Most of my income comes from content, but I also design knit and crochet patterns, I've published a latch hook book with Leisure Arts, and I've been in Knitscene and a couple knitting pattern books for Disney. I started a general craft blog for myself in 2010 as a way to connect with crafter friends online. Also, I saw it as a way to learn how to build a website, do photography, and do graphic design. My little posts and tutorials ended up getting featured in enough places (I started this before Pinterest and Instagram existed) that Hands Occupied grew as a blog. I realized most normal people got into blogging because they were trying to made side hustle money, and applied for an ad network an got approved.

In 2014ish, I focused more in on yarn crafting because everyone was talking about how important a niche was, and I'd been knitting since 1995. It took me a long time to realize that yarn craft design (knitting, crochet, latch hook, macrame, etc.) was something that I was interested in doing professionally. I started getting a lot of freelance video hosting work as a result of Hands Occupied, and now that I've gotten good enough at video production, I've started to grow my own YouTube channel of tutorials. It can be challenging to balance knit design with content production.