Before I begin my little tirade, let me show you my progress on my mom's socks:
I feel very accomplished. My goal is to finish them tomorrow. Then I need to work on my little sister's Knitted Babe (the poor thing is getting clothing veeeeery slowly), and make up a bunch of beanie bags for my little brothers. My dad and two of my brothers are coming in two weekends, so I intend to send them home with knitted goods. That's my intention. We'll see how all that goes.
Ok, on to my little rant:
A few weeks ago I was ordering some books from Amazon.com and was in an expansive mood. This book came up in the "other people ordering blah-blah ordered this as well!", so I was a sucker and bought it, sight unseen, the day before it was released.
I hadn't ever even read her blog. I guess I was thinking "the Yarn Harlot's books are awesome and so is her blog, so here is more of the same". Anyway, it arrived with....shoot, can't remember. I think it was the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Vol I. Something with big color photos and such. This book is entirely black-and-white on the inside, so it didn't grab me at first. Once I started reading it though, I noticed several things. The book reads kind of like a blog in book form. If you're new to the world of blogs and online knitting groups and such, this will be a helpful and non threatening way to find out about all of it. For me, I was just thinking "who's Wendy?". I put the book down and came back to it later.
The stories got more interesting to me (probably distancing myself from the colorful books was a good idea before reading this again), and then I noticed the chapter on socks. "Surely this will have something for me!" I said to myself. I've never knit socks toe-up. She knits all of hers this way! She has a generic sock pattern in the book!
She has a generic sock pattern on her blog! Wait. Read that again. Yes, now go check here. Yup, that looks like the same pattern to me. That makes me a little mad, but thankfully, I didn't notice any other "free online, pay for it in book" patterns. But isn't that wrong? Hopefully this is an isolated incident.*
Then I got a sudden flashback memory of when I was reading Amy Singer's Knit Wit. I had checked it out from the library, and noticed a pattern I'd seen before...in Knitty. Thinking this is just some little oversight, I continued to page through it, and noticed at least 4 patterns that had already been published by Knitty, and are free. What the heck?!
A few days ago I was listening to a knitting podcast (sorry, can't remember which one at the moment) and they were reviewing Vogue Knitting's On The Go Shawls (I think?), and mentioned that several of the patterns were simply recycled from other Vogue books or mags.
Recently I bought the Mason-Dixon Knitting book. One thing everyone's raving about (do a google search) in blogland these days are the dishcloth patterns in here. One person even wrote "this is why I bought the book". Should I leave a comment on her blog and mention that both dishcloth patterns are available for free online? That would be mean, so I won't but it made me pretty mad. Thankfully I like some of the other patterns as well, and the narrative of the book is pretty engaging as well. (Another plus is the HUGE, BEAUTIFUL color photos. The book itself is pretty huge, actually.)
Here are the free patterns:
Mason-Dixon Washrag (pdf)
Textured Slip-Stitch Dishcloth
*Log Cabin Knitting (thanks Sonja!)
And I may be wrong, but I suspect the Heartbreakingly Cute (One-Piece) Baby Kimono is out there somewhere too. Free. (Let me know if you find it first.)
Perhaps this should be included in KnitSpot's "We're Knot Taking Anymore" (top right corner of her blog)
All of this pisses me off. Authors and publishers should make sure that they're giving us what we pay for. Not just something we can get for free, packaged nicely. I could do that for myself, thank you.
*I have given the book, Wendy Knits, to a friend who is a new knitter. She loves the scarf patterns in there, and I think it'll be a good intro to the whole knitting world. I decided not to keep it only because it seemed too basic, and anyway I'm not currently emotionally attached to Wendy. Maybe I'll start following her blog though, and then perhaps I will regret this. Who knows? I'm sure that I could always check this book out at the library though if the urge to read this again should strike. And thankfully, whenever I decide to knit toe-up socks, I can print them straight off her site. For free. I'm not bitter though.
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