Stitch Cooperative

In response to this Ravelry thread in the Yarn Market News magazine group, we will begin selling certain patterns under the “Karma series” label, starting with my (Shannon Okey) Fetlock pattern. They’ll be available as single print patterns, and also under a licensing system.

Individual Stitch Cooperative designers may set their terms however they like. As an example, here is my general licensing agreement: for a set fee, LYS owners may purchase the PDF of a pattern and print up to a certain number of copies, to be sold, used in classes or otherwise distributed so long as the copyright notice and designer information remains intact. See Fetlock for its terms.

Why “Karma” series? As working designers, our intellectual property is our livelihood. And while we know that the vast majority of LYS owners respect this, sometimes it’s difficult to trust that something bad won’t happen if we make our work too easy to distribute. To quote Kim from Knitting Matters: “Imagine how quickly a yarn shop would go out of business if their main product (yarn) was able to be downloaded at will, an unlimited number of times with no way of tracking the activity.”

It’s not just an urban legend that some shops do sell Knitty.com or other free online patterns in direct contradiction to their terms of service. And ironically, I can’t remember who used “violators will get what’s coming to them” on a copyright notice, but that made me think a little bit. Hence “Karma” series. We trust you to do the right thing.

If a pattern is licensed under these terms you will be able to print the number of copies licensed before you need to renew it. We trust you will come back to us at that point — after all, if you sold out all the copies licensed, it must have been useful to you, right? Karma patterns may be distributed either as PDF or print copies (depending on whether you’d like to print them on your computer’s printer or photocopy them), your choice.

Thank you, as ever, for supporting independent designers! See you at TNNA next month, and happy holidays from all of us.