Well, baby Slytherins have to wear something, don't they?

There is a very good reason why I'm knitting a baby sweater in Slytherin colors. When stash yarns will work for a project I want to do, I should use them, right? Efficient resource usage and environmental friendliness and all that. These were the were two coordinating baby yarns in my stash that I did not have earmarked for another project, and I don't think I have quite enough of the green to make the baby sweater I've been wanting to try in a solid color.
It's a very cute color combination, the bright green with the "thought about being white but it seemed like a lot of work, so I went with this" grey.


The grey is a little blow out, maybe, and the green is really a bit more subdued, but I think this gives you an idea. I can see little baby Draco wearing something like this (when it's done, of course) -- except it'd probably be professionally knit out of unicorn hair or something. Bet baby Sirius got subjected to one, and it's left him bitter ever since. ^_~

We just bought a new camera, and if I may say so, it totally rocks. It was actually able to get this picture, no color correction needed, in the crappy lighting in my room.

I zoomed in to the eye white to get a sample to color correct, and found the color was already correct. And no blurring even thought it was hand-held in my bedroom's crappy lighting.

The hat there is another FO, btw. It's dollfie-sized by coincidence, though. It's actually a cap for premature babies. I wanted to play with how I held and tensioned my yarn, and it's a pretty quick and yet utilitarian project. And one I basically have the pattern memorized for; I just have to look up measurements. On this one I did a tubular cast-off with the "proper" four set-up rounds, and I don't like the effect the set-up rounds had. Probably none of you noticed until I said something, but it tightens up and there's a bit of a ridge there. You can see it especially right in the middle of Nick's forehead. Someday when I've got some of these together, I'll see which of the local hospitals takes them and drop them off. Or mail them somewhere if no one local does. Or maybe there'll be another event like Caps to the Capital.

I love my cat Angelina, but she really tries my patience. I caught her chewing on the wrist strap of the brand new, not even a week old camera -- which she had hauled off my desk for the purpose. And then later she went for the transfer cord. I'm not having a good day to begin with, so this did not help in the least. (Any day that starts with a fasting blood draw is not going to be a good one.) It also reminded me why we never put on the wrist straps, so I took it off again. I feel bad that the lady at the camera store spent so much time and trouble trying to get it on. :(

Darn it, I'm going to have to practice what I preach.

I once again tried swatching for the Fiber Trends Felted Clog pattern, and I once again completely failed to make gauge. My unfelted gauge on the suggested needles are right where the felted gauge is supposed to be. This is positively bewildering to me, because I usually knit more loosely than patterns call for. It's also very annoying, because there's not a lot of larger needles sizes for me to try.

I'm starting at a 13. I own a pair of 19s, and I have absolutely no idea why. Probably for this pattern, because otherwise I do NOT do 'big needle' knits. But, I flat out refuse to use those things. They're evil, and the points are stupidly long, and I won't do it, no I wont. You can't make me, you can't make me.

The next biggest size I own are 15s, which are only 1mm larger than the 13s (because US sizes are stupid); that is not going to get me what I need. My odds of finding 17s are not good. Clover doesn't make them that size, so it's unlikely any of the big-box brands do, either. Unless they're in plastic, and I am not buying plastic needles that I will never use again. Actually, the 'will never use again' is why I won't order 17s, either; that and the $29 the two pairs (24" and 16") would set me back.

So what I will be doing, nonnegotiably, is using the 15s from my interchangeable set for this. Which means to match the sizing I can either try it with three strands, or follow my own advice for figuring out what size to actually knit when your gauge is off. Although of COURSE this pattern has to NOT give finished sizes. :P
I should have enough yarn to use three strands if I need to, though. (At least in theory; I bought an extra ball of each.)

I suppose I'll go ahead and do swatches with both of those options, throw everything into the washer to felt it, and see which fabric I like better. But not tonight. I'm tired of dealing with the evil pattern tonight. (And I haven't even started knitting on the clogs themselves!)

Things That Bug Me (Knitting Edition)

Well, not all knitting, but they're knitting triggered.

1. DOC is a lousy file format for sharing. People who use it, please go look up the word 'proprietary' in the dictionary, kthnx. Microsoft Word, you have to pay for. And it's an expensive SOB, too. Yes, there are other programs out there that will open that format, but Microsoft doesn't like to admit it for starters, and depending on the respective versions, sometimes it doesn't work well. PDF is also a proprietary format, but the viewer is free. (And you can make them for free, too, with CutePDF. Not even any ads. It's easy; you'll like it.) RTF and HTML are both non-proprietary formats.
   OK, funny story. One of my coworkers needed something that would print to PDF, so I told him to call up the corporate help desk and ask for it to be installed under one of our corporate licenses. He thought for sure I was putting him on. "You're setting me up, aren't you? They're going to laugh and ask what I'm talking about when I ask for a program called CutePDF, right?"
2. People who have their head up their ass about intellectual property, please at least learn what is copyrightable and what is patentable, and what each entails.
3. Enough with the five bagillion patterns for fingerless gloves! I'll allow a few exceptions for actual design-element driven patterns, but most of y'all aren't fooling anyone. You're just doing "sleeve with thumbhole" fingerless gloves because you're scared of fingers. Don't be! They're easy! And frankly, 99% of fingerless gloves are more effective with little finger cuffs just a little short of the first knuckle. Maximum warmth, much better fit, and still leaves your fingertips with maximum dexterity.
4. With rare exceptions, Snap.com previews are not cool; they're terribly terribly annoying. Look, if I wanted them, I could install the end-user add-on. If your blog provider turns them on automatically (LiveJournal, I'm snarling at you), turn them off. If you put them on yourself, don't!
5. Elizabeth Zimmerman was not a deity. If you like her, that's cool. But she is not the end-all and be-all of knitting, she's not infallibly correct, and are some of y'all actually reading what she wrote, or are you skimming over what you wanted her to write? Because I don't think she said what you think she said.
   
6. The current knitting fashion of strongly shaped sweaters. It seems every time I find a sweater pattern I like, especially tanks and tees, the designer is bragging about how they "aggressively decrease at the waist." Um... My body does not aggressively decrease at the waist. And I'm so short-waisted that even if it did, their waist shaping would probably be at the point of my hip.
7. When I hit the "Publish Post" instead of "Save As Draft" button. Oops. Um, post away!
   

Flickr is owned by Yahoo, isn't it?

*scrolls down* Yup, Yahoo. I went to go make a Flickr account, only to discover myself automatically logged in. And since Yahoo is the only place I've used the name Fyrejinnayah, I figured they must be the same company. It's actually very rare for the name Jinnayah to be taken when I sign up somewhere. I guess it is a pretty obscure word, and not the usual English spelling besides. (OK, this is funny. Throw Jinnayah into a Google search, and pages by or about me make up 6 of the first 10 returns.)

Ironically, the reason I even wanted a Flickr account is for an entirely different site. I finally got my invite to Ravelry, and wanted to start loading up some projects. Particularly, I want to prove that I actually do make things and not just talk about it. Admittedly, I probably research and talk about more than I actually do, but I do do! See, proof, right here:


OK, so Da Bunny helped a little. She's actually on top of the second slipper. I've been doing them more or less at the same time (a section on one, then same section on the other) to ensure I don't have radically different gauges between them. I'm not terribly far off from finishing them; just need to finish turning the heel, and put ribbing around the top. Of course, it would help if I were actually knitting on them right now instead of setting up my Ravelry account and writing this blog post, wouldn't it?

I'm cute, though. :)

It is really time to get a new digital camera. Actually, it's probably past time. I'm thinking about maybe one of Fuji's FinePix line, but I'm not sure. I want a compact digital with a fast response time and good low-light performance, because most of my pictures are taken indoors under nighttime lighting. I don't like that, but there it sits, and it's not changing any time soon. I'm thinking maybe this weekend of going to the local camera store and asking for a recommendation.

Knitting Tip For The Only-Slightly Math Phobic

Don't fear math in knitting. Math is your friend. And I'm not even going to ask you to do anything hard like algebra or calculus, and I'll only ask you to do it once per project.

I'm going to say something blasphemous, but you have to wait for the but afterwards. Ya ready?

Blasphemy: That gauge on a pattern? That's just a suggestion.
BUT.
You need to know how to take that suggestion.

And yes, you do have to make a gauge swatch in order to take that suggestion. Maybe several. I'm not helping you weasel out of that now. ^_~

I've seen so many people tear their hair out because either they can't quite hit a pattern's gauge, or they decided they were close enough and weren't happy with the results when they actually knit it. This doesn't have to happen, if you just know how to do a tiny bit of mathematical finessing figure out what's going to happen, and how (sometimes if) you can work around that using the pattern as it's written, if it's a multi-size pattern.

Let's take for an example, you want to make Knitty's "Banff" (which I will probably always try to say 'Bamf', X-men fan that I was.) The gauge on that is 14 stitches per 4 inches. But, the yarn you want to use is TERRIBLE at the gauge when you made your swatch. It's like armor, it'll never work. So, try again until you get a fabric you like, and measure that gauge. Let's say, so I'll get some dramatic numbers here, that it comes to 12 stitches per four inches instead. And you want to make the large one.

Well, if you follow the pattern for the large one, your finished sweater is not going to be the 57 inches it was designed at. It's going to be a whopping 66 1/2".

What butt did I pull that number out of? Actually, it's pretty easy. Take the measurement, 57". Multiply it by the pattern gauge, 14. Yes, I know that's 14 per 4 inches, but you can ignore the "4 inches" for now (and I'll explain why in a minute). So, 57 x 14 = 798. This number doesn't actually equate to anything in real life, but it's an important step. Now, take that number, and divide by your gauge. In this case, that's 798/12, which equals 66.5".

To summarize, to figure out the actual size a garment is going to be, take the pattern's finished measurement, multiply it by the pattern gauge, and divide it by your guage.
(Pattern's finished measurement) * (pattern gauge)/(your gauge).

The reason you didn't have to worry about the "4 inches" is because both your gauge and the original are done over the same distance. They cancel out, so you can ignore them. Now, if the original was 4 inches, and you only measured yours over 3, then when you did the math, the gauges would have been (14/4) and (12/3).

If you're slightly math phobic, do it the easy way. Take both gauges over the same distance.

Anyway, back to the example. You don't want a 67" sweater, you want a 57" one. Is there another size you can knit to get what you want? Well, let's find out. (And, um, let's pretend there's more than one alternative there. ^_^;)

What to do? Just flip the gauges. In other words, take the size you want to make, multiply it by your gauge, and divide by the pattern gauge. So, take 57", multiply by 12, and divide by 14. That comes to 48.9". The Banff sweater doesn't have a 49" size, but it does have a 50" one. Would that be close enough?

Let's find out again! Do the first part again; use your gauge to figure out how big the sweater would actually be if you knit the smaller instructions with your gauge. Take 50", multiply it by 14 (the original gauge), and divide by 12 (your gauge). That's about 58 1/3". Now, take out a tape measure, put it around yourself, and see if you would be happy if your sweater was 58" instead of 57". With something this bulky, I imagine the answer is yes. But if it isn't, at least you don't have to knit the whole sweater to find it out. You've already done so without knitting a stitch.

So, to summarize again. You know what gauge you want to knit at (your gauge, of course).
To figure out what size THEIR pattern will actually be, multiple the supposed finished size by THEIR gauge, and then divide by yours.
To figure out what pattern size YOU should knit to get what you actually want, multiply the desired finished size by YOUR gauge, and then divide by theirs.

OK, let's take another example. Say you want to knit Knitty's Thermal in the 32" size, which has an itty bitty gauge for a people sweater. But, you're knitting just a skosh smaller. Instead of the 28 stitches per 4 inches it calls for, you're getting 28.5. You're thinking that half stitch won't matter, but everyone on the forum says it will. Will it really?
Let's find out! Take 32", multiply by their 28 stitches, and divide by your 28.5. That ends up with an actual finished size of 31.4". Decide if that's acceptable or not.

For the sake of argument, let's say that if this sweater is any smaller than 32", you're going to pop right out of the darn thing. So, what size would you need to knit to avoid spronging boobage? Take 32" (your minimum size), multiply by 28.5, and divide by 28. That gets 32.6 inches. Since you already know 32 is going to have you embarrassing yourself, you'll have to go up to 34". Which, if you repeat the math, will be 33.4 on you.

By the way, notice how this half stitch actually isn't making THAT much of a difference? In this case, it's half an inch all around, on a sweater made in a very elastic fabric. If I may say so, 'exact gauge' is kind of a bogyman. A half stitch off is not necessarily going to immediately equate to a sweater that would either be big on Goliath or stretch on a Barbie doll. So when someone tries to tell you "oh noes, your gauge will change if you get stressed or unstressed or if the humidity changes or with the moon phase, and if you don't measure it constantly and it shifts a tiny bit your project will be ruined, and the world will end!" Please blow them a big raspberry and go back to your knitting. Unless you're seeing wild changes in gauge, your base is probably going to be close enough. And if you are seeing wild changes in gauge, that's probably going to bother you well before the sizing does.

And now you know how to predict just how much that will affect you, and how to figure out what size to switch to get what you want.

This is supposed to be a professional?

Magknits, a free online knitting magazine, has vanished with no notice at all except for a message from the editor that was posted in its place. Seriously, I was just there yesterday or the day before, and everything looked fine. Now the editor is throwing in the towel -- and apparently throwing out the baby with the bathwater too, while she's in a pitching mood.

A couple of points that particularly bewilder me:
"However, MagKnits has always been a huge investment in terms of time and effort and to date hasn't actually paid me any kind of salary."

... Did she actually expect to make money off a free e-zine? Has anyone ever pulled that off? I mean, Knitty's probably about the most successful one out there in the knitting community, and I always got the impression that the main benefit there was exposure for the personnel and it just kinda broke even. (Not that I have any idea for sure, but...) Furthermore, Knitty is quarterly; Magknits was, IIRC, monthly -- making it all the more difficult and expensive. And I'm afraid MagKnits was never as polished as Knitty. It just didn't look like a really professional endeavor; it came across more as a very dedicated fan effort. Honestly, I never realized it was supposed to be a serious business venture.

Seriously, so was there any sort of business plan involved before going into this? Market research? Anything like that?

Next: 'Someone made a comment about us earlier in the week that we would be stupid to run a business that didn't pay us a salary, this made us sit back and think "Yes, you're right. We would be stupid to carry on giving so much and getting little in return.'
Earlier in the week? Dude, it's flippin' Tuesday! Talk about snap decisions! Just toss away 4 years of work (including other people's work) on a whim like that? If I take her at her word, I can't think highly of that.

What's worst, though, is the complete lack of warning. According to the notice, if I read it right, this all happened today. You know, if I were one of the designers who contributed to the April issue, I'd be pretty upset. A pattern is a lot of work, to have it go up for a week and then vanish on one person's whim.

I gotta say, too, this can't reflect well on her print magazine, Yarn Forward. I mean, knowing that she has a history of flaking on a moment's notice on one magazine (albeit a free virtual one), I wouldn't be terribly inclined to subscribe to that if I were in her market. What if she suddenly decides Yarn Forward isn't worth the effort, either? Bye bye subscription fee, I suppose. And honestly, the web design of the Yarn Forward site doesn't instill a lot of confidence (nor has the magazine itself when I've seen it at B&N, which often gets British craft magazines.) The poor image resizing, the lack of sample content, the errata links that "will be available week beginning 7th April" (ma'am, I think you forgot one or more words there) that aren't yet active... What's really stylish is that the "free patterns" link still leads to Magknits. Except for one, the Cloud Bolero -- with all the images broken.

Maybe I'm just being harsh from the surprise and annoyance, but if Magknits was supposed to be a professional endeavor, and if Yarn Forward is still supposed to be one... Well, it isn't coming across to me as professional at all.

Sometimes other people embarrass me.

Have you ever read something so stupid that you are embarrassed for the writer, even though you don't know them?
I've been getting that every time I see an article by Grace Hutton on Fiber Femmes. Every time she has one, she sounds like a flaming moron. Her articles are poorly researched, poorly thought out rants.
Take Predator Friendly -- Not Me. There are organizations out there that encourage livestock owners not to kill naturally occurring predators. There are areas with a near-natural wildlife balance where this is practical. She doesn't live in one; she apparently lives in an area where the black bear population is greater than the natural wildlife can support. Fine, predator-friendly livestock management is not a viable option for her. There's nothing wrong with that. But no, she has to go off on how the very concept is stupid, and makes herself look like a complete moron in the process. Some representative, but non-exhaustive examples:

1. She complains that yearly elk calf survival in Yellowstone is 14 calves per 100 elk cows, and obviously this horrible number must be because of predators.
1. Problem: Wild elk have an average lifespan of 10 to 13 years, which means the sustainable replacement rate is 7 to 10 elk per 100. So, depending on the number of males in that population and the adult lifespan for same, that could very well be a sustainable number.
2. Problem: Predation is not the only cause of death. There's also disease (sometimes transmitted, interestingly enough, by livestock), human hunting/poaching, lack of correct food, and so on.
2. She says that the Pennsylvania Game Commission advised her to bait her electric fence with bacon so that bears will learn this is not a place they want to be, and then states "Bear baiting and dog fights are regarded to be cruelty of the worst sort."
1. Hold on, so she's in Pennsylvania. Then what in the world does Yellowstone, a completely different ecosystem 1500 miles away, have to do with her situation?
2. 'Bear baiting' was the practice of using a bear as bait for dogs, not of baiting the bear. The term is sometimes used for a hunting practice of leaving bait for a bear until it has established a pattern of taking it, and then waiting for the bear to show up and shoot it. It has nothing to do with developing a negative association in the bear against your property.
3. She attempts to redefine predator to include parasites, so she can then dismiss the idea of predatory-friendly as ludicrous because it protects parasites. *eye roll*
4. And at the end of the article, we have a nice little appeal to tradition. Killing predators was good enough for her ancestors, dammit, so it's good enough for her, and anyone who "ignores the lessons of history" must be a moron. Ma'am, I'd like to point out that one of the lessons of that exact same history and those very same ancestors is that if you eliminate the natural prey sources and provide an alternative one, you're going to have closer encounters with predators, while at the same time if you eliminate all of the predators you're going to have a terrible time with destructive, unchecked prey animals.

That was bad enough, but then I looked through some of the archives at the site, and found an article that made me want to curl up and whine, and then take her hand and say "Honey, you're making a complete ass of yourself. "'Ethical' Issues with Wool".

The very first sentence: "Lately what is making me so mad my hair is about to catch on fire is the notion that there are “ethical” issues with using wool."

The article argues that there are absolutely no ethical issues with wool. That's ludicrous! I've previously ripped PETA a new one for their misrepresentation of the issues, but going to the other extreme is just as insane and irresponsible. Again, let's take some key, but non-exhaustive, points from this article.

1. "Most of the plant and man-made fibers require some powerful chemicals to dye them pretty colors. Wool on the other hand can be dyed permanently with food safe colors - - think Kool Aid and Easter egg dyes plus diluted vinegar." This one's my favorite.
   
1. Yes, you heard it here. There were absolutely positively NO dyed cotton or linen ever before the invention of industrial aniline dyes in 1856. Except, um, there were. Even today some of our cotton jeans are dyed with indigo. Plant fibers can be dyed very well with natural dyes and safe mordants.
2. Food safe dyes on wool do not produce results that most people would call "permanent". They are infamously fragile and prone to fading, not to mention generally starting in very pastel shades.
2. She brings in the cattle industry, and then denies that existence of factory farms that never pasture their cows. Not only is that delusional, it's not even remotely topical. Last I checked, cows don't produce wool.
3. Because short-tailed sheep exist and there is an "ethnic market" (her term) that desires uncastrated lambs, the issues of tail docking and castration without anesthesia simply do not exist. She's not arguing that they aren't as cruel as they seem to an uninformed outsider; she's saying that because it is not an issue in all cases, it is not an issue in any case.

Every industry and every fiber has ethical issues. Cotton is usually raised with massive amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. Even organic cotton requires massive amounts of water, which is not a problem in some areas but could be in others. Hemp is illegal to grow in the U.S. Synthetics produce pollution. Corn can use genetically modified plants, with the issues that come with them. Soy fibers are a biproduct of a food industry that pumps them into foods as cheap filler with no regard for the long-term health effects of the extra plant estrogens. Cashmere can be made finer by underfeeding the goat from which it comes and there are currently huge problems with overgrazing causing widespread desertification. Sheep can be treated poorly, their waste can be managed poorly, or wool can be imported from countries with serious human rights violations. Any and all fibers can be harvested or produced and processed with dangerous chemicals, and by child labor, political prisoners, or underpaid workers.

It's up to each individual to determine what the ethical issues are with each fibers, and which best align with their values. Thus for some people acrylic is preferable to leather ethically, and for others the reverse is true. By all means address and, if possible, correct the ethical concerns with your own fiber of choice. But pretending that those simply don't exist is flat-out delusional.

Bwa ha! I know what let's do!

This requires backstory.

A while back, I found a pattern for The Harry Potter Dark Mark Bag. I'm not huge on most knit bags, however. If you don't line them with fabric (a procedure which I suspect would suck) or felt them, they tend to stretch badly when used.

So, I thought maybe I'd make a sweater for myself with that design instead. Maybe a tank or at least a shell.

The problem: I couldn't find a pattern I liked to put it on. I want wide straps, a fairly high neck (for room for the emblem), and minimal waist shaping, and haven't had luck finding one. Furthermore, the time the search took got me wondering, do I really want to do this?
1) As is typical for me, I'm a much bigger fan of the series' potential than I am of the actual execution. In fact, I think the actual series taken as a whole is made of botch -- it is beyond made of fail.
2) Let's not forget what that thing actually stands for. It's basically a magical swastika.

So, I was about to put the idea aside, and it hit me. I can make it for him:

One of my dolls, Lord Mandali, whose character is a child vampire, one of the vampire lords of New Orleans, and a bit of an HP geek. (The snake's name is Nagini.) With any luck, I can find some fingering or lace weight yarn in black and green, and knit him up a sweater. A pattern is no problem: I've got both Knitting from the Top and Knitting in the Old Way. And believe it or not, a plain stockinette stitch sweater is really easy. I've done it (doll size) before.

That's one of the things I love about knitting. It can be so logical and mathematical if you want it to be. Sewing requires careful, in the cloth tweaking. Knitting you can map out on paper and get good results.

So I took the measurements, and... Oh, this isn't quite going to work. The Dark Mark motif is 40 stitches across, and I only have about 2 inches of room in which to work. 20 stitches per inch, that's beyond lace weight and into miniature territory. Out of curiosity, I pulled out a commercial sweater of far finer yarn than I would ever use singly for stockinette stitch and measured it, and it was 16 stitches per inch. No, not going to happen as is, so I can either find a different Dark Mark to chart smaller, or reduce this one, or abandon the project.

Long story short, I reduced the graph by hand so that it was half sized, 20 stitches wide instead of 40, and it ended up not looking too bad. That should be doable. I'm thinking of getting some Knitpicks Shadow Lace yarn in Midnight and Juniper, and at that price maybe a ball of Lost Lake just in case the Juniper doesn't have enough contrast. I'd like to smack someone for that gauge, though. "Gauge: Laceweight." Thanks so much! That can be anything under 8 stitches an inch, from my needed 10 down to 50, or even more insanity-tempting numbers. Judging from the weight compared to Baby Ull, which Lord Mandali already has a Slytherin scarf of, I'm afraid it may be too thin. But I KNOW the fingering weights are too large, and either doubling the yarn or knitting looser will look better than trying to cram too many stitches on. Although since it'll be a while before I place an order, I may try to do a swatch with the Baby Ull to see if I can get where I need to be without ending up with something like cardboard. That was nice stuff to work with.

What I'd like to do, at least academically, is make out a list of projects I plan to do, go through the stash to see what can be done with yarn I already have, and then for the rest of it do a big yarn order somewhere with swatching balls for each project. Then after I've swatched stuff, I can do another order for the actual project, and no risk of having a huge project's worth of yarn that turned out to be inappropriate.

I'd prefer to buy yarn from a local yarn store, of course. Unfortunately, we don't exactly have one. The nearest is a 20 minute drive away by major highway, and it's a bit on the small and limited side -- although I will grant that the staff is very friendly. I went there during my last knitting go to get yarn for the Fiber Trends Felted Clog pattern, and ended up having to settle because I just couldn't find a feltable color combination I liked. One of the yarns is now being used to make a pair of psuedo-ballet slippers, because I absolutely could NOT make the gauge on those. I just couldn't get big enough.
I'd like to try again, only this time get plenty of extra yarn, enough that I could work with an extra strand if I needed to.

You know, I need to get over my fear of felting. Maybe I'll whip up a mouse for the kitties and felt that. I'd like to try this handdone method, because I am REALLY iffy about felting in our washing machine. It's rather old, and I don't want the risk of wrecking it with wool fluff. And I'd feel bad about using so much water for a small item.
So, that sounds like a plan. I'll nit up a kitty toy with the feltable wool I'm not using for the ballet slippers, pop down to Lowe's for a 5-gallon bucket and an unused plunger, give hand felting a try, get incredibly frustrated, and then using a pillowcase in the washing machine will look MUCH more reasonable. :) [And frankly, I've wanted a 5-gallon bucket around the house, and an extra plunger won't hurt.]
Next time we're at a department store, I ought to see if I can find a zippered pillowcase, or a very fine mesh lingerie bag -- the one we already have is too widely spaced for safe machine felting. They're cheap; it wouldn't hurt to have one around.

OK, I've babbled enough. I think I'm actually going to go do something now.

Men's Crafts versus Women's Crafts

OK, first off, apologies for the title. Naturally there's no such thing as a "man's" craft or a "woman's" craft. I don't know of a single craft done with the use of a penis, and you could probably use a dildo if there was. Likewise female genitalia is not used in any craft I can think of. So properly speaking, the title should be "Predominately men's crafts versus predominately women's crafts." But that's not as pithy and doesn't fit in the subject line as well. And certainly doesn't let me share the mental image of penile and vaginal craft projects.

Anyway, what I'm actually hear to talk about are attitudes towards intellectual property rights in scroll sawing and wood carving (traditionally male-dominated crafts) and knitting, crocheting, and sewing (traditionally female-oriented crafts). For some reason, women seem to be a LOT more stingy about the IPRs. You would be hard pressed to find a modern fiber craft book that does not have a "patterns may be made for personal use only" disclaimer in the front. I've seen ones that try to put limits on how many copies you can make for yourself to mark up as you work -- copies no one else ever even sees.

On the other hand, you pop open a scroll saw book or magazine, and there's good odds that there's advice on how to sell what you've made from the patterns. (For example, Scroll Saw Scandinavian has a nice little section on how best to display the items it's giving you patterns for.) Not to say I've never seen the complaint about someone making money off of a designer's work. I did once, from someone who walked into a Hallmark store and saw hundreds of lasercut ornaments made with his pattern and without a license.

Ladies, what are we doing here? They're worried about mass production; we're worried about a church raffle. Why is this?

I know it's not that the men's crafts are harder or slower. I've been knitting and crocheting since I was a kid, but give me a choice of making a coaster with an elaborate design with yarn or on the scroll-saw, and I'll be down making some sawdust. It's so much faster.

Are men more secure in their IPs? I'll be the first to admit that men's crafts are more respected; it's much rarer for a woodworker to be told "you know, you can buy one of those" compared to a yarn artist. The hypothetical coasters: I strongly suspect the scroll-sawed one will get more wow's than the yarn.

I don't think the men's crafts have a larger customer base, and I'm quite certain that's not the cause in any event. In the 1980s, when knitting was a terribly niche market, many American patterns had a limited license (allowance to make 100 items/year for sale, or for 'pin money', or some other non-mass-production commercial use OK).

Is it related to the way women are taught to hate each other and view each other as competition? This is the one I always suspect, although I wouldn't try to say whether it's an effect or part of a cause. Is it really that horrible for your work to help another woman ease her financial burden? It's insanely rare for a crafter to be in direct competition with the designer selling the finished article, and the sort of person who would buy the pattern is not the sort to buy the finished article. (Otherwise we wouldn't be in this knitting thing; it's faster and cheaper to buy sweaters from the store.) So why not let other women sell what they've made?

I'd really like to see women's crafts open sharing back up. I mean, isn't it cool to think that the thing you designed has helped pay for another woman's car, or a meal, or a doctor's visit? Or even just a couple of balls of yarn? Designers don't have to close it off to individuals in order to prevent mass manufacturing. Heck, you will almost never see me suggest this, but grab a Creative Commons license. Instead of worrying about small losses, let's think about the big helps we can provide.