Ooo-wee, busy, busy, busy. I’ve been assembling and pricing materials for kits, and it’s proving to be quite the undertaking.

The kits I’ve made in the past have been for specific patterns, where all stitchers use the same materials to create the same end product. I

• do the project,
• keep track of what and how much I use,
• look up prices,
• do the math for dividing materials into appropriate quantities,
• place orders,
• cut and divide materials,
• assemble and bag the kit.

I love cutting, assembling, and bagging; it’s the brain work of planning and figuring that is hardest. Most kits contain fabric, fiber, chart, needle, and maybe some beads, buttons, or charms. I call that fairly straightforward, though that’s not to make it sound easy. There are always issues, especially regarding quantities.

This time around, however, there is no specific pattern, and that complicates matters. There isn’t even a specific size or quantity for the project. I’m assembling materials that might be used any number of ways for any number of end products. A sampler pack. A grab bag. Instant stash.

Another complication is that I’m including a wide variety of materials: I have over 40 items for which I had to find and re-calculate prices. It’s not as though prices can be found in a single Excel file; I have to look in different places: manufacturers’ price lists, shop receipts, websites, etc. For just the beads, which are listed as one item, I have separate bags of differently-priced beads: $.03, .04, .05, .08, .10, .12, .14, .15, .25, .30, .35, .40. I want to make $3.00 bags of assorted beads, a nice variety of color, size, and shape, including about $.25 worth of size 8 seed beads. Anyone care to tell me how many I should pull from each bag? And don’t think for a minute that each bag contains a single size/shape/color.

It’s a challenge and it’s time-consuming to make kits. But it’s fun, too, handling all these great materials. Sometimes, it’s hard to let the kits go!