Who doesn’t like a good story? Well, I too have a story; the story from Tangled to Know My Designs. This one is about my Knot My Designs. Did you know it was called Tangled before it evolved to KMD today? When I started working on crochet, I got inclined to choose this name. It is one simple word that captures the crux of what I do – tangling the yarns, thread, ropes, wires with a crochet hook.

You remember the story of Rapunzel from the movie Tangled? I have seen the movie and fell in love with it. But that’s not how I ended naming my work. It was actually a suggestion from a friend of mine.

So here is the story,

It was the summer of 2013. After the scorching sunny week, the weather was turning breezy then cool and misty on a Saturday afternoon. We (four of my friends and I) were sitting at this newly introduced gastro pub trying out the new restaurant menu.

With food and drinks on the table, we were talking about career, weather, life, events, and our next trip together and so on. And we suddenly started talking about entrepreneurship. It was a fancy word for us at that time. The trend of starting up own business was just catching up in the country. It was a new emerging wave of Start-ups. We talked about its future in India, the acceptance, the success stories, and the failures.

We started talking about UNDO. It was a new venture – Tees brand – that two of our friends had just started. We were conversing about the struggles and the future of it. Even though it didn’t become a success as we had expected, it definitely inspired me to start something with crochet. Remember, I had already started making crocheted knick-knacks as a hobby. The idea of starting my own small product line someday excited me. 

With that wishful thinking, one of the creative owners of UNDO said TANGLED. Why don’t you name it Tangled? You are tangling those yarns anyways. The words were music to my ears. I loved it! I am a big fan of TANGLED, the movie too. This single word says everything. It all makes sense. Thus, I decided to step ahead and launch my shop as Tangled. 

The Metamorphosis

I started taking crocheting seriously. After office hours, during weekends, any spare time that I get, I would browse for patterns, tutorials, and ideas and read them, watch them or try them out. Sometimes the pattern would go wrong either the size would be awkward, or the stitches wouldn’t be clean enough for me. Days and weeks went by struggling to get the fine lines. I would often end up with a wrong estimation and lots of frogging.

I even frogged the big (70×10) shell pattern scarf completely. The scarf was beautiful but it was just too heavy to carry. All my friends loved but and therefore they were crushed to see me so disappointed at my accomplished, which was achieved after such hard work. I was going back and forth but in the end, I chose to let it go. Even though this was my first successful and beautifully crafted item, it didn’t really serve its purpose. There’s no use of keeping it.

On a positive note, the heartbreaking event helped me understand the process better and I started making lots of good beanies and scarves since. Even though I feared to try a new design, I was more careful and calculative. 

 It was Nov 14, 2014, that I decided to create a Facebook page “Tangled” and share a portfolio of the year’s work. Even though I couldn’t get the same domain name, I still went ahead with it. That’s how TANGLED made way into crochet world and I kept on displaying new items. 

Two years had passed and I had gained fair experience in crocheting. It was Christmas evening and family vacation time. We were enjoying home cooked food and watching movies while my cute nephew was sleeping beside me cuddled in the autumn lap blanket, which I had made for him. I was contemplating making an app, perhaps a custom shopping app for Tangled and learning mobile app technology for the same.

The Genesis

I shared this idea with my family members and it turned into a brainstorming session where we discussed the pros and cons, other S.M.A.R.T ideas that sounded more realistic and achievable. S.M.A.R.T – specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, time-related idea – not a smart idea. The approach of having a blog turned out to be more practical and achievable one than getting a custom shopping mobile app. 

Now, the next step was getting a domain name. After majority approval, the creative bunch grouped aside and started darting around with Tangled, crochet, designs, create, craft, knot, etc. and many other combinations of words to get a domain name and KNOT MY DESIGNS emerged. Unfortunately! among so many searches, this was the only available Domain Name for the website. Thus, this became the final brand name. After repeating the name again and again along with my main purpose, the tagline was born – “MY KNOTS, YOUR DESIGNS”. Lastly, they helped me set up the blog.

This was, no doubt, an exciting night. But I was having second thoughts. Do I need it? What will I write about, my feelings or something else? Blogs are personal, isn’t it? Is it going to be about how will I purchase and made the items? I usually do not share much about myself unless asked and only my family and extremely close friends know me. I was at an impasse. Do I want to continue the blog in the longer future? Sometimes, you do not know how things will turn around.

Clueless and muddled with all these thoughts, I just went ahead with the decision to start a blog. Somewhere I was also thinking of the exit plan that today we are together for the Christmas and soon it will get over and everyone will be back to their usual busy lives and I might get a chance to chuck this idea aside. 

But I couldn’t. Somewhere the conviction to start the blog started to get stronger and it was during the New Year’s trip to San Francisco when I decided to go ahead with it wholeheartedly. The decision, however, was to keep it to business than a personal blog. But as I write it, let me share a personal thing with you. I believe in Knot My Designs and I want to continue making more items, learning and enhancing the content management skills, learning social media marketing, and enhancing it to become a brand as big and trusted as Nike or Amazon.