I would like to say, before I begin this post, that I am really glad that I started this blog when I was a brand new knitter. In part because I like to see how I’ve changed, over time, but in part because I like to look at my old self and my current self and see where my perspectives on things have changed and why.
Today’s subject: Pattern sales and pattern purchases.
This comes from a conversation I had with a friend a few months ago — she was telling me about a pattern she’d seen in a yarn store that she’d love to knit and that reminded her of me, and then proceeded to tell me that, of course, she decided against it, because the pattern cost money. My first reaction surprised me. Instead of sympathizing with her about how expensive patterns can be, I found myself inwardly disagreeing. I had a sudden shout of my inner voice saying “Designing is hard work and designers should be paid for it!”
Then I thought back to a couple of years ago, when I was just beginning to really learn to knit and afraid to turn a heel on a sock and realized that I absolutely chose things to knit because the patterns for them were free. In part because I didn’t want to spend money on a pattern and have it turn out to be too difficult, and in part because, well, I just didn’t see the point. Why buy a pattern when there were so many beautiful projects to be made from free online publications like knitty.com?
My how times change.
I started with books, figuring that they could teach me skills that I didn’t have, and they have and I’ve made some beautiful things from various pattern books. Then I grew into individual patterns because I decided that I wanted to knit lace stoles for the four lovely women in my wedding party and I wanted them to be different from each other and reflective of the people I was knitting for. And then, sometime last fall, I started to realize that I didn’t really need the patterns any more. I’d made enough things based on other people’s instructions and my own history of sewing that I understood the basics of how knitting works… or at least I understood them well enough for my own purposes.
Funnily, though, it hasn’t stopped me from buying patterns. My most recent cast-on is Themis (rav link) from The Sanguine Gryphon’s summer pattern line.
Now, this pattern (as it says in its blurb) is not complicated. It doesn’t actually use any techniques that I don’t know in terms of construction or knitting. I have other garments at home with a similar shape and fit, and lots of stitch dictionaries, so reverse-engineering it, if that’s what I wanted to do, would be a matter of taking some time to pick out a stitch pattern, knit a gauge swatch, do a little math, and start knitting.
I was tempted to do this, guys, I really was. And six months ago, or maybe even a year ago if I’d been brave/focused enough to work on sweater knitting at the the time, I might have done just that. But the thing is, this garment wasn’t my design. It wasn’t my Idea. It was someone else’s design and someone else’s idea and that person had put time and energy into turning that idea into a set of instructions so that I didn’t have to.
I decided that despite whatever modifications I was going to make (and there are some that I have planned — I’m not real crazy about the idea of putting a bunch of bobbles on a part of my body that I’d like to make look slimmer, so I think I might use a plain rib or even a wavy rib instead — and I really wanted to use a silk/merino blend stash yarn so that I’d get extra drape in the top section), I was still borrowing a lot of ideas from the original garment. Not just as an inspiration but as a pretty fundamental guideline for the top I wanted to make. And I felt that doing that meant that I needed to buy the pattern.
Funny how I’m more inclined to buy patterns, especially from independent designers, now that I need them less than I ever have, because I can more fully appreciate the work that goes into producing them and I want to support that work. Time changes all thing, I guess, especially perspective.