Hey folks,
But this post is more about the fact that I'm starting to charge for my patterns.
I wanted to write a thing here about asking for money for patterns. I'm not especially comfortable asking for money for things. I have a hard time doing anything creative for pay. But financially I have hit some hard times. I'm living on my own in Vancouver B.C. and rent is expensive. The cost of living here is dumb, people who live here know what I'm talking about.
I have three amazing jobs and although i'm doing okay, there's always a threat of financial instability looming over my head. Just like lots of other people, but the thought sometimes it keeps me up at night!
When I talk to people about this lots of them will say "Why don't you charge a bit of money for your patterns?" and I go into my shpeal about how I want my patterns to be accessible to people who don't have credit cards, or people like me, who can't really afford to buy a whole lot of patterns off the interwebs. More than anything I want people to look at my patterns and knit them and love them and to not have to pay for them.
So here's been my dilemma since the Lonely Tree Shawl got so popular, do I start to charge for my patterns? I put a lot of work into them. The Lonely Tree Shawl took months to put together. Test knitting, designing, photographing, layout. It took a hundred hours at least of conceptualizing and knitting the shit out of that thing. But I had a passion to do it, so why should I ask other people to pay me? I was going to do it anyway, wether or not people liked it, why should I charge?
I guess the bottom line is that I am broke, but the core part of starting to charge for my patterns is that my time is worth some money. My skills are worth some money. I do everything myself, from conceptualizing, to designing, to knitting and test knitting, to photographs to pattern layout and design to publishing and also to dealing with the 1-5 questions I get a day from lovely knitters wondering about aspects of my patterns.
I use years and years of skills I have paid to learn, and lots that I didn't pay for, but spent hundreds and hundreds of hours perfecting. I think I deserve your $3-$5! But that being said, if you don't have $3 to give me send me a PM on ravelry and I'll probably send the pattern to you for free. Because I'm there. I don't really have $3 to give either :-)
So there's my speech, I'll get off my soapbox now. Money is hard to manage!
So let me summarize. I hope you feel my future patterns are worth the money! If you think they're worth the money but that you don't have it, hit me up and I'll send you an expiring link to my pattern for you to download!
If there were a "pay what you can" feature on ravelry I would do that for sure.
I want to thank everyone who has been supportive of me through this whole learning curve! Lots of love to all the folks who knit my patterns and who send me such kind messages about them! You're all awesome and man do I love knitters a whole lot!
~ Sylvia
