Hi there,
I got a Ravelry message once from a guy who invited me to a group for people in the region I lived in at that time. So I checked this guy out (as you do) and noticed he had patterns for sale. Curious, I went to his store and saw a basic hat pattern and a basic baby sock pattern.
I couldn’t believe my eyes: The simplest shapes of the most basic accessories - and he wanted money for the patterns. Even worse - there were projects for these designs, so there are people who might have paid the money.
I was quite angry. I’m still a bit angry. How dare he *sell* these basic patterns (since then I found a lot of plain vanilla sock patterns, some of them for sale as well). Yes, obviously the patterns contain important information for people who never knitted a hat or baby socks. But come on, there are free resources for that.
My anger is bigger than the “offence” warrants, I give you that. But why?
Easy: I was/am jealous that some guy - who didn’t even have that much knitting experience at that point - just published a pattern and valued his work enough to sell it instead of giving it away.
You might agree with me that in this instance this was a bit over-confident but it is a general problem.
Let’s stay with me, shall we? I have quite exact ideas of what I want and I have friends who are the same. We all work under the assumption that when it comes to knitting, I can do anything. And mostly I find a solution - even when my brother asks me for a blanket-like something they can put around a child in a sling with integrated closures or a friend wants a scarf with an integrated hood.
When friends asked me whether I would publish a pattern for something like the above I would reply: “It’s nothing special. I just did this thing and added that thing and everyone can do it. Nobody needs a pattern for that.”
But here is the thing: There are a lot of knitters who feel better when following a pattern, they don’t want to do their own thing. They have the knowledge and experience but lack the confidence or the willingness to develop their own pattern.
So if you have, like me, an idea for a design but think that nobody would be interested because it’s easy (for you!), try it. Write the pattern down, go through the development process and publish the pattern. There are always people who didn’t have the ideas and don’t know how to find solutions constructionwise. They will be grateful for it.
Value your time and work and take money for the pattern - it doesn’t have to be too much (I saw a tank top pattern without variations offered for $20 - which might be a bit too ambitious). But people tend to value things which cost money more than free things too.
Men are much more confident in this regard and women need to catch up!
So, tell me about a design you ended up not publishing because you thought it wasn’t worth it. I promise to tell you about another one I didn’t mention in this email in return :-)
Talk soon,
Frauke x
P.S.: Do you feel your design ideas are nothing special and everyone could do it? Do you end up not publishing something because of that? Go for it, see it as an experiment: Write it up and publish it. See what happens - and don’t forget to value your time, work and expertise by selling it, not giving it away for free.
May 2018: mmm, what are you wearing now? ;-)
Hi there,
this second issue is a chatty one as well but for the next issue I am preparing a review which should be interesting.
So, it’s time again for the newsletter. That month went fast, don’t you think? And here we had quite a hot May over here as well.
As it is May: Do/did you take part in Me-Made-May?
If you don’t know it: This challenge was created by Zoe of the sewing blog "So, Zo - what do you know?" And in her own words:
"Me-Made-May'18 (#MMMay18 for social media interaction) is a challenge designed to encourage people who sew/knit/crochet/refashion/upcycle garments for themselves to wear and love them more. This challenge works on both a personal and community level. The participants decide the specifics of their own challenge, so that the month is appropriate and challenging for them (more on this below), and aim to fulfill that pledge for the duration of May 2018. Some participants also choose to document their challenge photographically (though this is in no way compulsory for taking part) and share them with other participants." (original blogpost)
As knitters we are makers and quite a few of us do a bit of sewing too; I know I do :-)
The appreciation of the things we make is a topic very near to my heart. I have friends who are makers and friends in the knitting resp. making world and of course we are all different and individual. This shows in our behaviour and attitude towards our making and the things we make. Some are project monogamists, others handle multiple projects at once. Some make what they know to make, others want to learn something new with every project. Some make one or two types of things (mostly socks, interestingly), others make what they want to have.
Personally, I make things I need and want to have. This means that soon I’ll have run out of things I can knit for myself but there are still people around me for whom I can knit (a still growing nephew helps a lot on that front). My sock and accessory drawers have been full for a long time because that was what I knitted the most.
So that was the situation when I first heard of Me-Made-May (2013 or 2014). In Germany, May is mostly too warm for hand knitted socks and shawls, so it would be difficult to challenge myself (as I am sure my colleagues did appreciate me not challenging myself to wear wooly things in every temperature ;-) ). I didn’t take part but decided to give sewing another try.
Even before I took up sewing garments I decided against buying things I can knit myself though. As I know which colours I want to wear and which styles suit me best I knitted several very similar cardigans in different but always (semi-)solid colours. But I am not easily bored by my knitting so that is fine. I wear these cardigans all the time and only have two RTW (ready to wear) cardigans in cotton left.
But the seed was sown and I wanted to make a bigger part of my wardrobe myself: I started sewing.
When the next Me-Made-May came around, I didn’t have enough things to wear at least one piece per day or weekday so I didn’t take part. What I noticed though was that I preferred my handmade clothes to RTW anyway. I was and am proud of every piece I sew and wear them all the time.
Last year I took part inofficially and I saw that I could wear one handmade piece per day for a whole month with a bit of planning. So that would surely mean that I took part this year, wouldn’t it?
No, it wouldn’t. I gave this a lot of thought and I really love the challenge Zoe created and the momentum it got (there are more than 1,000 people taking part this year).
And as I mentioned before: I don’t need help to appreciate what I make. Since I know what I like, I like all my handmade things and wear them as often as possible.
You can make the challenge about whatever you like. Some people use this month to see where the gaps in their handmade wardrobes are.
I know my gaps: I have not too many handmade T-shirts. But that isn’t a real gap because I have enough RTW T-shirts so it wouldn’t be sustainable to sew more.
At the core of the challenge is the appreciation of your handmade things and therefore of the time and work (and money) you put in them. I think it is sad to pour all those resources in creating things you thought at one time worth it but then put them away and not use them.
If you knit something for someone else and they don’t appreciate it and throw it away (happened to me once), that is sad and annoying. But if they aren’t knitters or makers themselves, they don’t know the amounts of time, love, work and money which go into our projects.
But we know it and that’s why it is even sadder if we ourselves can’t appreciate what we made.
So let’s think about it and put on our handmade things with pride and don’t let them live in a dark drawer.
Talk soon,
Frauke x
wearing a handmade jumpsuit which reminds me: Making things made me more adventurous regarding my style and I surprised myself quite a few times.
P.S.: I appreciate and respect your work as a designer when tech editing your patterns. And you show appreciation of your knitters if you get your patterns tech edited. I have open spaces for new tech editing jobs. If you have questions or a pattern ready for tech editing, don’t hesitate to get in contact.
September 2018: One can never have enough socks
FFS - famous first socks
Hi there,
this newsletter will combine a few snippets I let fall in earlier writings or somewhere on my website with a topic which is very important to me and worth a few thoughts.
Laying next to me are these socks.
Yes, they are well past their prime: They are pilling, the toe decreases opened up, there are dog hairs on them I can’t get rid off and discolouration and they are worn out and won’t stay on my feet. Why do I keep them?
Well, these are my famous first socks. If you didn’t hear their story before, here it is again (feel free to skip it if you can’t hear it again :-)): I learned to knit in school in 1993. After practicing a few stitch patterns we were given a project: The beginners were supposed to knit a scarf while pupils who had learned to knit before then should make socks. I was an easily bored and very lazy teenager back then but clever as well. I thought that I’d never manage to knit a scarf long enough for my taste without getting seriously bored but I quickly saw the advantages of knitting socks:
When you reached the halfway point of the project, you’d already have a finished sock (a so-called HO but I learned that expression more than 30 years later).
You could identify different parts, so you could see milestones: leg, heel, foot, toe.
It was much less knitting than a scarf.
So I decided I wanted to knit socks despite being a beginning knitter. I asked my teacher and she was convinced by my sampler that I could do it and I was allowed to knit socks as my very first project. My mother and I went and bought a set of double pointed needles (dpns) and this wonderful purple (my very favourite colour back then, I was in my purple period :-)) Regia sock yarn. I had fun knitting these and I didn’t find it difficult. Our teacher only explained the next step if all of us had finished the last step. I remember that I borrowed another set of needles from my mother to start my second sock because not everyone was finished with the leg the I was. It was the time of 50g balls and my mother is a knitter too so that wasn’t a problem.
The rest is history. I loved knitting the socks, they fitted well and I wore them all the time for at least 10 years which is reflected in their condition. I got the best grade for them as well (which was a rare thing for me). A new sock knitter was born and for the next 10 years I almost exclusively knitted socks. (All for me by the way: If I put all that effort in, then I wanted to keep and wear the results.)
My first project included things which are regarded as difficult by many knitters: Knitting socks, i.e. knitting in the round and doings this with dpns, turning a heel.
Instinctively, I followed a set of guidelines which still inform my knitting. My first impulse was to say that the reason for this sock-knitting experience was that I didn’t know better back then but that isn’t true. I was a teenager and had encountered many problems before so that I didn’t believe that things would always work out no matter what anymore. I had heard often enough that I wasn’t hard-working, careful or neat enough, especially if it came to crafts and handwriting.
However, here are my guidelines (formulated for knitting but they fit with most things you can do):
* Don’t be afraid, it is only knitting.
* Knit what you want to knit, not what other people think you should knit at your stage of your knitting journey. It is your journey.
* If you want to knit something, you can and will manage it. If it doesn’t look like you wanted it to look like, try again. You can always start again.
* Don’t limit yourself. It is only yarn and needles.
* Look for milestones and break down a bigger project into manageable smaller parts.
* Just start. Even if you don’t understand a particular instruction at first, more often than not it will be clear when you come to that point in your knitting.
* It hasn’t to be perfect. Small imperfections make the finished piece even more wonderful.
Decide what you can live with and make up a missing stitch or just knit two stitches together if there is somehow one stitch missing. Decide what you can’t stand, rip it back or repair a wrongly crossed cable several cm down which takes you longer than knitting it all again (guess how I know) and start over.
* There is always a book or a person to help you along.
Of course, some of these guidelines get easier if you get more experienced but from my example you can see that even as a beginner I followed most of them.
I think it is sad to limit oneself in something which should bring joy and is done not out of necessity but because you want to do it. If you’re happy knitting a selection of patterns, using a selection of techniques and knitting with a selection of well-know yarns (for example), that is great. But if you dream about shawls, socks, jumpers, cardigans, blankets, patterns, yarns….: go for it and just start. You’ll manage.
Around 1999/2000 a friend bought a sweater I liked a lot. It was knitted in cotton yarn and had bell sleeves and rolled cuffs. I didn’t buy one for myself but I had cotton yarn from another project I didn’t like and ripped back. I had never knitted a sweater because that was what my mother did. She knitted all my sweaters when I was a child and teenager and even when I was a student I got sweaters knitted to my exact specifications. I thought that she could knit anything. And though I now know that she had her own pattern in her head and only changed colours and stitch patterns, she made my dream sweaters happen. Back to that sweater of my friend: Since I had just seen my mother knit an Icelandic yoked sweater in one piece from the bottom up, I decided I could knit a copy of my friend’s sweater as there wouldn’t be any sewing which I hated at that time of my life. I started knitting and made the pattern up as I went along: I wanted it wider at the hem (rolled hem which meant no purling too) so I decreased after a bit. I only knew one type of decreases which are very obvious and not the best choice but that didn’t matter to me. I increased again for the bust, knitted the sleeves with glorious bells, put it all together after asking my mother which stitches to knit and which I needed cast off at the underarms and decreased again until I had a suitable number of stitches for the neck. When I was at the yoke/ decreasing stage my mother told me I should have used another decrease but I didn’t want to rip it all back and decided I could live with it. Because it was cotton yarn there are holes at some decrease points but it didn’t matter. I was proud of my first sweater and still am. And I even still wear it.
In the next weeks my very first knitting pattern will be published. The sample was knitted in summer 2017, the pattern was written and edited (of course I use a tech editor) in March 2018, it is being test knitted as we speak and it is going to be published soon. It is a simple colourwork cowl so why did it take me so long? Easy: I was held back because I thought negative thoughts and didn’t apply my knitting guidelines to my designing. (There are two more patterns in the pipeline which didn’t take that long so I might be on a good way.)
If you think your might limit yourself in your designing (or your knitting if you aren’t a designer), please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m sure we can work something out. I was always good at cheering other people on and I really like working with designers to make the patterns for their designs shine. I have room in my editing calendar for new designers and those of you I worked with before, for new and experienced designers, for shy and bold designers…. You’re all welcome :-)
Talk soon,
Frauke x