Whatever else you may have once thought about pink pussyhats back in 2016, where they resonated most for me was the way they illustrated the strength of the knitting community when it comes together, the sea of pink that flooded the Women’s March, and the powerful possibilities and things we might be able to achieve when we unite through our craft. But since that time, I have often wondered, what does it really mean in practice for knitters to unite and support each other? I will raise my hand and say that on a very basic level it should mean putting an end to the harmful practice of promoting and providing free patterns. And that instead of considering free patterns to be a "good deal," or an incentive provided by yarn companies so you buy their yarn, we start to understand them for what I believe they actually are, which is exploitative and ultimately degrading to our community overall.

I’ve been around the block a bit and have done this work for many years and have been able to look under the hood of many yarn companies that provide free patterns. I remember the head of one company (where I worked briefly) proudly asserting in a meeting one morning that most if not all of their patterns would and should be free. He of course defended his decision as a savvy business strategy, a way to entice customers to buy more of his yarn. But what his decision ultimately did (and still does), I believe, is forever hurt the women at his company and elsewhere who have spent their lives learning the intricate and difficult business (the art form, really) of pattern writing, sizing and testing and whose tedious, time-consuming and difficult-to-do-well work is effectively dishonored and sold out in such moments.

Yarn companies have a choice. By selling patterns for at least the same price as a skein of one of their yarns, they can show that they respect pattern work and tradition, and that they respect the work that helps them sell their yarn. Choosing instead to give valuable content away for free only amplifies the message that patterns don’t matter as much as yarn does. This is of course ridiculous and untrue. Pattern work is a profession. It is not a hobby or of secondary value to how profits are made.

Designs don’t even have to be created in-house. If a pattern from any designer does well (becomes popular and helps sell a lot of recommended yarn as a result), there is a tremendous imbalance that occurs. Designers might receive a pittance of a design fee (or more shamefully simply be offered free yarn for their work), but comparing that nominal, embarrassing fee against the profits that are actually made from selling the yarn reveals how laughable and shameful the whole process actually is.

This set up and the systems currently in place (giving patterns away for free, riding on the work of designers to sell yarn) creates lasting, damaging effects. It allows people to more readily think that it’s okay to steal patterns because what are they really worth anyway? It emboldens people to actually take time to write to me to tell me that they think I’m “crazy’ or “outrageous” (or far worse) for charging eight to fifteen dollars for patterns that have often taken me more than a year to write (and many more years to be able to write).

This mindset and devaluation permeates throughout the knitting industry. I’ve had yarn stores run off copies of my patterns if a customer buys their yarn for it there—this is not a kindness that the yarn store owner provides to the customer, it is theft. The work is not theirs to give away. But we have somehow enabled and condoned a mindset that allows customers to think that the practice is okay and to not question it, and even worse, to expect and welcome it.

As a designer who has devoted many years of her life to this work, pattern theft in all its forms is incredibly violating and painful. To see images online that you took in your home of projects that you worked on for months displayed by evil entities who attempt to sell your work as their own fills my stomach with pain.

It often feels like we have such a long way to go because this has been going on for a very long time. It seems baked into existing and harmful sales strategies and societal understandings of what work matters and what work doesn’t. That the world can be a darker place is sadly understood—but shouldn’t we as a knitting community try to counter this darkness with light? Can’t we stand up for each other instead and properly value the work that we all do?

Kristina McGowan, Brooklyn, NY 2024