Yep, my next fo is my signature sock design, knit from The Knittery Merino 4ply Sock in “Chocolate”.
Chocolate SocksI was aiming to have the pattern tweaked and polished up, and photos taken, by the Knitty deadline of 5 January. But various delays, including my poor hands packing it in and, well, Christmas and New Year, prevented that. The theme of the next Knitty is ‘traditional knits’, and I’d hardly consider this pattern traditional!
White Chocolate SocksBut I have a confession to make. Lately I’ve also been reconsidering the whole ‘get patterns into magazines’ thing. While I’d love others to enjoy knitting up something I invented, I know from writing that there’s a down side to this.
Due to the wonderful invention of the internet, I get a lot of emails from readers. While most are lovely, there’s a small number of people, whether because they are young, have no clue about manners or how to express themself in a non-agressive way, are nutters, or malicious, who write stupid, insulting or just plain whingey emails.
I can’t help thinking that if I put my pattern out there, I’m opening the internet gates on more of this sort of thing. Look at the comments on the blog entries of some of the famous knit bloggers, and you’ll see what I mean. I know I shouldn’t let the actions of a few people bother me… but there is a limit to what a person wants to expose themselves to. And the benefits of exposing oneself have to outweigh the disadvantages.
So I’m thinking: maybe I’d be better off just posting the pattern here for free. Or explore other options. Any suggestions?
You could post the pattern for free, if you wanted to. You could hold onto it for the next issue of Knitty (any idea what the theme for that one is?) or send it to Magknits, or one of the other free knit-zines out there. Or, you could put it up for personal sale on the site.
There will always be idiots on the internet. The difficulty (and the glory) of the internet is that people can choose to be completely anonymous, or create a personality that bears no relation to their personality in the ‘real world’. This leads to people saying things they would never, ever say, were the recipient of their verbal barrage actually standing in front of them.
Don’t let the idiots influence what you say and do on your own web space. If worse comes to worse, you can always moderate your comments!
OK this is weird!! I have made Block of Chocolate socks too!! I know I have left a comment on your blog before and you said you were making Chocolate socks, but I had already had an idea for Daphne’s wool in Chocolate myself!!! It’s all very Babylon5/DS9!!!!
I’m a bit leery of the whole selling a pattern thing too, I have heard of those horrid comments. The Chocolate socks, dark and white, look beautiful!!!
I would go ahead and do the knitty thing, submit to magazines, etc etc etc. Also, even though it’s hard to take care of, I have an email account that is a public account, i.e. if I get emails from stupid people I just don’t even bother reading them!
Unfortunately as mentioned, there’s always going to be stupid people, but most of them are just jealous, or just trying to rattle some fun outta someone.
I personally think those socks look fun *they’re not my style perse, but they look fun!*
Oh wow those socks look GORGEOUS!!
I do hope you send it into Knitty or Magknits! I would love the chance to be able to knit them up.
I am worried that when I finally design up my socks (that are in my head currently)that if I put them out there..Someone will have a problem. I have a test knitter (she has already test knitted my child version of the Dublin Bay socks) but I am still worried about getting them out there.
Katt
Have a look at Anna Bell’s blog, I have mentioned her in my last post. She has a number of free patterns on her site, but also a lot of patterns for sale from her site, in downloadable pdf. May be a good option if you don’t want to go the knitty/magknits way.
They look wonderful by the way, well done for getting down to it and creating your choccy pottern!
oops, make that pattern not pottern!
I love that pattern…especially the darker pair.
If you charged a small fee to email the pattern to folks I’ll bet you’d get many orders.
I don’t think you should just give away something you’ve worked so hard on…look at the time and head scratching you’ve saved others by working out the pattern.