I’m a knit designer, I’ve been a professional in this industry for 17 years. I’m also disabled and provide my family’s only income solely from the work I do in this industry. I’m far from being the most well-known knit designer, but I’m not unknown and I’m respected and established.
One key reason why I, and many others, have struggled to earn even a halfway decent living in this industry is because people like you believe that making good content is easy or quick or cheap, which only serves to devalue the work we do. You believe that our thoughts, ideas or skills don’t have tangible value.
You seem oblivious to the fact that creating good content – whether it be patterns, tutorials, workshops or articles – takes skill, expertise and experience. That it takes time to build a reputation and gain the trust of our customers. And that creating good content is essential to the growth of the community and industry alike.
Had you done sufficient research you’d have learnt that many of the content creators in the yarn industry are marginalised. We’re not all white middle class women choosing to do this because we can. You’d have learnt that we’re tired of our work being devalued and tired of our incomes being kept artificially low because someone with more privilege than us can afford to take the hit, or because some dude wants to throw money around to make a quick buck.
By failing to take all of this into account you’re not only hurting marginalised creators like me, but the knitting industry and community as a whole. We don’t need another race to the bottom.
If you’re still reading, can I make some suggestions?
What we need is recognition of the hard work, skills and expertise that already exist in this industry, and not just of those folks who shout the loudest or are savviest at marketing or photography. We need accessible resources and websites. We need those with privilege to lift up folks who don’t share their good fortune.
And we need the people who don’t bat an eyelid at $80,000 for a domain name to research their new market thoroughly, and to not only pay the kind of rates that similar skills and expertise would garner in other industries – because clearly they can afford to – but we also need them to take the experts in their new market seriously.
eta/ this post was updated on 11th March 2022 with a new post graphic. The image shows the crown of my Traversa pattern.
Very well said. I hope they see this and learn.
I’m not convinced they will read this let alone listen, but it needed saying anyway.
I just hope they don’t dupe too many people, either those buying into whatever they’re doing, or folks being exploited to create whatever they’re doing.
I’m going they dont start taking free patterns offered by real designers on ravelry and somehow selling them for their own profit without getting caught. Thank you and ‘The Fat Squirrel’ for letting us know. I’ll be boycotting them and hope others will, too. Showing no respect for our whole community means they deserve none in return. Thanks.
PS Hoping, not going. Also don’t, not dont. Sorry for the typos.
I’m not sure they’d get away with taking our free patterns and selling them for profit, but I suspect they’ll be asking a lot of us to offer our free patterns through them in exchange for exposure. They’ve gone very quiet lately, hopefully they’ve learnt that the knitting community aren’t keen on being messed with!
Dear New Owners of Knitting.com,
You really ought to think twice before alienating your audience before you’ve even begun. As you didn’t research knitters, let me clue you in: This community is no longer what you might expect. We are international, we are intellectual, we are organized and we successfully boycott and ostracize bad actors.
We are, in a word, tight-knit.
I recommend that your opening PR makes a big deal about how you are going to offer designers both large and small a fair deal for the content that you are already crowing about getting for next to nothing.
Without patterns and, most important, good community bona fides, you will be just another pointless backwater that happens to have a good domain name. There are several of these that are needlework-related and they don’t have a speck of the traffic they could.
We visit our favorite websites daily – we are repeat visitors, not once-and-done uniques coming from Google. The heart of our traffic is engaging repeatedly around meaningful content. We don’t just Google ‘knitting’ and go look at a tutorial on how to purl. I realize you probably have no idea what I just said, and that, my dears, is exactly the problem.
For a case study in what I am talking about, look at the cooking domains. The leaders are the sites with top-quality content, for which they pay well-known writers, and they have loyal, repeat audiences visiting multiple times per week. Buying cooking.com, if you could afford it, would never get you the revenue that is built from content of actual value, and such content is expensive, compared to what you are probably expecting to pay Indian organic/SEO sweatshops for puerile articles larded with keywords.
You need to invest for the intellectual capital that will drive your traffic and ad revenue, and tread carefully and with respect when entering this very alert and responsive community.
Sincerely,
LoveWillWin
Well said, Woolly.
thank you. This post had been brewing for a while!
Brilliantly said!
They must think that all we want to knit is garter and stockinette, and that we’ll continue to throw money at them even when that’s all they’re capable of delivering. LOL They probably don’t even know what garter or stockinette is and they spell purl "pearl". LOL again! This website will be boycotted the minute it goes live. Their get-rich-quick scheme didn’t stand a chance.
They clearly have no idea about knitting, and say they’ve brought in experienced knitters, but to the best of my knowledge they’ve not spoken to anyone who actually works in this industry and creates content – and they’re two very different things.
I hope it does get boycotted, even better they actually listen to the indie creators already here and take what we have to say onboard. They won’t though.
My concern is not only for those of us whose incomes and livelihoods could be impacted and those exploited in the process, but those who buy into whatever they produce believing it’s all great stuff just because they’ve got the money to throw at a marketing team. The result could be really bad for all of us :/
Extremely well said. Thank you!
Extremely well said. Thank you!!
Bravo!
Brava!
love you, and it’s all so tragically true
Well said .. I was shocked although I shouldn’t have been about the arrogance when I read the info about this purchase. What can we do … just avoid that space?
avoiding the space and not linking to them is a good start! And encouraging knitters, especially newer knitters or folks not in the know, towards ethical retailers and indie creators.
they’re going to have a lot of money to throw at this and our best chance is by raising indie creators up and making sure no-one is caught out or exploited :/
Very well said, Woolly!
I don’t understand what this is about. What have they done? As I read it they’ve paid for a domain name without actually knowing anything about knitting? What purpose does this serve? Have they bought an EXISTING domain name with the intention of making money out of it somehow?
I would be grateful if someone could explain very very simply what they have actually done, because neither this open letter nor the post/website it’s about are very clear.
That is exactly what they have done. Neither knit, and they’re using this as a way to prove that you can make $5mil out of a hobby site in 5 years, and to teach others how to do so. They have referred to those who do that hobby as grannies with blogs, and have one (1) content designer who does knit producing their content. They have reached out to established pattern designers to solicit their free patterns for exposure, while presumably making good money off the pattern by placing it behind a paywall. They had a podcast episode up that revealed that one of these dudes didn’t understand what knitting is (he referred to it as crochet and sewing with yarn around the 22 min mark, the episode was subsequently deleted from Youtube). They have not connected to the community, they have not done even basic research into what knitting is (they selected it because of the hits key terms received in a preliminary Google). They did not take the time to familiarize themselves with sites like Ravelry (despite its flaws, it still is a repository of where the community is today), or some of the more established blogs/sites. The background research they did, besides the Google, apparently consists of one (1) trip to the local Michael’s craft store. There are screenshots of the initial post on the Wayback machine, and most podcast hosts should still have the episode. It seems most of the offense came from the podcast, not the original posts. Every engagement they have had with members of the community in the comments just adds more to the fire- they clearly do not respect the people who create content, who participate in this community, or who craft in general. And because they don’t know what they don’t know, they keep fanning the flames by saying stupid stuff.
Thank you for explaining.
Well said. It’s a shame they have shut down comments as there are so many more things we could say. Not least, "how dare they be so patronising?"
I agree wholeheartedly, but this needs to be said to the knitting community. Designers are undervalued at every level. Everyone appreciates the beauty and joy we create, but are too often unwilling to support us in the same way they do the right to a living wage. I pay other women to do work for me, yet I cannot pay myself.
Well Knitting .com is off my list, though it wasnt there before anyway lol
Clearly guys set on making money rather than maybe supporting and celebrating the creativity of all the various designers.
Well said : )
Well said. I know how hard you work and appreciate your hard work.
While I do not think those guys will see it, I’m happy I found you this way and have added an Arcus to my library 🙂
I don’t think it’s a given that they can pay designers etc. appropriately just b/c they paid for the domain name. It’s entirely possible that they blew their wad on that and were counting on cheap or free labor to build up the site. Which will probably lead to even quicker failure for them so I’m not too mad about it.
This reminds me of the mess that prompted Tits Out.
It’s interesting to consider that they are unaware that patterns are creative work akin to coding.
In fact, maybe knitting income would increase if patterns were sold as applications….
I don’t think they considered the value of creative content at all: what they could easily see at a Michael’s was a lot of cheap(er) yarn and needles. I doubt they thought beyond the materials.
Thanks for saying what many of us are thinking. Glad to see you’re still knitting, designing, and speaking up about social justice issues and ableism!