Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Where do Great Patterns Come From?

Usually news stories about knitters get focused on the granny angle. The NYTs recently did a piece on Josh Bennett. They decided to also cover a blogger, Samurai Knitter a.k.a. Julie Theaker, who had disclosed her opinion of his work on her blog...6 years ago? I don’t know why we knitters get such rough treatment from the mainstream media.

As a result of the coverage Julie has written a very interesting post on the business model used by mainstream magazines as compared to online publications. In this case the comparison was to Twist Collective.

I think having knitters understand the economics behind the business decisions in the knitting world is always a worthwhile exercise. Take a look at her post, most of it is a review of the issue itself, but sharing the background on why TC is producing such great work is fascinating.

In my case I want to sell patterns, my income stream comes from pattern sales as well as teaching and speaking events. To sell patterns, I'm very focused on the patterns being good and that means items are reworked if they don't match the vision I had when I started the design. Some are completed abandoned, some get rethought over a longer period of time until I resolve aesthetic or technical problems. I haven't submitted to any of the mainstream magazines because I'm convinced that the tight timelines lead to the publication of work that wouldn't have made my personal cut. I believe the reason we are seeing such wonderful work from self-publishers is that slower pattern development leads to the best work of the designer.

What do you think? Do you get your patterns from magazines or from self-publishers? 

If you enjoy reading my blog, I'd really appreciate it if you would tell your knitting friends or share links to your favourite posts online with Twitter, Ravelry or Facebook. Word of mouth is really helping to grow my business as knitters respect the views of other members of our community. Thanks!


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