I made this balaclava while I was in the UK, for myself, and I was very delighted with it. I still am, but I have decided to list it for sale on Etsy.

Why? Well, first of all, I still have a lot of the yarn I used to make it, so I can always make another one for myself and anyway, it’s a long way until winter. But the real reason is that when I posted a picture of it to Flickr, I noticed something curious. Where all my other pictures got one, two, three, four views, the pictures of this one had twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Where all my other pictures were, in large part, not commented on, pictures of the balaclava drew a number of admiring comments from strangers! Someone even favorite-d it, but I think it might have been some horny guy with a mask fetish… oh dear.

Anyway, I’m hoping the balaclava phenomenon doesn’t boil down to horny guys with mask fetishes, because then it’s unlikely that it will be very successful on Etsy. But, I’m listing it up there as an experiment to see if there is indeed a market for balaclavas — maybe this could be my niche! And I could become a balaclava factory! Now this would be fun.

I’ll let you know how the experiment turns out!