I have a need to rant this week. I read from time to time about how some crafters will use a pattern and sell the finished goods. For some reason, there are those who are outraged by the idea that the crafter is making money from someone else’s design.
I am not talking about a company mass producing and selling hundreds or thousands of the end product but a craftsperson maybe selling a couple or more at a craft sale or on the internet. I am also not talking about reproducing the pattern itself (copyright) or selling the item as self designed; give credit where it is due.
I guess that I take exception to the outrage mostly because there are no truly new designs in the world. There are only old ideas represented. There are finite stitch combinations and colour choices. There are only so many ways to calculate the number of stitches needed for any particular size on any particular needle or hook and there are so very many patterns that are exactly the same.
An example of the fact that two people do think alike is the cocoon shrug. There are several patterns on the web, both paid and free, that, if you looked at them without seeing the attendant “designed by” would assume that the same person had written them all. How can each of these be unique to the particular designer? How could you ever say that this or that person had stolen your intellectual property and is now selling the finished product that they, not the designer, created, for a profit. How could you ever claim that it was even your pattern that they used and not someone else’s or even their own?
Another example would be Aran or Irish knit sweaters. The traditional cable patterns are repeated on many different knits that look similar if not the same. Does this mean that all of the pattern writers that produce Aran knits are guilty of taking credit for a design that is not theirs?
I design and write patterns. I know that there are many hours spent creating, writing, rewriting, editing and rewriting again only to proof read, test and rewrite once more. You publish the pattern and, thank goodness, read and respond to the questions and suggestions, most of them really good, that follow. You design to share your inspiration and vision with the world, not so that you can take possession of it and hold it close. Being a designer and pattern writer means having an open mind and a thick skin. It is just like in kindergarten, not everyone will play the game the same way that you think they should.
I rarely knit or crochet a pattern as written; I always change some part of it to make it more appealing or easier to work for me. Does that mean that the design is now mine? If I wrote the pattern with my revisions is it a new pattern?
I don’t write on my patterns that the finished items cannot be sold. I am flattered that a crafts person thinks that my design is worthy of making and selling. On those that I know from my own experience are good craft sale items, I will comment that this pattern is quick and easy and makes for great craft sale inventory. How would you police this anyway? The world is too big and time is too short to obsess over the uncontrollable.
I am not in any way condoning copyright infringement. I think that credit should be given to those original thinkers among us. I just want talented crafters to be given their due on their handiwork making items from our patterns and to turn away the protest and guilt ladled out to them for being industrious.
