My 12-year-old niece has a knitted Roxy hat in her Amazon wish list. I am currently attempting to reverse engineer it from the product pictures. I feel slightly guilty saying that I am doing it but not at all guilty about the actual doing. It is a pretty simple hat and I feel certain that I can make it just as well, if not better than Roxy can.
This kind of activity can bring up angst among knitters. I personally think that if you are copying something that already exists for personal use than their should be no guilt. If you are selling the item or the pattern, then it becomes problematic. I don’t know what the legal implications are but I have observed, from the outside, many a copyright dispute among knitters. It is not pretty.
Sometimes I wonder if this kind of drama only happens among knitters. Knitters do seem to be a passionate breed but I don’t know enough about the community of sewers (people who sew, not the other kind) to know if similar issues arise.
I am not sure where I was going with this post. This is the danger of blogging every day, or almost every day, you have to start a post and hope you get to a point and it looks like I haven’t done so today. All I know is that my niece will be cute in the hat I am working on for her, and warm too, I hope.
the sheep free knitter 