With uni work finally submitted and quite literally having nothing at all in the world to do (or anywhere snowy to go :’( ) I spent my time going a bit nuts with wool, thanks to my very vibrant, imaginative and.. quite brave, class mates.
Still on my to do list is branding my hats and making tags, with a possibility of getting some badges made. I had hoped to use the Interface facilities in uni to embroider labels for them, but getting in contact with anyone up there is proving fruitless. Its quite expensive too, £25 per hour, plus material costs and thread. I’ve begun thinking about other less conventional more hand crafted methods for branding, such as using pin badges, or even using epoxy resin to create my own buttons. You can purchase little circular pewter rings that look like tiny cake tins, and what you do is print out an image, in my case, the Epic logo, pop it in the bottom, then pour in the resin to set hard, and there you have it. I’ll have to some more in depth research on that, but the possibilities have got me excited 
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For tags, I want to do something a bit personal. I’m working on a design that will encapsulate the creation of each custom hat. On one side, ill have my logo, and on the other will be a ‘Hat Stats’ section. This will have information like the length of wool used, probably in some crazy measure like nautical miles or light years, the colours used, how long it took me to make, how much I like it, an ‘Epicness’ rating… something funny and thoughtful, that will give a humble-beginnings, comforting, homemade vibe about the brand .
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About an hour ago I bought some beautiful recycled sari silk yarn, that’s hand sorted according to colour and thickness, hand spun and put into ’skeins’ by women in Nepal. I’ve been wanting to buy some ever since I seen it a few months ago on eBay. I bought it from Darn Good Yarn which ensures that the women who produce it live in adequate conditions and get payed a good wage. I can’t wait to get it. It got me thinking though; Brand diversification is quite common for huge companies but not for little, or in my case very little ones. However after tweeting about my purchase earlier where I wrote, “Just bought some recycled fair trade sari silk yarn from Nepal!! Ethnic, Ethical, Eco, Epic hats ftw “, I thought, ‘thats was a bit clever.. it’s all E’s ‘ *Noise of a penny rattling on the floor* So ‘Eco Epic’ or ‘Epic Ethic’ or ‘Triple E’ or ‘E three’ or ‘Eby3′ or ‘Ex3′ is slowly crocheting itself into existence 
Still on the subject of brand diversification, my friend Coleen texted me earlier, to change her order from a stripy red and gray hat with red tassels and poms and a set of red bear ears *breath*, to mittens. Epic is a hat brand; However I do like making other stuff, such as gloves and mittens and pears. And these ‘other things’ have always quietly worried me as far as branding them is concerned, because they arn’t ‘Epic Hats’. So now that Coleen has specifically asked for mittens, I have to categorise them some how. How does ‘Epic Extras’ sound? ..E’s again.
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Thought I’d share this.. Drawn over several days, with Staedtler fine liner.
Everyone came, and the party was a rager! \m/