Adventure

I’ve embarked on a new adventure. I’ve enrolled in Shirley Paden’s Handknit Garment Design class on Craftsy. Like all adventures, it’s the journey as much as the arrival your intended destination that changes you. I’m not very far along. I know what I want to design. I know the purpose and shape of the garment and the yarn I want to use. My initial concept was a summer top with gansey stitching, bust darts, and short sleeves. 

My concept collided with reality over the past two nights. 

The yarn is Berrocco Remix: a 100% recycled non-wool tweed worsted weight yarn made from five different fibers. I’ve knit a swatch for another project with three different needle sizes, washed the swatch and know that the yarn grows when hand washed and lay to air dry. 

It slowly dawned on me that most gansey garments are made from solid colored yarn and that the garment would either be too busy with an all over pattern or the pattern would be swallowed by the tweediness of the yarn. 

Bust darts would add the complication of continuing a pattern and knitting the darts simultaneously. This is going to be Herculean feat from jump. I decided to apply the KISS principle: 

• Channel Island cast-on, to create a little interest at the bottom. 1x 1 ribbing (haven’t decided how many rows yet). 2 to 5 rows of garter stitch a row of corn stitch and then stockinette stitches. I’ll report on how it all works out as I knit the first swatch with these elements.

In a week of thinking, looking at stitch dictionaries, looking at projects made from the yarn on Ravelry and reading reviews and comments, this is as far as I’ve gotten. Granted, I’m a newbie; this is my first time out of the gate. 

But this week has engendered in me a deeper appreciation of the process every knit or crochet designer goes through. I appreciated designers and the work they put in before. But it’s a very different walk when you’re wearing those shoes.  

So, when I discovered from an old email and a Ravelry post that one designer has had

1. a crochet pattern sold on and published by Love of Crochet without payment or notification from All Craft Media
2. a sewing pattern sold on without notification or attribution by All Craft Media to Igloo Books for inclusion in A Guide to Sewing
3. a knitting pattern sold on without notification or attribution by All Craft Media for inclusion in A Guide to Knitting

that familiar rush of the anger and outrage at the downright disrespect for the creative ideas and work of another person that I felt at this time last year when I first learned that designers had not been paid, and that arose when A Guide to Knitting and A Guide to Sewing were discovered for sale, returned.  

The management who made those decisions, signed those contracts to sell on, and collected the money is and will remain justifiably infamous.

 

Eyes Wide Open

As the end of the year approaches, I’ve been reflecting on the ongoing efforts of those in the Friends group on Ravelry, our allies and partners and recognizing that the struggle we’ve been engaged in for most of 2012 (and many before then) has been a struggle for justice.  

It is an injustice that designers, writers, photographers, employees, contractors, printers, many commercial vendors, advertisers, landlords, subscribers, lace, sock, and amigurumi club members either:

• Weren’t paid for goods or services they provided
• Weren’t provided goods they paid for
• Didn’t have their goods transferred to be published by the purchaser of the magazines sold by the Administrator
• Didn’t have their goods submitted for payment and publication returned as promised
• Had patterns sold on without payment or in violation of contract or where no contract existed
• Had work published without permission or payment
• Saw goods paid for provided to the public free for download from the Internet
• Allegedly had advertising run without agreement
• Were engaged to collect disputed or uncollectible debts

For a history and more detail: Click

AND MORE THAN ANYTHING

To have the reasons for and the defense of the above and more be that mistakes were made and the companies’ liability is limited under UK law. To quote the oft quoted Mr. Bumble from Oliver Twist:

“…the law is an ass—an idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.” 

There are those who still sleep, doze, or continue to imbibe the intoxicating potion ladled out by those whose refuge has been and remains the crenellated walls of the law and who publicly swear that certain individuals have done no wrong. Personally, I wish you well with that. Hope it works for you. But I fear, and think I speak for many more than you know, that one day you will reap Mr. Bumble’s wish and find out the worst: that your eye has been opened by experience.