The Hook and I

U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Charly Hengen.

James has been in Nome for a bit over a week helping to coordinate the delivery of a Russian fuel barge that was led by a Coast Guard ice breaker. You may have heard about this story because it’s been in the news almost as much as the snow in Cordova, the town we left this summer. James’s project in Nome is exciting and cold work–he had a near injury when he absentmindedly stuck his keys in his mouth in 30-below temperatures! Yesterday, this picture of James smashing ice with a sledge was run by the Associated Press and his picture ended up in a little under 500 newspapers! In what to most of the world is a side note, he’s wearing a hat I made him!

Here’s the hat close-up on a warmer day:

I’m glad to be present and helping to keep him warm in some small way while he’s up there in the frozen north. Speaking of frozen, it’s quite cold here in Juneau this week, 5-10 degrees, so I’m glad to be making a pair of fingerless mitts for the class I’m teaching this Thursday night. When I’m sitting still at home, despite the heater and my cup of tea, my hands get cold. The mitts are a big help.

Do you ever get the feeling, you’d like things to stay just as they are, thank you very much? I had to chuckle when I got this recent New Yorker in the mail, because that’s kind of how I was feeling that day. And of course, when you’re feeling that way, watch out. Change is coming.

Oh Daylight Savings, I am not your fan. Here in Alaska, the phenomenon seems to make little sense. Our summer days are so long anyway, and then in winter, we fall back an hour all at once when we’re already losing many minutes of light a day. It just seems cruel. It’s 4 p.m. right now and looking rather dim and dreary.

The other morning, I realized I’d probably have to change my daily schedule. I can’t keep going for walks right after I drop off the kids because it will be dark. I wasn’t even considering the time change. (I should have–because for the next few weeks it will actually be lighter in the morning).

Just last week, I got to see the sunrise as I approached the beach.

Then, a couple days later, I was the only one out walking in the morning. Who knows why?

The beach had transformed, and for once, my tracks were the first ones to appear.

When I catch myself mourning the loss of light, I quickly remember that we only have two months now until the solstice, and then the days will start to get longer again. I might as well enjoy the darkness as a time to bring my focus to things close to home. I got up this morning and started to address the bounty of vegetables from our produce box that were beginning to look a little sad. Now we have soup bubbling, and I have an evening of knitting ahead of me. Let the darkness come!

A few things have been happening around the Internets that got me thinking again about fair use. It’s one of my favorite perennial topics. I am passionate about the idea that artists, crafters, makers, writers and other creators can take inspiration and even content from other works of art. It’s a concept that can be misunderstood. Some people perceive it too liberally, others don’t believe that aspects of fair use are possible even if they are ethical and legal. Here are a couple of real-life examples.

The other day I was looking through projects on Ravelry. It’s such a treat to see when people make one of my patterns. I love seeing all the yarn choices and variations.

One of my most popular patterns is the Alpine Frost Scarf. (The beautiful photos in this post are all pictures of the design that I found on Flickr, they are not from the crocheter I discuss below.) There are a lot of ways people can get this pattern.  It was originally published in Interweave Crochet, in Winter 2008. So if you have that issue in print or digital versions, you have it. You can buy the pattern individually from the Interweave Store. It’s even included in the new book, The Best of Interweave Crochet.

So, I was surprised when I was trolling the hundreds of Ravelry projects for this pattern the other day and I stumbled upon one where the crocheter said something like, “I didn’t have the pattern for this design, so this is my version.” Then, she proceeded to show the instructions for her version in the pattern notes on her project page.

Guess what? I’m not bothered that she reverse-engineered my pattern. More power to her! I applaud the ingenuity it takes to figure something out on your own. I’m not even bothered that she wrote down her notes. I am concerned that she thinks it’s ok to essentially publish those notes for anyone on Ravelry to use, and associate her publication with my pattern.

In my opinion, it’s totally ok to reverse-engineer, and even design and publish patterns inspired by the work of others. I’m a big believer in supporting derivative work. It should be derivative though, not just a copy. Publishing a simple copy seems uninspired and not respectful of the original designer’s intellectual property. What didn’t make sense was the fact that this crocheter used my pattern page to post her own version of the pattern.

So, I e-mailed her. Good news! She answered quickly, and removed the instructions from her notes. A happy ending. I wonder what she thought of my e-mail, she didn’t say. The long and short of it? I hope when people exercise fair use and publish the results that they’ll be polite, they won’t violate copyright, and they’ll use appropriate attribution–giving credit where credit is due. Also, I want people to experiment, be creative, have fun.

Today, I was trolling again and found a beautiful scarf that people have been making lots of, apparently. Since this pattern isn’t published in English, people have been sharing scanned versions of the (Japanese?) (Chinese?) chart on Ravelry. What’s the ethical crafter to do if she wants to make something like this scarf? Well, I would like to see her try and reverse engineer the scarf herself, and then come up with her own pattern–hopefully adding her own originality and spin to the design.

Finally, I wanted to mention one other great conversation about fair use happening right now (not surprisingly) on Kim Werker’s blog. (Kim and I worked together to try and launch Fair Use in Art and Craft Day back in 2009–maybe I’ll nudge her and see if we can get it going again for 2012.) Kim’s discussion is about Pintrest — a site where people keep track of things they think are cool on the internet. At issue is the idea that crafters are copying ideas from pictures instead of buying what’s being offered for sale. I’m with Kim on this one–I think that people selling crafts that are simple enough to copy from a photo shouldn’t be surprised when people do so.

Before I started working as a publishing designer, I sold fancy crocheted scarves at craft fairs for around $100 each (this barely covered my costs, so I didn’t do it for long). There were two types of people visiting the craft fairs–customers and crafters. Customers were happy to pay for my hand-work. Crafters were sometimes polite and engaging, but sometimes they’d just say things like, “Oh, I could just make this myself.” It can be annoying when you’re trying to pay the bills, but that doesn’t make it less true. Now that I’m a designer and teacher I don’t want control of my designs after I publish them–I want to see how people get creative with them. I’m happy to be in the position of saying, “Yes! Go make it yourself!”

Lately I’ve been more careful about purchasing craft books. We’ve moved into a smaller house and there just isn’t room. But I never pass up the opportunity to use a new stitch dictionary. So I was thrilled to hear that one of my favorite designers (and best designer buddies) Robyn Chachula was publishing a new one: Crochet Stitches VISUAL Encyclopedia). I wanted to hear all about the making of a stitch dictionary first-hand, so I asked Robyn if she’d consent to an interview. You can read the result:

(Or how I lost most of my afternoon to my digital library).

I have to admit, I love e-books. I read a lot. I love paper books–the feel of them, the smell. One of my first jobs ever was in a used bookstore. When Selma was a baby, I re-invented that job for myself filling my basement with books I found at garage sales and selling them on Amazon. But I don’t have space for all the books I love, so I love being able to have as many e-books as I want without using up any physical space in my library. I also love being able to highlight and annotate in e-books. I use this feature a lot in the reading and research I have to do for my graduate work. So far, I like the way the Kindle app does this best, but I’m trying out Kobo right now too, and it seems pretty good. I like e-books so much that I get frustrated when a book I want isn’t available digitally.

But there is something about e-books that bothers me: You don’t really own the books you buy digitally. You can’t use them any way you want. I spent the better part of the afternoon trying to move a book I bought on Google Books (because amazingly, the Google Books app does not have any feature for annotating books). After going through the machinations of getting this file into another reader, I thought… there’s got to be a way I could just centrally store all my e-books and read them where ever I want!

Of course, other people have wished for this too. Very clever people have developed programs to store and catalog books, like Calibre. You can sync your Calibre library with Dropbox and have access too it anywhere. You can use one of the readers that lets you open external (i.e. dropbox files) like Stanza and access those files on your ipad. Supposedly, you can spend lots of time setting this up and maintaining it, but really, you can’t because most of your book files are locked with DRM. You can illegally strip the DRM with tools available on the Internet. (Why is this illegal if you are using files that YOU purchased on devices YOU own?)

You CAN do all of this, but after wasting a day on it, I’ve decided it’s too. much. trouble. For now, I’ll buy the books that I can get DRM-free, and those that I can’t, I’ll prioritize Kobo and resort to Amazon (the worst culprit for open formats) when necessary. I know it took a while for MP3s to loose the DRM, I’m just frustrated that we have to have the fight all over again with e-books. Look publishers–the music industry is finally surviving BECAUSE OF, not in spite of easy access to digital media.

I know many of you are more tech-savvy than I am–am I missing a great solution out there for e-book management? How do you maintain your digital library?

Now that we’re getting settled in here in Juneau, I’m starting to develop a daily routine. In the mornings, after making breakfast and packing lunches, I make my tea and fill my mug, then walk the kids to the bus stop. Buses come at about 8 a.m. Then I head south on a walk.

I vary my path slightly each morning, but most often I hit many of the same favorite spots. My route includes a jaunt across Sandy Beach and a stroll through parts of the Treadwell Mine trail, including my favorite spot–the cave-in–where the trail meets the beach. (I’ll talk more about the Treadwell Mine in a future post, I’m sure–it’s a fascinating part of my neighborhood’s history).

I find myself wanting to photograph the same spots day after day as the light and the surroundings slowly change with the tide and the seasons. My little camera phone isn’t great, but it’s with me all the time, so it gets the most use. I’ll probably keep adding to this particular flickr set as I notice more tiny details of my walk.