Here’s a successfully finished object, a Christmas gift to my daughter’s therapist at Bethesda KIDSz (pattern is Lemmy K. by Isabell Kraemer):

It knitted up very quickly (I needed two days from cast on to bind off, and another one to wet block) and it turned out beautifully. My mother fell in love with it instantly, so I will have to make another for her as soon as I have two days off… 😀

This past week I tried slowly getting back to everyday routines like planning, designing and posting on social media sites.

My first announcement on my Facebook site was an announcement I’ve been excited very much about and prepared for months. I’ve always loved newborn photo props but I wasn’t sure if I should design any as I have several other things in my mind that seem more important. But I had several referrals from photographers and I didn’t want to disappoint them. One day last summer I was searching for something on Etsy, and a shop hit my eye accidentally… It is a Bukarest-based shop, selling knit patterns and I was shocked by all the beauties there… and I quietly asked myself: “do I have to design every single piece myself in the GK webshop or is it OK if the Newborn section is designed by someone else, like this really talented Romanian designer…?” You problably know my answer… I bought some of their knitwear patterns, knit them up and we had the first photo sessions by November… and so GK Newborn was established…

More photos are coming soon and ready-made pieces will be available in the GK webshop from February.

For those of you who would like to browse this beautiful pattern shop I’ve talked about above, here’s the link: 3PLittleKnits

Photos were made by Englert Orsi Photography – Orsi, if you happen to read this, I’m blown away by your pictures – again… ❤

From this week on, I will write weekly blog posts and next week will be an important milestone in the life of Gynka Knitwear with a little surprise, so stay tuned ;)!

KNIT.WEAR.SHINE.

XOXO,

Mici