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Hello All, and thank you for your entries! They ran the gamut from short & sassy to relatively short & sweet. However, as with Highlander, there can be only one winner. And I’m happy to announce that person is Suna Finbog!
Suna, I neglected to ask permission to post your story, so please do email me with your address and permission, if you’d like, to share your essay.
Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall keep this writer from their appointed internet contests. As promised, it’s GIVEAWAY TIME! Up for grabs – a well-loved copy of Monarch Hand Knit Styles #95 :
This lovely volume is a compendium of chunkier knits from previous Monarch issues, chosen ‘for quick knitting!’.
This could be YOU admiring Mexican folk pottery!
The giveaway is a thank-you to all you readers I was surprised to find I had, who came out of the woodwork with your greatly appreciated well-wishes. Now, I hold no truck with this ‘random number generator’ pap, nor do I appreciate having to jump through hoops ‘friending’ this and tweeting that just to earn the possibility of getting free stuff. No, all you have to do to enter this contest is, in 500 words or less, explain what is happening in this photo:
That’s it! Don’t by any means feel constrained to literalness or logic. Email your response to heythere@rarerborealis.com with the header ‘CONTEST ENTRY’ by, let’s see…MIDNIGHT, May 18th. That should give everyone ample time. I’ll announce a prizewinner on May 21st, and post the winning entry. Huzzah!
On a down note, this officially marks the end of free vintage pattern posts on the site. However, as I have waaaaaay too many vintage pattern books, this is by no means the last contest or giveaway over here. I just won’t post any more pattern scans, which blows because my love of obsessive hoarding is matched only by my need to compulsively share that which I’ve hoarded. In the future (the near future!), I’ll share patterns I’ve come up with myself, both free and for sale, of the knitting and stitching variety. Here’s to the future!
Well hello there! If you attempted to visit the site the past few days you may have gotten a 404 message saying the website was ‘Forbidden’. While that certainly adds some sexy danger to my image, it was the result of a site takedown notice from none other than Mariella Shearer, aka The Hare Moon, aka EbayUK’s bythelightofthemoon, aka Etsy’s toknittowoo. Here’s the truly hilarious part – she asked that the site, the entire site, be taken down because I ‘stole’ one of her images. ‘Stole’ it to use – wait for it – in a post demonstrating how she’d very clearly stolen the image from me.
So, to restate – my site was taken down for 5 days because this blatant, unrepentant thief had the sheer balls to claim I stole her image in a post demonstrating “her” image was a badly photoshopped rip from my site.
I’ll wait a moment to let the uproarious laughter die down.
Now, I’ve already called her out for her theft. I’ve made the majority of the vintage knitting community quite aware of it. And I’m pretty sure anyone who reads the post that caused all this bother would agree that the image is clearly stolen. However, we are living in a fearful and litigious society, and while I have generously (and many have warned me, foolishly) shared these patterns with you all, she is selling them. That she stole them from my and several other sites is moot. Because she’s selling them I am ‘infringing on her livelihood’ and therefore I, the one providing content, am the one the hammer comes down upon. Angry Jim wrote a full summation of the situation on his site, including her full contact information, which I’m also reposting below should anyone wish to get in touch with her concerning their own stolen images being sold, or perhaps their sites being threatened with takedown notices for pointing this out.
While I dearly enjoy knitting, this site is far more for me than just a place to share patterns. It’s the platform from which I’ve chosen to speak to the public, a full compendium of over 5 years worth of writing, worrying, animated gifs, research and yes, free patterns. That someone would dare threaten all that over something so petty, not to mention backwards, speaks to an avaricious and narrow mind.
She actually signed a document reading “I, the undersigned, do solemnly declare that the image represented at the following website address is my creation, my intellectual property and copyright and I have not given authorization to anyone, including the owner of rarerborealis.com, to use or display it.” Well, if badly cutting and pasting an image onto a new background and slightly changing its color makes it yours, then I’d like to share some more of my own personal, copywritten, totally my own and not anyone else’s vintage images:
Before Ms. Shearer runs to the nearest keyboard to type out yet another infringement claim, I’d like to point out these follow THE EXACT parameters she’s claimed make the images she stole from ME, HERS. Calling me out will by the same stroke invalidate her own threadbare claims. As an additional gauntlet thrown down, I’d like to ask Ms. Shearer to see a photo, ANY photo, of the vintage knitting books she’s culled her ‘digital scans’ from. I’m more than happy to share photos of my collection; IN FACT, this week I’ll be giving away some duplicates I have in my physical, non-imaginary vintage knitting collection that really exists!
Ms. Shearer claims I have infringed her copyright. Well, she has infringed on my now-lessened belief in the decency and thoughtfulness of humanity by persisting in her greedy, dishonest ‘business’ venture. If anyone out there feels similarly, please do let her know. Also, please do link to and repost this; I would love it if one of the first things that came up searching for vintage patterns was a warning away from her sites.
Mariella Shearer
Telephone number: +44 (1424) 819224
email addresses: mariella@coolers.fsbusiness.co.uk mariellashearer@yahoo.co.uk
address:
39 Station Road
Bexhill-on-Sea
East Sussex
TN40 1RG
England
Tags: copyright, irksomeness, moral indignity, stolen patterns, theft
Remember several months ago, when I posted about this sniveling thief bythelightofthemoon (toknittowoo on Etsy), who stole patterns from me, Bex and a number of other free pattern sites to sell on Ebay? Remember how I put up the stupid watermark so this wouldn’t happen again? Well, it turns out just because you have no morality doesn’t mean you can’t figure out Photoshop. Behold, a pattern put up AFTER the watermarking:
CLICK FOR BLATANT, ‘COPYRIGHT INFRINGING’ THIEVERY!
Here’s the link to the original FREE pattern, which I will again clarify is for personal use only, NOT FOR RIPPING OFF AND BADLY PHOTOSHOPPING INTO A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BACKGROUND. Also, for the briefest lesson in pattern copyright – the pattern is not just for the image, IT IS FOR THE PATTERN INSTRUCTION, so guess what sister, you’re still stealing even if you did make some collages. And you also just blatantly stole a bunch of my patterns and stuck your stupid name over the top.
What’s even worse, this louse has set up her own website full of stolen patterns, presumably as a hedge against the inevitable shutdown of her completely stolen Ebay store. If you’d like to contact her through her new shop, as the email she lists for the ebay store, mariella@coolers.fsbusiness.co.uk, doesn’t seem to work (or perhaps she’s just blocked my email, possibly the only intelligent thing she’s done), please feel free to click here and write away.
I am absolutely crushed by this. This is the second time, after personally contacting them to stop no less, patterns have been stolen from my site. Until I can figure out a better way to share these images with good honest folk without getting burned again, I won’t be posting any more free patterns. Sorry guys. If anyone out there slightly better at watermarking or protecting images has any suggestions, please do let me know.
Also, be sure to tell as many people as you can, internet or in person, that thanks to the generosity of a large group of vintage pattern lovers, so many wonderful patterns are available absolutely free on a variety of sites. In fact, there are several sites out there that exist just to aggregate free patterns. Some have ads and probably derive revenue from clicks, but they at least link people back to the original and don’t try and sell them hogwash. It just boils my potatoes to think not only is someone making a profit off of stolen goods, but someone on the other end of the transaction is getting bilked out of their hard-earned money. Or if they’re a kept man or woman, someone else’s hard-earned money. And this person has already had over 14,000 sales. Times the ridiculous $5.00 for a PDF, that’s quite the stolen income, and until I can figure out a better way, I’m not helping them make another dime.
Again, that thief’s name is:
Mariella Shearer
24A Silver Street
Dursley
Gloucestershire
GL11 4ND
sims@coolers.fsbusiness.co.uk
Tags: 1920s, 1930s, 1940, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 20s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70's, 80's, blouse, dress, patterns, stolen, sweater, theft, vintage
The forecast for spring is looking like a melting cast member of the original ‘Beverly Hills: 90210′, and who am I to stand in the way of progress? This week’s free pattern is something I’ve already seen a number of trendy ladies walking around Soho in…oh did I say walking? I meant hobbling, as with every step they attempted to take on the crowded streets of New York their floor-length maxi skirts and dresses, if not stepped on by their own heels, were trammeled under a thousand pedestrians’ feet, not to mention blackened from the filth that is this city. Did we learn nothing from Taxi Driver?
(The model looks like she’s trying not to crack up, possibly due to dress squeakage.)
Until that real rain finally comes people will continue following the random whims of fashion. In the meantime, let us stick to this slightly more reasonable above-the-ankle-length, or better yet, the ‘midi’ length, which would probably eat up a lot less yarn. Even better, follow the other trend of weensy skirts and make it a body-hugging mini. Ultra-mini! Belly shirt! Whatever!
I’ve also included this inverted image, just because it looks boss:
