Just share for the joy of sharing

This is a bit of a mini rant so I'll issue apologies up front and feel free to move on if this isn't of interest. I'm sure it can't be just me though who has noticed this. Over the course of recent months I've noticed that there is an increasing trend for people to regard social media as their own personal pattern search engine.

A good friend of mine recently posted a photo of her knitting in progress on Instagram. She is a designer and frequently shares photos of her work, her inspiration and her designs. This however was just the yarny equivalent of doodling. Playing around with yarn and needles for the sheer joy of it. She took a quick snap of the pleasing colours and textures and thought nothing of it.

Then she found herself besieged by requests for the pattern in the comments. "Pattern please" people merrily chirped again and again, and even just the rather curt "Pattern?" - the latter clearly from someone who didn't graduate from charm school recently.

And of course, as is often the way, I found myself noticing this pattern of behaviour over and over again, across all social media platforms. A lovely photo of a finished knit would invariably attract more than a few of these types of responses with varying degrees of politeness.

I absolutely love seeing photos of people's finished work and yes, sometimes a particular pattern intrigues me enough to want to go and track it down on Ravelry, but as a grown woman I'm more than capable of doing that myself - I don't require the original poster to provide the link for me.

I've even seen instances where people get cross with the original poster for not providing a pattern link. "But it's up to them (the original poster) to provide the link", they assert confidently, "It's their responsibility"

I would like to make the case for the exact opposite and suggest that posting a photo of your finished knits bears no such responsibility. 

What on earth happened to sharing our knits for the sheer joy of sharing? In an ideal world we would cast off our latest project and then immediately turn to a friend, loved one or knitterly colleague to show it off to. Often though, we don't have knitty folk around us and so we turn to our online friends instead. Our virtual community of yarny folks who understand and instinctively know just how many hours of work that cabled blanket took to make. But in the excitement of taking a photo and sharing it online we don't always have the time to provide the pattern details or yarn details or go into specifics about what cast on we used. We just want to share our stuff.

And we should feel free to share our stuff without the pattern police popping up to insist that we provide a link to help them populate their own pattern libraries. Let's face it, if you are anything like me your Ravelry pattern library already contains more patterns than you could knit in a lifetime. It's hardly the end of the world if you can't add another one to it.

So knit on with pride, share photos of your work as and when you want to. Share a link if you want to, but don't feel obligated to. It's your knitting and your work and your only responsibility is in helping to make the internet a more yarn-filled and colourful place

Why pattern sharing is wrong!

Fuss Free Festival Shawl

Pattern sharing is theft!

There we go. A simple statement but one which I absolutely stand behind. In some circles I am aware that this might be greeted with a sharp intake of breath and sideways looks but as a designer who makes a sizeable chunk of her monthly income from direct pattern sales I feel compelled to point it out in no uncertain terms.

I was somewhat taken aback the other day to receive a private Facebook message asking me to copy a pattern I was using and post it to the messenger. They assured me they were more than happy to pay for postage to cover my expenses. In fact, now that I think about it, the request wasn't even couched in terribly polite, or apologetic tones. There was no "would you mind terribly..." or "I'm so sorry to bother you but..." Just a simple request that I copy the pattern and post it to them please.

I don't recall exactly what I said in response but I think I was polite (just) and firm in my assertion that I support the copyright of the original designer - whose published works are freely available for purchase.

It got me thinking though about the way that designers work these days and that maybe there might be a gap in perception between what indie designers do and how they earn their keep as compared to the big commercial yarn companies.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that there is a significant difference between a large commercial yarn company who produces patterns almost as a loss leader to support the yarn the pattern was created for. Indeed, not too many years ago there was a yarn shop near my parents house who would refuse to sell you a pattern unless you bought the accompanying yarn with which to make said pattern. The large companies almost certainly treat the patterns they produce this way, if not as disposable assets, but at least of secondary importance to their main aim - which is the sale of the yarn.

In the world of indie designers things are very different. The majority of us sell our patterns direct to the public, often via a 3rd party such as Ravelry or Love Knitting. Once Paypal, Ravelry fees and VAT are deducted that money is ours to do with as we will, whether that's to invest in new charting software, pay website fees or get the cat wormed!

For every £5 pattern sale we lose through someone 'sharing' a pattern with a friend that's money taken directly from our monthly income.

The issue which really got my goat from the original request was that the person concerned was more than willing, anxious even, to reimburse me for my time and expense is sending the pattern, but didn't give a second thought that the person who put all the hard work into designing and writing the pattern didn't deserve any recompense at all.

Like all things, it comes down to education. The more we educate people about how independent designers work and the more they come to appreciate the help and support they can get from the independent community then hopefully, they will be more prepared to support us in future.

Please knit appropriately

Places I have knit include (but are not limited to): school halls, church halls, churches, cathedrals, cinemas, sporting events, Olympic events, rugby fields, carparks, traffic jams, airports, trains, cafes, restaurants, museums. Hell, I've even knitted over tea at the Ritz.

In none of these places has anyone ever suggested that knitting is not an appropriate thing to do, nor has it generated the remotest amount of interest - except maybe when a lady took my sock off me in a cafe and told me that it wasn't possible to knit a sock on small circular needles (clearly overlooking the evidence she was holding).

The fact that a woman knitting at Wimbledon is enough to cause comment is something guaranteed to get my goat.

It would be bad enough if the comments were on the mainstream media but this discussion took place in a Facebook group for knitters. I am firmly of the 'live and let live' camp and I was pretty miffed to see so many comments along the lines of 'There's a time and place for knitting, and this isn't it'. Seriously, who is anyone to judge what someone else does with their time? I can't link to the thread as it ended up being deleted but to be honest it made for pretty unedifying reading.

And yes, if this sounds familiar you are quite right. The same thing happened back in 2012 and the BBC even ran a news story on it, And here we are in 2017 with similar comments and even comments that she is somehow wasting a seat because for the micosecond in which this photo was taken her eyes weren't on the match. If you did a quick headcount of all the people on Centre Court who were yawning, dozing, scrolling their mobile phone or daydreaming I'm sure you would find a good number who weren't fully focussed on events on the court. 

Imagine the headlines if a man were to be seen looking at his mobile phone during the 3:30 at Newmarket? Or someone gently dozing in the sun at Lord's. Would anyone even raise an eyebrow? But a woman, in public, knitting - hold the presses.

Wouldn't it be just fantastic though if it were a man knitting. How many social stereotypes could be broken in one sitting. The BBC would be mobilising the Newsnight team surely?