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.

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!

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

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

This week’s pattern comes from the very specifically themed 5th Avenue Fashions, shot on and around the Empire State Building. Tourist magnet, glowing beacon, the very symbol of the city, what frights could possibly await at the top of New York’s famous icon, barring a giant gorilla on the loose?

Wooooooh! Wooo! woo. Eh. It’s no Q The Winged Serpent, but tell me that underlighting and sly grin don’t imply she’ll push you off the balcony the second you turn your back? What inspired the book’s photographer to light her like that? Especially given that, in the 1930s, underlighting was shorthand for ‘terrifying monster’?

Eh?

Eehh?

Eeeehhhh?!

At a time when Hollywood had gauze shortages from soft focus ‘glamour lighting’ their leading ladies, harsh underlighting screamed menace and terror. Also it doesn’t help her direct gaze resembles a more modern movie psychopath:

All work and no crochet make Jack a dull boy.

The pattern itself makes up a lovely crocheted top, and if the nautical color scheme isn’t up your alley, it would also look great in black with Fiesta-color triangles (Fiesta being….an unspecified amalgam of bright hues). Or if you really want to stick with the Halloween theme, you could knit it up in this and go as a background extra from ‘Hellraiser’.

Even in the wider shot, it looks like she’s holding the elevator door saying “Room for one more...” in the creepiest tone possible.

Perhaps you’ve noticed a lack of posts recently. Perhaps you’ve been too enomoured of the changing seasons to even notice. Perhaps my ego’s puffed up enough to assume anyone actually notices anything about a particular website before immediately clicking on to the next series of animated GIFs (featuring kitties, of course). Of late time has become a more precious commodity, due to the slowly dwindling amount of daylight to burn, the toll of the daily grind, and what I’ll loosely refer to as ‘The Saturn Return’. Mark Twain said it best when he wrote, “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” I’d hate to think of this site as work, and, for now at least, will limit Free Pattern Fridays to a vague schedule of every other week-ish, or whenever I find a genuinely exellent pattern to write about and share.

So much for the ‘bad news’; on to the good: this week’s patternsssssss(plural) include a most delightful removable Peter Pan collar, a dainty belt, wee rosebud jewelry, and a change purse. The change purse (or ‘compact cover’, to hide the shameful fact you powder your nose) I could live without, but who knows, perhaps someone on your holiday gift list has been dying for some way to keep their loose change just like the folks on ‘Mad Men’.

(Here’s what’s on the table this week.)

Instead, here are a handful of gorgeous images from a genuinely beautiful state. Utah has numerous national parks, including Arches National Park which contains the famous natural bridge featured on the Utah license plate. As a bonus, hiking trails run the gamut from several hours to 30 minutes, and all will make you feel as if you stepped into a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

We know we belong to the land! And the land we belong to is grand!

You may notice the ugly new watermark covering the image – please feel free to thank Ebay user bythelightofthemoon, aka Etsy’s toknittowoo, as their repeated theft of free patterns led me to this decision. Also note that it says right there in plain Latin that this stuff is FREEEEEEEEEEE for personal use. Do note if you’ve not already the clarifying paragraph on the RIGHT under HEADS-UP, stating the specifics of this personal usage.

We on the East Coast are geographically fortunate, mostly avoiding natural disasters that plague the rest of the country. We’re on a major fault line, but it’s mostly inactive. We do get storms, but they’re weakened after moving up the coast. We’ve even had the occasional tornado, though with the dense build-up they’re rarely as destructive as those in the Midwest and barely touch down. So it’s a bit of a surprise having a hurricane follow an earthquake in less than a week.

The yin and yang of stereotypical New York mindsets, the high-strung neurotic and the blasè rock, are reacting about as expected. For every gallery owner panic-grabbing fontina and prosecco at Eataly screaming “I HAVE CHILDREN TO THINK OF!”, there’s a stoopfull of elderly Hispanic guys quietly chatting and playing dominoes (which they would continue doing whether the sun came out or a car exploded in front of them). Given how hectic day-to-day life in a crowded city is, either mentality is an acceptable coping mechanism, but it’s funny how few major disasters the city has to deal with. With the 10-year anniversary of September 11th drawing near that may seem strange to write, but it’s the 10-year anniversary, and how many large-scale terrorist attacks have we experienced since? Exactly.

Which brings me rather long-windedly around to this week’s pattern, from a state that’s no stranger to devastating natural events.

Stay safe, everyone.

On a random tangent, I declare the Allan Moore lookalike the Stevie Nicks of Kansas, for while the rest of the band plays 12 instruments each, he sings and plays tambourine. And sports a boss beard.