About Me
I’m Holly, a 20-something knitting fiend and the founder of this blog. I’m an Upstate NY native who now resides in central Pennsylvania. During the day, I work full time as a digital marketer at a marketing agency. But at night, I’m an Etsy shop owner & avid knitter.
About Holly G Hats
Holly G Hats is the name of the Etsy shop I founded in 2016. I was a broke college student who had gotten really into patterned hats, and I had really never heard of the platform until some coworkers recommended I give it a shot.
Although I was initially doubtful, I fell in love with the chance to grow my own hobby-based business. I exclusively sell patterned knit hats to this day.
Although I feel like there’s still so much to learn, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about making the most of Etsy’s platform and optimizing online marketing in general.
If you’ll join me, I’m excited to share my own shop’s journey and guide you along the way. Have any tips and tricks of your own? I’d love to hear from you!
You can stop here for a quick read, but if you want a little more in-depth information, continue for my presentation of Holly G Hats: A History.
Learning to Knit
I learned how to knit when I was 18 and starting my first year of college. My college has a great knitting and crocheting club, which I promptly joined because their first few meetings of the year are dedicated to educating new members who want to learn the craft.
That’s not to say that this was at all a quick process. No, before I ever dreamed of knitting a hat, I was trying to get through a scarf. My first scarf took several months to knit, and was a bumpy, misshapen disaster. But it was my bumpy, misshapen disaster.
The First Holly G Hat
Fast forward one year. I am well-versed in the art of scarfs and potholders, and I have a singular goal in mind: I’m going to knit a hat.
I’m familiar with round needles at this point, so I purchase a cheap pair of 9-in circulars and bypass that entire double-pointed needle nonsense (apologies to the DPN lovers). I find a WikiHow article on how to make this thing work, and I’m feeling confident.
And it absolutely sucked. It looked like a mushroom. This is the OG Holly G Hat, and it is somewhere in a landfill because I was too ashamed to look at it.
It’s okay though. Practice makes perfect, as they say, and soon I started diving into fair isle so I could make hats that were both functional and beautiful. I haven’t stopped since.
The Etsy Shop is Born
That summer, I was working an office job at my college and had oodles of down time to devote to knitting. Some of my coworkers told me a little about Etsy and convinced me that I should check it out.
I was intrigued but resistant. Why would anyone want to buy one of my hats? There were way more talented knitters out there with so much more skill and experience! But after a little precursory research, my detailed business plan was formed (“why the hell not, I’ll see what happens”) and I created Holly G Hats.
Creating that Etsy shop was a huge motivating factor for me to get better and better at what I loved to do. Soon, I was drafting my own designs on StitchFiddle and taking custom requests from friends and family. Within a few months, a review or two started to trickle in, and that inspired me even more.
Growing My Etsy Shop
It wasn’t for another year that I would begin to apply some kind of strategy to my shop and begin turning my little side hobby into a passion project.
The fall of my senior year, I landed a digital marketing internship that focused on supporting small businesses in my community. Suddenly, I was exposed to things I had never given a passing thought to: search engine optimization. Keywords. Social media analytics. As I applied these concepts for small businesses, I began putting them in practice for myself, too.
Thus, Holly G Hats’ Facebook and Instagram profiles were born, and my Etsy stats actually started meaning something to me. I started educating myself about optimizing my Etsy shop, connecting with other sellers, and researching the platform.
Now, I’m learning even more as I pursue a professional career in marketing. But there’s always so much more to do! I invite you to learn along with me as I focus on growing my knitting and Etsy selling know-how.