The Beetle Tracks scarf pattern is now available for purchase!  Thank you to all my test knitters!

Beetle Tracks is a simple lace and cable scarf, perfect for small amounts of soft yarn! Shorter than a typical scarf, it’s still long enough to wrap around once the neck and secure. The stitch pattern is simple to memorize and becomes very soothing after a time. If you’ve never done cables or lace, this is a gentle start in each. Quick gift knits, and once you’re used to the repeats, a perfect TV project!

For a better idea of length, here’s a rather unflattering photograph of me wearing it.

SIZE
Finished Width: 4.5 inches
Finished Length: 56 inches

MATERIALS
* 220 yards sport weight yarn
Shown in Knit Picks Andean Treasure in Embers
* 1 set U.S. size 5/3.75 mm needles
* cable needle
* tapestry needle

GAUGE
21 sts/28 rows = 4 inches in stockinette stitch

$3.50 in U.S. dollars.  Buy now for PDF download!

I’d hoped to have the pattern for my new shawl ready for test knitting by today, but unfortunately, I still have a little way to go.  It’s mostly ready, though, so yay!  I just wanted to make two options for size and while the charts are ready, I figured it would be handy for knitters of all stripes if I had written out instructions as well.

My sister kindly modeled for me to get some shots of the finished piece.  I may need to shoot her again (wow, does that sound creepy!) but in the meantime, enjoy!

At this point, the shawl is tentatively called Clothilde (pronounced kloh-TEELD).  My naming process for knits involves a combination of sheer nerdery and a certain randomness.  I tend to start with a basic impression that I personally get from the knitwear.  In the case of Pauline, for example, it reminded me vaguely of something a flapper might wear.  I knew I wanted to use a feminine given name for it, and so I looked at names that were more common among the girls born in the early nineteen hundreds.  To make sure it evoked a particular time (and this is terribly subjective, to be honest) I looked for a name that was not nearly so popular after that period.  Pauline leapt out at me as a name that sounded cute and spunky and old fashioned, so I used it for the hat.

In this case, the lace of the shawl reminded me of spearheads.  I saw the long columns of gull wing lace coming down into points that were more triangular at the top and then took on a more organic teardrop shape, and in the colors I used, both of which remind me of metal, it made me think of spears.  I still wanted a feminine name, I thought, so perhaps one that evoked the spears.   I preferred a Latinate name or an Turkish one, because the shapes also reminded me of Spanish or Turkish tiles.  Unfortunately, most of the names I found referring to spears were Germanic or Celtic, and on top of that, Gertrude (”spear of strength”) just didn’t sound right for my shawl.  So I expanded from the spears and went for something warlike, which is how I came to Clothilde (still Germanic in origin, but Francofied on its entry into France).  All names ending in -hild or -hilda are feminine Germanic names referring to war.  Many of these names sound very heavy in English (Gunnhild, Reinhild, Irmhild, Brunhilde) but there are some, like Matilda, that have been softened by passing through a few languages and iterations.  When I came to Clothilde (”famous battle”), I felt like I’d found a good fit.

This isn’t my favorite picture from the shoot, but it gives you a pretty good idea as to size.  This is really a very large shawl, but even in the DK weight yarn, it’s light enough to be worn comfortably in a variety of different ways.

Like so.

I’m writing up the pattern for the large size and for the small shawlette size I made with the sock yarn.  I am leaving in the improvements I made in the charts, so the written version will not be identical to the small shawlette pictured here, but the size will be very similar.  I don’t know if the differences between the large and the small are clear in these photos, but all the changes happen around the center “spine” stitch, and it’s a matter of placement as regards the spearhead shapes, which I think is much improved in the large size version.

While the changes won’t be enormous, I don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking that it will be exactly the same as the shawl pictured here.

May I mention again how very much I love this color?  Good heavens!  It is glorious stuff.

You can click through on any of these pictures to get to my Flickr stream, where there are a few more photographs.  I’ll keep working on the pattern and get it out to my test knitters as soon as possible.

The story of how this shawl came to be starts with Project Spectrum.  The current theme, East, is connected with the color yellow, which color, much as I’m currently in love with it, is rather under represented in my stash.  One of the only yellow skeins I had was the gorgeous Socks that Rock in 24 Karat that Sarah sent me.  And I loved that skein.  I knew I wanted to use it for something special, but none of the patterns that appealed matched the yardage in the skein.

The obvious thing to do, of course, was to use my lack of experience in knitting lace and make up my own pattern.  Or at least it seemed that way.  I quickly ran into issues with my charts.  (I’m learning, apparently, because I actually made charts before I started knitting, rather than desperately trying to decipher what I’d done after the fact.)  After a whole lot of frustration, I decided to simplify the lace I was planning and I went back to my books and settled on the always lovely gull wing lace.  It’s used so often that it can’t ever really be unexpected, but I thought it had real possibilities.

So that’s how I made the shawlette.  I don’t yet have a full picture, but I’m wearing it all the time, and I love it.  It’s comfy and pretty and shiny and gold and just wonderful.  It’s astonishing how much like gold the 24 Karat is when it’s knit up.  In the skein it appeared to simply be a very rich egg yolk yellow, but knit up it shimmers.

It’s not perfect, but I’m very happy with it.  Knitting it through showed me where the problems remained and I revised my charts.  I knew I wanted to make a larger version and I knew I wanted to use Malabrigo Silky Merino.  The gorgeous Cape Cod Grey at the store looked perfect.  Cape Cod Grey sounds very dull to me for such a silvery hue.  It’s almost metallic.  The lace at the edges looks like spearpoints to me when it’s knit in that grey.

The charts are all set, and now I just need to get modeled shots and put it altogether into a pattern.  I think it will be ready for test knitting early next week.  I’m feeling very excited about this whole thing, and I hope you guys like this one as much as I do!

]]> http://knittingkninja.com/2009/06/26/peek/feed/ 10 spiffygrits Clothilde 1 Gold Clothilde Clothilde 2 Clothilde 3 http://knittingkninja.com/2009/06/17/girl-detective/ http://knittingkninja.com/2009/06/17/girl-detective/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:47:20 +0000 Kristen http://knittingkninja.com/?p=405 ]]>

Hey, you know what we haven’t had around here in a while?  One of my semi annual long rambly feminist rants. About time, I think.

A little while back, Emily posted this in response to my musings on enjoying the things we don’t have to do.

I think something else that’s going on, at least in Anne and the other L.M. Montgomery books, is that they really valorize a particular kind of intellectually dreamy yet physically adventurous, almost tomboy-ish girl, and that type of girl (as portrayed) is unlikely to enjoy a quiet, non-narrative activity like sewing. I find that in many novels about girls there is this idea that the main character is interesting because she’s different from other girls – and sewing/knitting is often the shorthand indicator for boring feminine normalcy. So often the “dull” girls are content sitting still and sewing, whereas you can tell the “interesting” girls because they like to read and to be outside, roaming over the prairie/dale/moor (Callie Woodlawn, Scout Finch, and Jane Eyre also leap to mind). Which is interesting and problematic, in terms of discounting the traditionally feminine & claiming that girls are only interesting if they’re more like traditional boys.

Good points, all, and they stayed in my brain and affected my interpretation of my recent reading choices.

Some years back I wrote the very, very messy first draft of a novel, and I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to edit it ever since.  Recently, it occurred to me that what my novel most needed was a good dose of noir and mystery.  There is a mystery central to the plot, but the writing about it was so unfocused that it never became cohesive.  Reading the works of masters of detective fiction has become a major project for me of late.

So after reviewing Hammett for a while and moving on to Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, it hit me that I had never read a Nancy Drew book.  Nancy Drew was the commercial creation of Edward Stratemeyer, the successful publisher of the popular Hardy Boys mystery books.  Stratemeyer was a decided anti-feminist, but he was an even more decided capitalist, and when he realized that girls were purchasing the Hardy Boys books, he saw an opportunity to make money in the person of a girl detective.  Thus was Nancy Drew born.

Since Nancy Drew was entirely a commercial enterprise, her incarnations have changed somewhat over the years to suit the vagaries of different times and attitudes.  The byline Carolyn Keene is as much a fiction as Nancy herself; all books were ghostwritten.  In 1959, the earliest Nancy Drew books were reworked to suit changing cultural attitudes toward race.  It has been written that much of Nancy’s personality was stripped out at this time as well, but since my library only had the rewritten novels, I can’t personally confirm or deny this.  I can tell you that the solution to the racial insensitivies seems to have been to strip all references to non white characters from the books entirely.

Nancy presents an interesting counter and confirmation to the issue brought up by Emily.  Nancy has all the feminine accomplishments suitable to a young lady of her times, and what’s more, she enjoys them.  In one of the books I read, Nancy arranged a bouquet of flowers that she had grown herself and then, much to her surprise of course, won first prize at a local garden show with her arrangement.  She sews, she has fabulous fashion sense, she probably knits, though she didn’t in either of the books I read. Nancy is independent, confident, capable, and wholesome.

And she’s an absolute bore.  The character is more static than any I’ve read in a long, long time.  Already practically perfect, there’s no real need for Nancy to grow.  She exhibits none of the endearingly human foibles that the rest of us experience.  Anne Shirley, though also practically perfect in her own way, shows temper and makes mistakes repeatedly.  Nancy has no time for mistakes.  She must solve the mystery, at her own expense, without reward, and on her own initiative, because she is just that amazingly perfect and wonderful all the freaking time.

It was easy to see what about Nancy appealed to young women, though.  Nancy manages to straddle the uncomfortable line between left and right in the United States, and she does so with aplomb.  Nancy is independent, confident, trusted by the men in her life, and while she shows consideration for others, she is also very much whole in herself, so much so that her faithful boyfriend, Ned, seems rather limp and dependent in comparison.  At the same time, she has the traditionally feminine qualities already mentioned, and the respect she shows others, as well as the individual charity, tends to appeal to the politically conservative.  Nancy’s role is traditional and feminist at the same time, making her a fairly unique figure in children’s literature.

I’d rather read Hammett, but there’s something to be said about this wooden archetype who inspired Supreme Court justices and First Ladies. In an odd way, Nancy is closer to my particular brand of feminism than the heroines I’ve enjoyed and admired more.  I’m an ardent feminist who lives a fairly conservative life.  I’ve been a stay at home mother to three kids for a good long time now.  While I currently attend school and work, most of my adult life has been wrapped up in traditionally feminine pursuits.  It has been occasionally asked of me how I, a stay at home mom who loves to cook and knit, who has spent many occasions literally barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, can call myself a feminist.

I suppose we all must decide for ourselves.  If someone wishes to think me a bad feminist for living my life this way, that is his or her prerogative.  To me, though, feminism is not about disparaging the traditionally feminine.  It is about upholding the rights of women to make choices for themselves.  It is not just about those choices.  We can make choices that are decidedly unfeminist and antifeminist, but the right to make those choices for ourselves is a feminist cause.  I believe in the rights of women to determine their own courses, to have as level a playing field as is possible in a world where we all differ in talent, ability, and inheritance.  I don’t believe in allowing other women to decide for me based on what they believe is best for women, whether that view is one of women in traditionally feminine roles or women in traditionally masculine roles.  Ideally, we carve out our own place based on our own needs, and yes, our own desires.

Nancy Drew, girl detective, practically perfect in every way, is not a perfect symbol of feminism, but in some ways, she comes close, and for that, she has my interest.

This is a little scarf I whipped up for one of my sons’ teachers!  I hadn’t originally planned to write up a pattern, but I was very pleased with how it turned out, so I ended up doing just that.  My scarf is short, but long enough to wear comfortably (I’ll get modeled shots soon), and it took only 220 yards of sport weight yarn!  I’m very pleased about that.  If you’re interested in test knitting, send me a quick message. My scarf was 55 inches long, but you can, of course, make yours longer, provided you have more yarn.

Perhaps this makes me odd, but the stitches together reminded me of Namib Desert beetles and the tracks they make in the sand.  The pattern, therefore, is named Beetle Tracks. It’s pretty simple and easy to memorize, and I hope other people enjoy it.

Other things!

The cutest little fellow showed up at my house the other day.

He didn’t bring any baggage, but he did bring a lot of cheer!  Weezel arrived on the very day that I really started feeling better again.  I think he’s good luck. He quickly made a friend.

Weezel has since settled happily onto my knitting cabinet.  Such a cool thing to get in the mail!  Thank you, Lady!

And since I’m trying to catch up, here are a few more things I’ve been working on and a detailed shot of the lace from my rustic cardigan.

New pattern, available at Popknits!  Verde is a green string bag knit out of recycled cotton.  This was my secret project for April, and it was a pretty relaxing knit, for the most part, save for the handle, which was reknit several times over.  I had a hard time settling on the perfect stitch pattern and needle size to create a really firm handle that wouldn’t stretch downward too much when worn and wouldn’t dig into the shoulder.  Many thanks to the Lady, who, during this period, looked at a proto-handle and suggested going down in needle size and using some kind of woven stitch.

When it came time to take the pictures for this project, I thought we might as well take them on an actual family outing, when we were putting the bag to use.  The photos were taken on our trip to Ardenwood Farm, which I mentioned previously.  Our picnic blanket and Nora’s Fleesa are shoved in there.  We’ve since used the bag for groceries and discovered that we can fit a whole heck of a lot of them in there!  The butterfly lace is super stretchy.

My husband has asked me to make a few more of these, so it’s a hit at our house!  I hope you can use it, too!

More soon, as I’m finally recovering!

Muench Sir Galli, now discontinued, is a silk tweed, and while it’s not actually practical for rustic use, something about it, from the subdued natural tones to the tweedy flecks and nubs, screams rustic.  It has a gnarled, woody look, and when I finally made use of it, I felt that I wanted to turn that woody look to the advantage of the garment.

This isn’t the most practical cardigan I’ve ever made, but I’m excited nonetheless, because all the elements of this experiment worked out rather as I wanted them to.  I had a vision and the end result looks an awful lot like that vision, despite a certain lack of knowledge when it comes to shaping lace.  You can see that in the rumply shape of the front panels, but the raglan shaping itself went very well.

I need to get a picture of the back of this so you can actually see the Fir Cone lace.  It’s a fine old Shetland pattern, closely related to Razor Shell and Fern lace, but it doesn’t lie as flat as either of these.  This is where the silk yarn came in handy: the sheer amount of drape causes the lace to lie relatively flat, something I don’t think would be possible in most fibers.

As I said in my last post, I have no plans to write up a pattern for this one, but I do like the construction enough that I’m planning a similar garment that will be written up.

I’m still unwell and still on crutches, and am overall unhappy with my body and its inability to stay healthy for any space of time longer than a month.  The crutches are leaning against a nearby wall in the above photo, and to be honest, soon after it was taken I was too tired to stay upright.  It’s just a bit discouraging.  Use of the crutches creates pain in parts of my body other than my foot, and then my fibromyalgia flares up and I’m exhausted and painful all the time.  It’s making me crabby.

I have deeper thoughts, mostly inspired by Emily, that need to be written through, but I’m afraid I’m too tired to get to them now.  So for the moment, it’s just the new sweater!

I have had a rough time of it lately in terms of health.  I was sick for a time (though not with swine flu – yay!), and then I hurt my ankle and now I’m on crutches.  I’ve been largely confined to bed, so I haven’t really been as up on things that require being upright, such as sitting at the computer.  (I had the iPod in bed, but that’s very hard to type on.)  Anyway, this means that all my Project Spectrum North projects, cast on last minute in mid April or later, have gone unposted until now, when we’re in Project Spectrum East.

Dishcloths?  Oh yeah, baby.  That’s right.  I got yet hardcore dishcloth action right here!

Honestly, I never really imagined myself knitting dishcloths, but I came into a small amount of dishcloth cotton over time, and last month I decided to use some of it up.  I have to admit, while not the most exciting thing to make (rectangles that will eventually be covered in grime) they are much, much nicer to use than my usual pile of rags from hacked up tee shirts.  In both of these instances, I picked a simple knit/purl stitch pattern and just went with it.  No edging, just two kinds of basic basketweave.  The texture actually makes them very useful for cleaning.  Can you tell which one’s been washed?

I also made a hat for Mr. Kninja for next winter.  He’d been eyeing the leftover green yarn from Liam’s rainbow jacket, and while I knew he wanted a Thorpe or other ear flapped hat, I didn’t have enough left for that.  I chose Turn-A-Square, and used the remnants of my Chasing Rainbows Superwash for the stripes.  It reminds me oddly and intensely of Oscar the Grouch.  It’s just such a nineteen seventies Sesame Street sort of hat, what with the bright colors and the stripes.  I really love this thing…it just suits Mr. Kninja to the skies, and it’s so cheery and odd.  The stripes are actually really close to Mr. Kninja’s skin tone, which adds to the funny overall look.  It’s like he’s trying to camoflauge himself in a crayon box.

Finally, another project for Mr. Kninja.  The Lady was kind enough to meet up with me and teach me Magic Loop, and this is what I’m making with my new ninja skills.  I am so loving the Magic Loop, and kicking myself for not learning it earlier, after all these years of posting vaguely about how I should probably learn.  The toes on these socks are leftover Smooshy from my Spring Green top.  The rest is yummy Trekking.

I am afraid Project Spectrum North just zoomed by for me.  I love green!  I felt so ready for green and North and all the ideas connected with North, but somehow it just kind of passed me by, with only these last minute projects (and one still secret project) to show for it.  However, that’s not the case with Project Spectrum East.  Oh no.  I am so ahead of the game on this one.

This indistinct heap of knitting is a project that hit me quite suddenly this weekend.  Since I was laid up anyhow, I decided to just go ahead and start it.  It’s in every way connected with the themes of Project Spectrum East.  From the Project Spectrum Ravelry group page:

EAST (May/June)
Color: Yellow
Material: Wood
Season: Spring
Element: Air

The project you see here is a spring layering cardigan in butterscotch silk tweed with a woody look and an open, airy lace pattern on the top half.  It’s not as yellow as a project I have in mind for later, but I just couldn’t resist starting right when inspiration struck.  I have very few urgent projects on the go at the moment, and it seemed like an opportunity for spontaneity.

The lower half of the cardigan is knit sideways in one long strip.  The upper half is a Shetland fir cone lace – very puckery, but I think the silk will flatten pretty well.  It’s all got a very rustic, outdoorsy look.  I made large short sleeves, which are just now being attached, and I’ll be finishing it up with a raglan construction.  I’m afraid I have no plans at all to write up a pattern, though.  It’s really very improvised, and I think my method of dealing with the lace is pretty amateur.  I may write up a similar pattern later, but not this one.

Still, I’m very excited about this project.  I only started it this weekend and I’m almost done.  I hope to have modeled pictures (sans crutches) soon!

On April 26th, we went to Sheep Shearing Day at Ardenwood Historic Farm.

We arrived after the shearing itself was over, but still in time to see plenty of formerly woolly ruminants looking svelte and wary after their haircuts.  The sheep in this photo are keeping a close eye on the border collie crouched at the edge of the field.  She herded them all into a trailer for travel to another field shortly after I snapped a few pictures.

The Ardenwood sheep are a mix of breeds, and unfortunately, I didn’t write down which ones, though I think some are Corriedale.  Whatever the case, while there were some fleeces that were not as appealing, many were long staple with a heavy lanolin scent and a beautiful hand.

Ardenwood is run as a Victorian era California farm, with a working horse drawn railroad, a variety of animals, and crops in regular rotation.  It’s a lovely weekend destination for Bay Area families, and it was a real pleasure to go there again.  We hadn’t been in over a year, and it was nice to see so much going on.  The costumed park attendants were hard at work sorting, combing, carding, and spinning the wool, and the kids got right in on the action.

Gabriel found the looms fascinating and spent a little time learning to weave.  The little loom had a very simple cloth pattern on it, but there was a more complex one further down the table.

Liam and Eleanor were more excited by the carding, which was being done on a hand cranked machine.

In the barnyard, we arrived just in time to feed the newly shorn sheep.  While the adult animals looked a little eerie with their short cuts and alien eyes, the lambs were as charming as only lambs can be, and all were only too glad to accept handfuls of timothy and alfalfa from the children.  The Ardenwood staff make it clear that you are to drop the food where they can reach it, but several times an overzealous sheep pulled it from an outstretched hand before it was let drop.  Eleanor was accidentally kissed by a sheep and was made very happy by it.

All in all, it was a delightful day.  The weather was perfect, and the outdoors and the animals and the space and the children all conspired to make a perfect time out.  It was hard to ignore the fact of work, though, in this family outing.  While we missed the vigorous act of sheep shearing, the outspread fleeces and heaps of wool bespoke a long and arduous journey from sheep to cloth.  The woman I spoke to told me it would take the entirety of the coming year to spin all the wool.

Because Ardenwood is a living museum of times past, all this work is and will be done by hand.  And while for most of these days, handiwork is a luxury, for the Ardenwood staff it’s a job.  The woman I spoke to was a spinner.  She told me that she’d done it for pleasure for many years, but that working at Ardenwood had dulled her pleasure and that after she left, she’d actually given it up for a time.  She’d only returned to spinning after a break of several years, and only returned to the farm last year for the shearing.

This, to me, is an interesting part of the history of handiwork.  It’s a very enjoyable activity only when it’s not an intensive daily slog.  As a small child reading Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie, I remember being struck by how much Anne and Laura hated sewing, an activity that sounded interesting, fun, and relaxing to me.  But it wasn’t as though I had to sew a stitch if I didn’t want to.  Any sewing I did was unskilled and done solely for the pleasure of doing it.  Anne and Laura both achieved competence and even mastery in the craft, but neither enjoyed it because it was something they had to do even though they had no real interest in it.  This is much how I feel about vacuuming or cleaning the kitchen.  I might even enjoy the results of my labor, but the labor itself is not something I want to think about.

Ardenwood is beautiful this time of year, and for idle adventurers like me and mine, paying a small fee to go and harvest corn or card wool or feed livestock is a joy.  For others, it’s work.

]]> http://knittingkninja.com/2009/05/11/shorn/feed/ 2 spiffygrits Wary Fleece Gabriel weaves Woven Crank Card Shorn Sheep http://knittingkninja.com/2009/04/27/i-love-my-math-class/ http://knittingkninja.com/2009/04/27/i-love-my-math-class/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:23:05 +0000 Kristen http://knittingkninja.com/?p=390 ]]>

I don’t think I’ve ever thought those words to myself before Saturday.  But I do.  I love my math class.

Math is one of those subjects that is clearly important and yet has, until recently, seemed really endlessly boring to me.  It’s not that I was awful at it, though some days I certainly feel that way.  I’ve actually always tested well in math, but I’ve rarely intuitively understood why the more complex processes work, and if you’re like me, you want to know why.  My current math class comes at a point in my life when I’m older, more serious, and more determined to understand than ever before, and I’m really getting it.  I keep seeing all these connections and patterns and I can feel my brain expanding.

My class is on Saturdays, and it lasts for close to five hours.  Around 10:30, when we usually have our break, I’m downright peckish, but also hyped up and thrilled with the sudden influx of knowledge.  Yesterday, as I went to buy a slice of pumpkin bread and a green tea, I had this momentous feeling of connection.  I couldn’t stop thinking, and, sitting down in my desk again to nosh, I unwrapped the pumpkin bread and inhaled the spicy smell.  I’m currently reading a book about spices, and the smell made me think of just how far those spices traveled to end up in my bread, how expensive they would have been a mere few generations prior.  They would have evoked lands unknown, having traveled from one merchant to another until the point of origin was mere legend.  Today, most of those spices still come from India and surrounding islands.  The pumpkin, like so many gourds and squashes, is a North American native, but has flourished well in Europe.  We must have common pollinators – so many Spanish treasures lost their value when they proved easy to grow in the Old World.  The green tea, like the spices, comes from Asia.  And the sugar for my tea and bread was cane sugar, which likely came from the Southern U.S., but in the past would have come from the Caribbean.   My inexpensive breakfast was a miniature history of imperialism.  I was gulping down what once would have been seen as treasure as though it was what it was – a cheap mid morning snack to get me through the remaining hours of math class.  Imagine.

I like that about my math class.  So much of math is about connections and pattern recognition, and once I’m in that mindset, it takes a little while to turn it off.  I keep seeing new ways of looking at my life, and I like it.

After class, I took BART to my stop, about a mile from home, and since it was a gorgeous day, I walked.  My brain was still humming, and I decided to apply it to knitting for a while.  I’m still thinking a lot about the subject of knitting classes and design, and the relation between the two.  The comments on my post were really interesting, and I’ve been reading some of the many other blog posts on the subject.  I think, like so many subjects, there’s not really so much disagreement as there are shades of opinion that amount to approximately the same thing.  I think we can all agree that licenses should be honored and that designers and shops need to be aware of licensing rules, and that designers should be credited for their work.

Anyway, the conclusion I’ve been led to is in some ways a little depressing, but it’s that to avoid abuse, the best thing to do is to charge for patterns in the first place.  I’m not sure where the rule originates, but I remember, even from childhood on, hearing that one should never offer kittens or puppies for free, even if you want to be rid of them, because putting even a miniscule price on them tends to weed out the cranks and villains.  People who want to misuse something also don’t want to pay for it.  Of course there are people who will misuse paid material as well, but even a token price tag will help deter the folks who really are unscrupulous.  This doesn’t solve the whole problem, but until unscrupulous behavior ceases entirely, there will be problems that will arise.

I’m sorry for the lack of pictures in this entry.  It’s not for lack of projects, but the only one I’ve actually photographed recently is one of those secret projects, which is a shame, as it’s also the only work I’ve done for Project Spectrum.  You’ll see it soon, though!