I'm Drea. I'm Meg. I'm Tina. And I'm Jess. And this is Pardon My Stash.
Welcome to Pardon My Stash, a podcast about knitting, the fiber arts as a whole, and how
awesome it is. Before we get into today's topic, let's talk about what we're working on this week.
Jess, what are you working on? So I'm working on my Pardon My Stash, make along, tea cozy,
thingamajigger, which is from Yarnspirations. And it's just the knit flower basket tea cozy.
And I've kind of gone off the rails with it a little bit because I am totally not doing it in
the yarn or the gauge or anything like that. I basically took the pattern and I am going.
But it's for a tinier teapot and it needed needed a tinier thing.
Wing it like everything in your life. I'm winging it. And it's pretty cute. So I have
one half done. I'm almost done with the basket part of the other half.
Which is pretty fast considering you only work on it. I only work on it when we're recording.
So and then I have my other projects for all the time. So so it's working out. But yeah,
so it's coming along. I'm like, you know, almost halfway done with it. And I'm looking forward to
getting to the knit flowers, because those are going to be super cute from critical hit dies.
And I'm pretty sure this one is a Barrett and I have red tail going on. And I don't know what
the flowers are going to be in. It's whatever I grab out of the bag. Excellent. Tina.
I am plugging away at my Engel sweater. It is going along. I haven't knit too much, actually,
since we last chatted. But which actually was fairly recently. But because we had an odd week
last week. Thanks, air quality. But but yeah, I'm just kind of I've been stuck in the half inch
mark of the body. Feel like for too long. I'll get there. I swear I will. You will. How it be
sometimes. Yeah. And I still I have the pattern picked out for the make along. So I think at
some point I might switch over to that. The brioche hat I was making, I think is turning into a cowl.
I don't know what happened. It got you. What the heck? I'm looking at it. I'm like, this is a
really floppy hat. You know what? It's too big even for your head. Oh, wow. She's got a big head.
I didn't take that as an insult. No, I know. Drea's head to my head in circumference is
quite the difference. Also, I have a very tiny head. You do. Yeah. So I like, for example,
I was making I made a hat on my Addy King and I bound it off. I'm like, oh, this is way too tight.
Who makes hats like this? And I give it to Drea and it like fits perfect. It was like room. There
was like room for her to put a hand. Yeah. And me it was like, I'm like, this is okay. It's a good
hat. It's Yeah, at least I know will fit someone. It won't fit me. But I'm using a string NYC
Dolcetto Decay in gray, dark gray and red. Excellent. Drea? Camichal by Isabelle Kramer,
Faded Jeans. Jeans. I thought you were just gonna say jeans. Silver Moon Fiber Arts. That sounds
right. Yeah, that sounds right. Feels right. And jeans. Faded jeans. Beautiful. Meg? I just split
for the sleeves today on my Calliope sweater. That is so good. Look at the halo on that. Like,
it is so good. I love it. First of all, that came up very fast. Yeah. It's listen, I've never knit
a sweater out of Decay before. This is like lightning compared to knitting a fingering weight
sweater. I'm looking at your mine is supposed to be Decay. I'm looking at yours and I'm looking at
mine and like mine looks like fingering compared to yours. Well, it's a Decay held with a mohair.
That's true. Yeah. So it's a little bit bigger than a Decay. Yeah. No, I'm like, yeah, that's okay.
Because yeah. No, this looks like the same thick as your solid yarn. I'm just okay. Never mind.
Yeah. I'm sitting there like, wow, I'm small. No, it knits up really, really, really fast.
I've also been like pretty project monogamous for the last three weeks. So I know, I know it's been.
So I did pick out what I'm going to knit for the make along. So I'm probably going to start that
pretty soon. But on a whole, I haven't picked up anything else but this in a few weeks. So I've
just been knitting round and round. This is what I needed right now. I just needed something that
was tactile and easy. That was kind of where my brain was at. So that's why it's been going so
fast. But anyway, it's Kaliope by Melissa Clullo. It's all over the internet lately. Yarn Harlot
made one a few weeks ago. So a lot of people are knitting them. I've been noticing. Perfect time.
Yeah. And I'm knitting it out of Critical Hit Dyes, Wizard and Mystic held together. And both
of them are in the colorway etherealness. Be sure to check out our website, PardonMyStash.com for
more information as well as pictures regarding our current projects, patterns and yarns.
So for our topic tonight, we're going to get a little bit serious. Something we never do
on this. Super serious. On this podcast. What's the word I'm thinking of? I'm feeling super serious today.
Super serious. We're going to talk a little bit about the state of the... Union. Crafting
world in general. We're not doing the state of the union. We're being serious, Strea.
I mean, the state of the union would be pretty serious, but I am not the president,
nor do I want to be. Fair. I don't think anyone at this table wants to be. Agreed. Let's move on.
So the least enviable job in the world. So state of the crafting world on a whole. Talk about
kind of where things are at, because there's been a lot of talk lately on social media about,
you know, what's going on with designers, indie dyers, small businesses in the fiber arts all
together. And, you know, we had the unfortunate incident with the closure of stitches about a
month ago and how that impacted a lot of teachers, indie dyers, craftspeople in general. We want to
talk a little bit today about, you know, what we have seen, what's been going on, kind of noticing
a puzzling, not puzzling, but more disturbing trend. And maybe what we as fellow fiber artists can
do to try and help. Well, what's happening? At least from my perspective, I have seen a lot of
people just kind of calling it quits, not with the fiber arts, but with the consumeristic side of the
fiber arts. There's a lot of knitters that are pattern designers that are retiring, quote unquote,
from doing any further designing. There's indie dye shops that are just done. Like, they're just,
okay, that's it. Like, they might be doing a fiber arts venture, but it's no longer in the indie dye
space, nor are they going to be selling to the general public. And then there's just this kind
of collective, like, exhaustion with the idea of peddling, as I like to put it, your wares.
Because, like, what happened, guys? Once upon a time, land far away. You know, like, fiber arts,
and kind of honestly, a skill that you could do with your hand. I'm talking about, like, the trades,
I'm talking about the crafts in general, any kind of crafts. There was like this time where people
would like look at craftsmen or women and go, wow, what a skill. I will pay many, many dollars for
that skill, because that is a very tough thing to do. And I appreciate the work and time that has
gone into that. Yeah, but I can just go to like a big box store and I can buy the same thing for,
you know, $15. Correct. So why am I going to pay you? Correct. And that's honestly the problem,
is that you have this kind of reduction of the quality of craftsmanship in general, because it's
all getting pumped out. And I think there's, and as we all know, as fiber artists, there is this
misconception of that, especially crochet, that that is just, oh yeah, just thrown on a machine.
Sir or Madame, that is not from a machine. What you were buying, if you're buying something crochet
from some big box store is usually from someone getting severely underpaid for their work,
for like pennies on the hour for their time. And it's just furthering this kind of distinction of
poverty within the folks that have those kinds of skills, because it's just not valued.
And it's interesting because it's causing disruptions with a lot of different things. One
is that if you are selling your wares, you're just, you have the people that are just tired of it,
like, no, I'm not going to reduce my prices. And it's not worth it anymore, because you're not
going to buy it for the price that it's worth. So, you know, that you see an issue, so we're just
selling them, you know, just by themselves is the fact that you, it has created this idea that it
takes an actual artist that doesn't own a factory and a big machine that does it, that it takes them
the same amount of time for the same amount of cost. And there's this disconnect now between the
consumer and the seller of these things, thinking that it's all made the same exact way. And that,
I think, is the issue is that I feel like it's not everywhere. Obviously, you still have people that
know and understand what goes into a craft, but you get a lot of people that kind of like,
that disappears and there's just the magic of the store where they don't even think about
how the production actually happens or how it's actually made, which I mean, even if you're
looking at the factory things, it's kind of interesting and like super like, so check that
out. But they don't think about that. It's just, nope, I walk into the store, I pick it up and,
you know what, if I complain about the price, they'll try and barter with me down. And
that's not necessarily the case anymore. And some of that too, you're seeing that is rounding about,
you're seeing a lot of platforms that people are using to sell are starting to side more with the
consumer than the seller, which in some cases, yes, that can be good, but it's to a point now where
there are consumers that abuse it. And like Etsy is a bit having a big blowout right now because
someone can just say, Hey, I didn't get this. And instead of actually looking into it, they're like,
okay, we'll refund you. And now the person has the product, the cash and the seller is now out,
all of that. And you're seeing, I'm seeing a lot of sellers saying they're leaving Etsy because of
this, because they're, they're losing money. They're, they're literally going bankrupt because
of charge backs. The best part of Etsy that is killing me right now is that there's, there's tip
videos on how you can let someone know that they're buying a $5 pattern, not a $5 sweater. Yeah.
Like there's people that legitimately buy something for $5 for like, or $10 even,
and it's a pattern. And they think it's a, they think they're getting ships.
A sweater product or a hat or a whatever. And I'm sitting there going like, are you crazy?
In what, in what capacity, unless you're going to some kind of secondhand store or like that,
you would find anything knitted or crocheted for nothing. Like you, when I see prices like that,
it's usually because I've gone to a Goodwill, somebody dropped all grandma's blankets at the
Goodwill and they're for $5 each. And that's when I see those price then not on Etsy. There's no,
nobody's sending you a luxury beanie made of merino and silk and cashmere for $5. I'm sorry.
I hate to break it to you. And, but what's happening is they put, they give them bad reviews.
And then there's people who even buy the pattern and they say they like, they can't figure out how
to download the pattern. So then they leave a bad review because they can't figure out how to use
the app. And I'm like, that's not the seller's fault. That's Etsy's fault for having a bad app.
Like I can't even realize that things like that were happening. Yeah. Yes. You're telling me this
right now. Like people are buying patterns and expecting a finished product. Yes. And it's like
literally killing me on the inside. There's, there's also very little oversight from the
inside. There's also very little oversight from a lot of sites like Etsy that, and this happened,
I remember a few years ago with Blue Brick, the Blue Brick yarn company and Wingspan when they're,
did you remember when the Wingspan pattern went viral and everyone was buying Ibis? I don't think
it was Blue Brick that was the, that was as impacted as the artists who designed Wingspan.
Other people, scammers were taking that, creating their own pages with the picture of Wingspan and
selling the kits. And there's no oversight. Like nobody could stop them. So people were getting
scammed out of that. And scamming, I think is another huge part of why people are, are getting
out of it, both sellers and honestly like consumers, because we, we've all heard the stories of small
businesses that don't deliver that accept money and then they don't deliver a product. And especially
in the fiber arts, if you're buying, you know, a indie dyed yarn or an advent or, you know,
something that is a considered a luxury item, normally you have put some money away. You have
planned for that. And it's, it's not like it's a couple of bucks that, you know, okay, you know,
that's inconvenient, but no big deal. A lot of buyers have gotten turned off of small businesses
because unlike a big box store, it's, it's harder to get, to be made whole when you've been taken
advantage of. So it kind of goes both ways. It really does. It's, it's on the sellers. It's also
on the buyers on both ways. And it sucks because this minority, cause really it is at the end of
the day, for the most part, if you sell an item, it gets to the person, the person says thanks and
moves on. But then you have the minority, you know, that's even if it's 10%, it's still a huge
amount to a small business of people who are trying to scam them out of a pattern, scan them
out of a product, you know, or from the buyer's perspective, buying an item and just never
receiving it. And the seller just getting off. And again, there's so few of them that do that,
but it doesn't matter. But it, but it, but it tarnishes. It's huge. It tarnishes everybody.
And it goes crazy and everyone hears about it. Because at the end of the day, you all,
everyone gets lumped as a small business owner, right? And people talk and then it's like, oh,
well this indie dyer scammed me. So then all of them, or this designer scammed me. So then all of
them, or I bought an advent and I didn't receive it. So I'm never going to buy advents again.
Yeah. And then it's like that product in particular just gets ruined. I understand, like things happen
and, but it's, I think at the end of the day, if everybody would just, I know this is a hard
concept people, but we're going to try right now. If everybody would just let go of their egos and
be honest with everybody, you would be amazed at the problems that we could solve in this world.
I really truly feel, I know, I know the concept of honesty, I think has, has been lost. Because I
think at the end of the day, you have all these social media accounts and they show everybody with
no problems and nobody Fs up and everybody's perfect. And I, and I do feel that the, the
younger generation is killing this because they're just like, no, this is now everybody's got problems.
This is not realistic. I do, I want to say that our generation, the elder millennial kind of
generation probably started that because that started in when we were younger, this whole like
influencer, like look at my perfect life. I also think that that came from our parents. Yeah.
We're putting that pressure on airs and making sure you present the perfect picture. Yeah. If
that isn't the case behind the scenes and it's, we just put it on social media and made videos.
Correct. And I think as time goes on, you're seeing millennials start to like break out of that and
go, you know, the Gen Z got something going on. And they just like, no, we're not going to do this
anymore. And it like, we're going to eliminate this illusion of fast, quick production, productive,
this kind of idea that like your life is meant to do something or give something or no, maybe,
maybe your life is just literally to exist and like, that's okay.
But my life is a mess and I'm just getting through it. I need breaks. Yeah. I like to do
crafts and that's me in a nutshell. Yeah. And doing this whole like, it just, it's killing me because
back to the whole idea of honesty, it honestly just, honestly, being frank and open and honest.
So like say, I don't know, I have a design, I'm having it tested. It turns into be a crap shoot.
If I just go to everybody and go, Hey, you know what? I did this design, we're testing it. It
sucks. I'm going to go back to the drawing board. So any deadlines I told you, we're going to nix
all that. And I'm just going to go back and like rework this and get this going. I feel like as a
tester on the other side, I'm just speaking from a tester, I would be like, wow, awesome. Like
they're listening to all of the problems. They're going to go try to resolve them. They're going to
come back and try to do it again, instead of, oh, like, everything's fine. We'll just delay this a
little bit, but it's okay. Everything's fine. And I'm like, no, it's not fine. It's okay. It can be
not fine. Like it's, it's okay. It's fine. Same thing with indie dyers doing like, you want to
do a batch of a certain color. You try the batch, the batch up. It's just screwed. And you're like,
crap. I have, um, we call that wild magic. I love wild magic for that. Wild magic is like,
we tried to do something. It didn't come out and we go, huh, it still looks good. It's still a yarn.
There's nothing wrong with it. It's just not what we wanted. Wild magic here. It's cheaper now.
But like the fact that you embrace that instead of like, okay, we're going to like pretend this
didn't exist. No, no, no, there's nothing wrong with that yarn. There's a whole page on our
website of mistakes, happy accidents. Some of your happy accidents are beautiful though. Okay. Uh,
what was it? Tequila, tequila sunrise. Oh my God. That was hilarious because that was such a mistake.
And I put those up. I'm like, I was, I was super upset about it. I was really upset because I called
Jess and like, I had this whole batch and it's all wrong. And I'm like, you know what, whatever
it's going up there, call it tequila sunrise. I'm good. And it sold out in an hour. And I was like,
Oh, it was gorgeous. It was gorgeous. I can't recreate it. I don't know. It's fine. That's the
one sad thing about those types of happy accidents. I don't know how I screwed it up, but like,
but it was, it was what it was. You're right. Like, and it's, and I've, but, but to kind of
go off what Drea said about that whole, like the pressure from, from older generations, like
that is probably as a fiber artist been one of my biggest challenges. And Jess knows because she
watches me go through the five stages of grief. Every time I screw up dying. Oh, I really do.
Like it's terrible. I'm like, and in the wild magic kind of saves us because originally I was
like, Oh my God, I'm destroying our stock because I'm an idiot and I can't recreate this dye color.
And Oh my God, like I'm, I'm costing us money, like the whole thing. And so kind of like now at
the point where it gets screwed up and she'll come home and she's like, what are you doing? I'm like,
well, I don't know. It was this it's not anymore. Ta-da. And I don't care anymore, but it has taken
me a long time again, going off what Drea said to kind of break out of that. This is a mistake.
This is a screw up. I did this wrong or go. I'm bad. Like that mentality. And it was really ingrained
that if it's not exactly what I wanted it to be, then it's a failure. Yeah. It's been really hard
to break out of that. It really has. And I think too, there might be part of that with all these
closures because I feel like, like I actually put that on a story, the other, if not yesterday,
like today where no, it was yesterday. And it was about like how guys, I have all these followers.
I don't make any money. Like I don't live off of this. Like there was people that legitimately
thought like, once you hit like a certain mark, like just Instagram just sends you money. They
just send you money. Nobody sends you money. Nobody sends you money. There's no money. Even
when Instagram was doing money, I know it was bull crap. They kind of stopped doing that pretty
quickly. Yeah. They were like, wait a second. This isn't, this isn't working. We're losing. We, we,
instead of having 70 billion in profit, now we have 69 billion in profit. That's not okay.
It's just like, I don't like it's, it's, I think there's a mentality of like, if I create a product
and it doesn't sell out and it's not the number one product, I failed. And that's not the case.
I'm okay. I'm okay with my seed. I think I have like a hundred something people or sales or
whatever for the seed top. You need I'm good. I'm good. Is it a sellout? Is it like, am I like going
to be a huge name at the next fabric? No, absolutely not. But you have maybe a hundred people that are
wearing your head. First of all, the fact that even one person buys my pattern, I'm just like,
oh my God, like, what did I do? It was it the, was it the pattern cover? Like,
I actually can't wait for fall. That's like my favorite hat. Oh yeah. It's going to be a good
time. I'm not even saying that to bump you just like, it's going to be, it's going to be a good
time. But they like, but like, instead of feeling like I need to create something so that I meet
some kind of capital capitalistic goal. Now I'm like, okay, I'm going to create something
so that it makes me happy because I would make this. I would want to do this. So here's this idea.
If you like it, buy it. If you don't, that's okay too. Like I'm still going to use it.
It's and it's hard because I know that there's fiber artists out there that use this as like,
this is how they make a living. And, and you can't almost take that mentality with it because it is
your form of living. Um, and if it is, I'm sorry, you gotta try and find a happy medium though.
Cause some, some with that too, it's like, and not everything is going to take off. So it's like,
okay, that doesn't mean you're a failure. It doesn't mean that it's a bad idea. It just means,
okay, that's not the market right now. And the market is always changing. Everything is always
like flipping around. You got to stay on top of all of it. Um, I work in sales, uh, it's like food
sales, but still. So the idea that's sort of where I'm saying is like, you've got to kind of figure
out where your market is, who is by, you may be originally targeting towards an audience and then
a different audience like enjoys it. So it's like, it's not a failure in less you do nothing with it.
So long as you can take a loss and be like, okay, what, what were the factors that went into this?
What can I do to kind of switch it around? Are there things? What have I learned from it?
That's maybe not money, but what have I, yeah. And if you can take that and then go in from a
different angle, like you're never really losing it. So it is, it is the cool thing. And it is also
the unfortunate thing because a lot of times you are gambling with your, your own money and your
time time. Um, and that part can get scary, especially if you get to a point where it's like,
you know, it's, you're starting to get more on the thin side of things and it's like, okay. So,
and I feel like that, that is what we are, especially right now with, um, just kind of the
state of that things are in. Um, people are finding they are getting on the thinner side and they have
to make that hard decision of, do I keep trying right now or do I have to like make the hard
choice to stop until, you know, things can, things can pick up, things are a bit easier to, to push
back into a business. Well, the other problem too, is that like with every market, with every
business, there are highs and lows. Absolutely. And you know, 10 years ago, the indie pattern,
indie dire markets were so small. And then you saw, you know, with, with Ravelry and social media
and blogs in general, and that exploded. And at this point, right where we are at right now,
even though it seems like all my favorite indie dires are closing, the market is oversaturated.
It is, it's oversaturated. Um, that lends itself to, you know, a scarcity in the market of people
having to choose between, you know, nobody can afford to buy from every indie dire that they like
every week. So you have to pick and choose. Now, when that happens, this is basic economics,
businesses start to close and eventually you get to the point where the market is no longer
oversaturated when there is more demand than supply. So then more people enter the market
and it's cyclical. It's just going to keep going. So right now we're still at an oversaturated point.
It's not that we want the market to be under saturated or oversaturated. We want it to be
whatever it is. Um, but it does make it hard for people that are trying to make a living within it
really on both ends. It's difficult. Especially when you, again, you've got platforms and things
kind of working against you and you got to, it's, it's hard and it's, it does, it's, it is kind of
sad when you start seeing it, especially when you see like all the ones you really like. And it's
like, oh, you know, we're starting a club and you're like, oh no. Um, but I think you do,
you do see that though. It does. Um, especially with smaller businesses and, uh, the smaller indie
died or indie owned. Um, you see a lot of like turnover almost. I honestly, so one thing, so I
used to be in the Japanese fashion scene and one of the things that they, that they did towards the
end right before I left, um, they did like a collective. So like someone came up with the
idea of instead of all of us trying to all be like, whatever, like we could still be our brand,
but like, we're all gonna pool together. And instead of going to like an Etsy or something
like that, we're all going to, they, they called it literally the, I think it was like the Lolita
collective and they had like all these different brands, small little brands underneath one
website. So working together instead of trying to market against each other. And what that gave the
opportunity for was, is when they, when we had, so we used to run our conference, they were the
vendor, the collective. And then if you wanted to have items at our show, but you couldn't afford
necessarily a booth by yourself, you could just be in the collective and they would include you on
the rack. So then it gave opportunity for everybody to have success. Kind of. Yeah. It was almost,
yeah. And I w I just like, I don't know if I just said a billion dollar idea and someone's going,
Oh my God, I'm going to make that right now. Um, but like, and I hope so. Yeah, no, but it would
be nice. Like I think it would, I think the idea of like kind of a collective idea in the fiber
arts world. That's not like the site for me, when I see the Etsy's and the Ravelries and all these,
um, there's like a, there's another app and they're, they're like, their business is to
make money off of the people in it. Yes. It's not necessarily to come together and
form a group to try to like work together. It's, it's to like the person who ran that collective
in the fashion world had their own brand in it. Yeah. So they were just running the group,
but they weren't necessarily like, okay, like I'm going to make money off of all you and you will
do all the work. That's what Etsy does. Etsy wants all the, the crafters to make all their crafts
and then they take a fee and then they make millions while the crafters still get haggled.
So I think what we need is to go back to the, um, group help mentality. And I know that there's
like this, I know that when you start going that way, people are like, oh no, it's going to be like
a hippies in a, in a big, like, I'm not saying that I'm not saying that I'm not saying all the
way that way. I'm just saying, can we grow tomatoes at the commune? Yeah. Great. I love tomatoes.
They're so hard. Anyway, anyways, we're not doing that right now, but it's okay. I have my own
tomatoes. I just planted some last week. The idea is, is like, I think if maybe some of these crafters
or dyers or just anybody within this fiber arts industry, just like said, Hey, I have a bunch of
friends. We all have this thing and we're going to call it the fiber collective or something. I
don't know. That's probably already somebody already has that, but whatever, but something like
that. And then like under that, there would be a whole bunch of indie designers and dyers and stuff,
and they would just work together as a small group. It wouldn't be like this.
Okay. Like there's thousands to pick from. And it's like, no, it's maybe they have all have a joint
venture where like all of them are women or all of them are LGBTQA or all of them are, I don't know,
like you just all have something in common and then they go that way. I just, I don't know,
throwing ideas out there. Somebody do it. Like merchant guilds. Yeah. Yeah. What I said, be the
I said, be the change go. No, but honestly, kind of to go along with that, I was, I was
looking in on a conversation the other day and people were talking about two, two designers,
one who was actually they're both pretty well known. I'm not going to name names.
And someone was irate that one of them had used a similar prefix
on a design name as the other dyer, as the other designer, which again, I was like, okay, that's
petty, but whatever. And that's why Ravelry has like the cowl two, the cowl three. Oh, I know.
Like literally if you like just, just for reference, when I was looking for a T related,
cause I didn't want to do a T cozy when I was looking for that, I just put in T and there were
like 7,000 patterns that had to do with T. But the reason like pettiness aside, the thing that
really hit me and actually really made me sad was the person who was irate about it said, well,
I think that's just a really low thing for a competitor to do. And I was like a competitor.
The thought that designers, dyers, crafts people that we are competing against each other,
it really bothers me and saddens me. Like we, we're, we don't have to, it doesn't have to be a
competition. It's not like we're fighting. I, I dye yarn. I still buy other people's yarn. I don't
look at them as, oh, that's my competitor. I don't. Like when you decided to make a pattern,
I didn't go up Meg, mind your own business. Instead I was like, hooray, come join me
in this whole of patterns and math. Because the more we put it together, the more options we have,
the more people that are involved in the more art that gets created, the more options that we have
in terms of yarn, in terms of colors, in terms of designs, the wider and bigger and more diverse
our craft becomes. And that's a good thing, not a bad thing. We shouldn't look at each other as
competitors. The five words is very much like there's something for everybody. There really is.
And looking at it as we're all in competition with each other is sad. And I think that's
the point. Like everyone wants to focus on the fiber and forget about the art at the end of the
day. We're all artists and you, you cannot, one artist can copy another like work, like line for
line. But even if they, unless they were tracing, even if they copy line for line, it is still
their own, like it's completely there's, you can tell like this is somebody else's and this is the
original. And because, but because of that, I'm not saying copy each other. What I'm saying is
because of those unique perspectives of how you view the world, I mean, we have people who are
colorblind. We have people who literally just see things differently because our brains are a little
messy, me included. Um, but like you just, because of that, you have so many different perspectives,
so many different viewpoints, so many different layers of experience that people have been in
that you, I could not go up to somebody and say, well, you understand you've clearly been in my
shoes because they probably haven't. And you haven't been in theirs and I haven't been in
theirs. So when someone, if someone were to come up to me in this stranger and say, I would like
you to draw a picture of your happy place, guess what? It's going to be two different things.
Even if it was the beach, they're not going to look like the same beach. No, they won't because
your, your visions are completely different. So I, I don't, I get the whole like, I'm trying to make
money or whatever, whatever, but I honestly feel at the end of the day, if everybody would just go
back to the fact that this is art and work together rather than against, you have to understand
that guys, we are working all these indie folks. The reason why we're indies is because we're all
tiny. We're all working against the consumerist society that is we're working against all the big
box people, all the people who just put out like just nonsense that you can just walk into a store
and buy. And we're also working against that fast, fast fashion industry that is, you know, chunk,
like just throwing things out, creating horrible, like I just go into that anyway, but instead of
like looking at the other fiber artists next to you that may be also designing hats, plenty of
people design hats, but there are like, your hat will be different. I remember when I made my seed
dot beanie, I was like, nobody's going to want this hat. I'm like in my head, I'm like, it's just the
seed stitch and the dot stitch. Nobody wants this hat. Nobody wants this hat. It's just a hat.
Some people want that hat.
Yeah. A hundred plus people wanted my hat. So it's like, it's like, if I could speak to a hundred
people and with my little simple hat, then maybe your hat that you have out there in the universe,
whoever's listening, maybe your hat idea will speak to 10 people, one person. It doesn't matter.
Like you are speaking to somebody else because everybody has different viewpoints.
Guys at the end of the day, knitting is all one stitch that can be reversed. That we put together
in different ways. Dying. There's only so many colors that actually exists that you, the artist
are mixing in different ways. It's a freaking mic drop sound. It's crochet. Same thing. Like one
stitch spinning. There's only really one way to spin yarn. Wrong. There are a couple different
ways. You're twisting fibers. You are fusing fibers, correct? So there are different ways.
No, there's different ways, but you're, you're fusing fiber. That is what spinning is. You're
fusing fiber. That's how you make yarn. There isn't like a non-fusing fiber way to make yarn.
So everything yet is fusing fiber. Okay. Meg, enlighten us.
No, I'm just saying it's so if we're stopping at like, okay, you're copying me,
then everybody just stopped because you know, way back, like right when Homo sapiens first
discovered how to make cloths and we're at the end, we're done. They figured out how to do it.
Just stop guys. Cause now you're copying that person. I mean, to be fair, someone made a stock
net sweater probably like a hundred years ago. Let's stop probably longer, probably way back.
So like, can we just wait more than a year? I, I, yes, we have, they have had sweaters, you know,
so it's like prior to the 1900, I am aware that sounds like I just threw out a hundred. I know
that a hundred is a big number. Okay. Sorry. Back when the hobo, so I started this episode by saying
we were going to be serious and I clearly lie. Let me go back. Oh, okay. Fine. Jess has got it.
The Homo sapiens. Okay. I will go back to Homo sapiens. When they created fire and the Shetland
sweater. That was it. That was it. They created fire and then the Shetland sweater.
Everybody's conception of history is making my brain explode right now.
And ancient is not even my fourth time. They made the fire. When the fire would go out,
they made the sweater. Well, you got a lot for the blooper reel. Oh no, this should stay in.
This was great. I'm just saying this, this, this thread was everything. The idea of people copying
things in that regard, like, yes, if you just copy paste somebody's pattern, like bad on you,
that's back off that, that is not nice. But I mean, again, it's, it's all just different
putting together of patterns that exist guys. Like we need to calm down.
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