The Darkside of Copyright Infringement

Here in Tucson we are losing a second local yarn shop this year and it is only April. As with any small business, every sale makes a difference towards the bottom line. Even though the prices seem higher than the large craft retailer down the street, in actually your local yarn shops carry a wide selection and better quality of yarn. They also provide help to get you through the hard part of the patterns you are working on, just try to get that help at a big box store.  They provide classes to teach you new techniques. They also carry a wide variety of books and patterns. Since they do not have 100's of stores, they can not get a volume discount.

I am going to be focusing on the books and patterns in this blog post. For the sake of speed, I am going to assume that you all know what a copyright is and how long it is good for. If not I will refer you to The Copyright Office in Washington D.C.. If you are not in the United States, your country should have the equivalent legal body. I would also like to state that this is not legal advice since I am not a lawyer. This is written from the point of view of a consumer and a pattern designer of which I am.

Your local yarn shop relays on knitwear designers and authors of knitting books and patterns that you use for your projects. They gladly carry all of these items for you to buy. No, it is not OK to ask that they photocopy the pattern from a book or that you copy the pattern down in your pattern note book. After all these patterns help to sell the yarn that they carry.

Now here is where we come in as a consumer.  This is where a lot of knitters fail their local yarn shops and designers. They buy one copy of the pattern that they want to knit. After they knit the item their friends want to knit it too. So, instead of referring their friends to the yarn shop where they went,  they go ahead and make photocopies and freely distribute the patterns. Technically you just broke the law, although copyright does let you make photocopies of the items you buy for personal use, giving the pattern away is not personal use.

To put it another way if you bought the pattern for lets say $5.00 ( I like easy math) and then gave that pattern to 10 friends. Your local yarn shop had $5.00 in sales and the pattern designer got money for the sale of 1 pattern.  If you instead did the right thing and sent those friends to the yarn store and they each bought the pattern for $5.00, your local yarn store would have $55.00 in sales and the possibility of additional sales of supplies and the pattern designer would get their rightful share of the use of their pattern.

Depending on the location of the yarn shop, the monthly rent is upward of $1,000 or more per month. Add the cost of utilities, wages of employees and other business expenses, you can see that it takes a lot in sales to run a business. This is before the owner even draws a salary.

Depending on the pattern it can take upwards of 1 month to write, test and knit a sample of the pattern that you are using assuming 6 to 8 hour work days. It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year to get a pattern book out. If the pattern is from an indie designer they  will get about 40% of the sale price of the pattern. If you buy a knitting book, the author will get between 4 and 10% of the wholesale price, with most authors getting 4 cents on the wholesale dollar for every book that they sell. So for a $25.00 book the author gets about $.50. unless they self publish.

So what I want to know is, if you want to have local yarn stores  and designers in your communities and are willing to pay the price to keep those small business running? Are you willing to send your friends into your local yarn store to buy the pattern that they want to knit? Or can you say, that I personally help close another local yarn store by buying 1 copy of a pattern and making copies of that pattern to freely distribute? The choice is always yours.

Busy with a Chance of Knitting

My guess last night, that Eric would be home sick today was spot on. Eric was running a fever all day long and it seemed to get higher as the day wore on. I am really hoping it was do to the family outing on Sunday and not the really bad cold that is going around his day program. He was cranky all day and wanted me close by all day.

So my day consisted of catching up on laundry, a little picking up around the house and lots and lots of knitting. I started out the day on size 6 knitting needles working on the stripes of a hat. Then when I got tired of that I went to size 7 knitting needles and worked on a poncho, 1.5 inches later it was time to switch things up. So I went to size 10.5 knitting needles. I started 3 hats and finished 2 of them. This was more my speed today. I wanted to finish things fast. For some reason I just need to get things finished quickly when I am sitting with Eric all day. I need to feel that I have accomplished something besides sitting all day.  I also took the time to weave in the ends of another hat.

I don't have a row count yet. I just threw all the freshly knitted items into a laundry basket to be tagged and counted at a later date. If worst comes to worst, I will count all the rows when the laundry basket is full.

Well it looks like Eric is going to be home tomorrow too, so I think it is time to call it a day.

More knitting

Today I got more knitting done. I finished knitting another hat, but still have to weave in the ends tomorrow.  I also made progress on a poncho. I might get more knitting done with the bad allergy season we are having here in Arizona.  I think it might have something to do with all the rain we had this winter.   

I have a question for every one.  Does anyone else walk and knit at the same time,like I do? Nothing crazy hard like lace.  Just washcloths and hats.  

This is today's hat. 

It's That Time of Year Again

Its the time of year to finish all my knitting UFO's.  There is a method to my madness.  You see I am running out of yarn for the scrappy hats that the kids love and I find so fun to make.  No, it is not necessary to send me your leftovers, I need to make my own.  So in my looking around the house at various UFO's I have found at least a few scarfs and 5 ponchos that will go to the kids.  I also have quite a few for me.   Not to mention the never ending blanket. 

I think it would be fun for you to join me in finishing UFO's.  Then use the leftover yarn to make some funky scrappy hats for people in need in your own area.   If you are very proud of a finished object weather a former UFO or a scrappy hat, then send it to me and I will post it on my blog.   Common sense and decency rules will apply.  Please send the pictures in j-peg format.   Who knows, there just may be prizes involved.  

Happy knitting,crocheting or weaving.  Now it's time to tackle this bag of projects.  

A Very Busy Day part 2

Today I managed a full workout.  Then I had planned on a cleaning spree in the storage room for 2 hours.  I lasted a whole 70 minutes.  The good news is that I have made a dent in the clutter.  I have also decided not to work in there again until Friday or Saturday.  This will give my body time to rest and recoup.  I will need to get it a bit cleaner and dust free before I let John help in the cleaning. It is very dusty in the storage room. Hopefully it will only take a few more cleaning secessions before we can get John a work bench. 

Eric was so cute this afternoon. I told him that I was tired and needed a nap. He spent the next 90 minutes holding my hand in a very tight grip so that I would rest.  I even tried a caffeine boost while I was sitting with Eric. Unfortunately it did not work.  I landed up taking a nap anyway.  

John was wonderful and brought home dinner. I am finally winding down for the day. I have a busy day tomorrow too. 

A Very Busy Day

Today Eric had no day program.  I had a to do list from he double toothpicks.  With 10 loads of laundry and 50% of a pattern to finish writing.   I must admit that I fell short on finishing the laundry, load 8 is now in the dryer.  Eric was watching PBS Kids and I was getting distracted by Clifford the Big Red Dog and Curious George.  My solution was to give Eric a Sesame Street marathon.  For some reason I can write with Sesame Street on and not get distracted.  

I managed to get the pattern transfered from my iPad to the Dell computer.  From the apple words program to Microsoft office without help from John. After reformatting the pattern and doing spell check I realized that I had forgotten to add punctuation. At one point I felt like I wanted to channel e.e.cummings.  One hour later everything was done, including adding the picture.  Unfortunately, it is sideways on the blog.  

After dinner I managed to get the pattern uploaded to Ravelry.com and love knitting.com.  I will try to get it on Etsy tomorrow.  The pattern is called Cactus Washcloth.  I based it on the saguaro cactus that I view when sitting at the kitchen table.  It is also my first reversible piece.   

In between all of that, I also managed to clean house and put a few things away.  All the laundry, except the load currently drying in the dryer, is folded and put away.  

Life with Eric

I was joking around with Eric this morning about laundry. I told him that I had 7 loads to do this morning and that he will bring me 2 more this afternoon since it is swim day.   I asked him if this was his way of keeping me out of the yarn stores? He smiled.   John said that it was not working out very well.  That left Eric with a look on his face of how can I make more laundry?

For a gift certificate to my etsy shop to the first correct answer. How many loads of laundry do I do in an average week?