i actually have so much to celebrate this year. my three very best friends who appeared in my life 25 years ago have stayed. and i am soon on blog post # 50 and sweet albert and sweet alba, the knitting muse, came into the lives of my family one year ago. and i have been the happy blogger for 50 posts very soon. and my glass is definetely half full more than half empty.
so i will have a competition here. and the prize is a very old book that i love: annechen sibbern bohn: norwegian knitting patterns. even the divine ms. z quotes from it in knitting w /0 tears odds are mighty good right now. it is a staple in anyone's collection of knitting books. and i would love responses to the question when does somebody else's design become your own?????? on this post when you enroll for the contest????
i will find the winner on the 24th of august.
good luck.
cheers
merete aka knititch
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33 comments:
Many congratulations!
I've heard of that book and tried so hard to get it here! but it's not available!!
That's a tough question! I think with EZ the recipe will always be hers, but the design is uniquely yours every time.
With other designers I think the design would be yours if the original designer looked at your FO and couldn't recognize her/his original pattern.
Grr!! Sometimes English is so useless! Instead of needing to write her/his why can't we have "sin" !? You Danes are so smart.
I think that someone else's design becomes your own when you feel ownership and pride for the finished object.......when you feel pride for the project because you know all of the little changes and modifications you have made truely make it a unique pattern. Fashion is always inspired by someone else's original design. :)
Thank you for having this contest! :) ~Amber
I think a design is truely yours when you are done knitting and you look at yours and the patterns and hum i think we took different turns in the road. lol By the way your knitting is beautiful.
I love the question! Well, I think it becomes your own when you no longer see it as the standard. When you look at a design, and like the idea, but realize that for you, it needs some different elements. Not just different yarn, but different gauge, different shaping, edging, etc. Then the finished project may look somewhat like the original design, but is uniquely yours.
It becomes your own when they can't sue you for ripping them off. :D
I'm serious. That's when I see it.
I think a design becomes yours when you have fiddled and messed around enough that the end result is something different than what the original design would have made. But sometimes it's a hard call.
There is a very fine line between seeing a design and doing a knockoff/ripoff of that design, and seeing the same design and using that as the starting place to create something entirely different. When you can create something entirely different -- that's when it's your own design.
When your inner self tells you "This came from me and only me." or when google.com shows you that they have no entries that are like your creation.lol.
I think a design becomes my own when I have internalized the nuances of the process and the product. This does not mean that I can re-publish the design as my own. It means that the design has become a pary of me and who I am. Something becoming part of me is something that has intrinsic meaning to me and for me.
When does someone else's design become your own?
I think it is when the form and function of the design meets my personal needs and likes.
punkin at needle-to-needle.blogspot.com
I think, it is my design, when I change a pattern to my personal needs and taste.
www.myblog.de/leandra
When I have finished one and imediately want to begin another but to add a it here and subtract a bit here to improve it to my tastes/needs :o)
A design becomes yours when the original item looks nothing like the original item. OR when you take a stitch pattern and turn it into YOUR work of art!
Libby
I really like your question, it's a hard one.
For cooking recipes, someone came up with the rule "change 3 ingredients and it's yours", which seems to be widely accepted in the cooking world.
For knitting, I think something is your original design, when someone else with another pattern (your starting point) would not get the same result as you.
I think it's ok to incorporate stitch patterns or colorwork charts, as long as shaping, construction and details are your own. However, even that can be a hard call sometimes.
I like the idea mentioned above that the designer of your "starting point pattern" does not recognize your design as theirs.
And with all the EZ recipes: it's basically her recipe, but your design.
Hmmm. What an interesting question! For me, I think a design becomes your own when you understand the form and function and have added multiple elements (whether a change in stitch or a change in construction) that make the sweater "made for you" so to speak. It's like a light bulb comes on and by the end of the knitting, you know that you totally understand the process of making the item and feel like you've grown as knitter. When the knitted item forces you to grow as a knitter and you are able to give input to that growth process, it becomes your own.
Congrats on #50! Keep 'em coming!
I haven't a clue when it becomes your own so you don't have to enter me in your contest. Just wanted to send you good wishes!
I think a design really becomes your own when you're able to alter it to your own needs in such a way that you can see both the influence of the original designer as well as your own skill. (And then you think of three more variations you need to knit.)
Love your Knitting Alphabet!
A design becomes your own when you add to and change it to your specific wants. When you see more of you than before.
I found your blog through Zimmermaniacs - good question! I think the minute a knitter reads a pattern and then thinks - "I will change (something) instead of knitting according to the instructions" is when a pattern becomes one's own. Making it work is also a test but tweaking an existing pattern definitely makes the pattern unique.
Diane Hall
If I use someone else's pattern as inspiration, a springboard, a starting place, I think of the resulting pattern as my own. But if I just make some slight alterations, perhaps a change in gauge, or substitute a different stitch pattern, then I consider the result a variation on the original pattern.
I am making little sweaters for my granddaughters. While I have retained the sizing on a free pattern leaflet I picked up, you would not recognize my sweaters as the leaflet photograph. I changed the stitch from stripes of stockinette mixed with garter to plain stockinette, added a lace panel up the front and added a hood (also with lace around the face). These have become MY design, my sweaters — to my infinite satisfaction.
A pattern starts as just a collection of words and symbols printed on a piece of paper, but from the first moment that you carefully choose just the right yarn to the moment that the final end is woven in, each pattern that you choose becomes 'your own' because of the time, effort, love, and care that goes into each and every stitch. This is especially true when the knitted article is meant for someone else.
Congrats!
As for your question, I believe that a pattern becomes your own at the point where someone else knitting the same pattern does not end up looking like yours (someone else said it much more eloquently).
Altho' the flip side is that it is your own pattern if you manage to reverse-engineer a pattern without actually seeing the original pattern. It is your own pattern, but the end product may look identical/very similar.
when you've changed to be perfect for you and you can knit it almost from memory
A design becomes your own when you could not replicate it from the original pattern without the copious notes that you made along the way. And yet, it's all been done before and will be done again which is part what makes community and continuity.
Congratulations on 50!
I suppose very basic designs, like a close-fitting cap or a raglan sweater, can become one's own when you invariably use one stitch count and gauge that you stuck with over time, and when one develops a stitch pattern or decrease pattern to go with it. Or it depends on how you write it, I guess, like cooking recipes--the words make it original. It's very hard to say, though.
I don't think a design ever becomes my own. I will forever be in debt to those who came before me, those who "invented" a new stitch, or a new cast-on method, or envisioned a different colorway. All Unless we're full into production knitting or knitting exactly to directions from a kit, which few of us are, everything we produce is unique and rooted in the work of those who've gone before us. Do we "own" the design?
There are laws governing copyright. And with the ease of the internet I think folks have become accustomed to getting patterns for free, and we've lost some respect for copyrights. But even Barbara Walker started by cataloging the work of old knitters, and Elizabeth Zimmerman built on what she'd been taught. We've simply joined the stream of humanity with different gifts and skills, access to information and our own imagination--to be part of a community of knitters who create beauty with our hands.
I think a design becomes our own when we're doing something in a new way or putting a new spin on a well known technique or stitch pattern. I love to see people thinking about how knitting works, how stitches are formed and how they work together to make a particular fabric.
I found your blog through Zimmermaniacs and have two immediate comments:
1. I am so envious that you know Gillian Welch. I have discovered her in the past year and think her music is wonderful. I only own revival but have checked Hell Among the Yearlings out of the library more than once.
2. Someone else's design becomes your own (design...not finished object) when: you borrow parts of it -- the shaping maybe, or the color combinations -- into something else you are creating. Changing yarn fiber or color does not count. Nor does resizing to a different gague or modifying collar/sleeve/body length, etc.
It is like cooking: you might consult a cookbook to see how someone else does it, then charge off on your own. You borrow a bit from here, a bit from there, and combine it with your own intuition.
Someone's design does not Become your own. It remains theirs and you just use it for your own product. Or it influences your own design, in which case the end design is yours.
?
So many have said so well about what makes a pattern your own. I think I will pass on adding more.
But I did want to say - you have great taste in music, it looks like you have been listening to my iPod! ;-) Every single one of those musicians is represented.
Cate
I think that the moment you embrace the pattern that you are knitting it becomes yours. I think the pattern or orginal thought will always be whose started it but EZ once said on her video, the if you can make it better do so, if you can unvent it do it...any thing you do makes it yours.
Casey
I believe in counted cross stitch you can take things from 3 different sources and claim it as your own. Anyone making an EZ garmet can surely claim it as their own. As Meg says "Elizabeth does not hold your hand." Even her directions for Blind Followers leave much to the descretion of the one knitting. The book is a treasure--are you sure you want to part with it???
I agree with so many of the other posts that this is really hard. I think it's when you go through the trouble to change one thing about the pattern that is essential to the design--change one element (border, ribbing, background pattern, other pattern, cable, collar, hood, etc.), change the yarn weight(i.e. sportweight to laceweight), change the style (fitted sleeves to loose) or add an element that is not stated in the designer's pattern.
I know I left something out. :)
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