Friday, November 28, 2014

Open letter to Amanda

Hello Amanda,
   I'm not sure what your financial and moral situations are that led up to you joining the Chinese pattern sharing forum. I don't have any vendetta against you in particular, you just happened to be more obvious than most of the thieves so it was easy to single you out for example.
   It always leaves me with a knot of anger in my stomach when I see my charts posted up on the sites for the downloading.  Seriously, how would you like to see something that you've spent hours developing as a saleable product being passed out for free. Actually it's worse than just giving them away for free. To download them, I know that you have to further propagate the piracy by uploading different charts to the forum. I wonder who you sold out to download my pattern.
   My daughter's college doesn't take "gold coins" for her tuition. The grocery store doesn't accept them either, nor the vet, nor the power company. Perhaps you think we designers are swimming in dough from all the legal sales and don't really miss the gravy. If you were to look at how many of my charts were posted in that forum, and calculate how many downloads each, and how much lost sales, you might be surprised at how high the figure was. Perhaps you don't realize what a small percentage of the retail price from a legal sale ends up in an account from which I can pay for those groceries.
   From your Facebook pictures, I can see you have a young son. Are these the lessons you are teaching him? He'll grow up to be a real gem, I'm sure.
   I particularly like the way you waved your arms around and Facebook deleted everything from my timeline, including my own photos. It's as if NOTHING happened there. I called you out as a thief, with the hard evidence to back that, yet somehow I was the bully. But not before 4,000+ people saw what you did. 
   There's not much I can do to stop the root problem. Those foreign sites don't comply with legal requests and takedown notices. You've changed your screen name, as if that will protect you or somehow hide you from view. Lawyers to chase infringers and shut down sites don't work within the salary limits I have, and further dealings with you will only depress me.
   Besides there is a different morally decrepit soul over on Google docs that I'm turning my energies toward today.  She somehow thinks that if she recharts my patterns into the cross stitch program herself, that she can copyright the output. And as I speak, a friend just sent an email pointing out that some bitch on Pinterest is sharing scanned images.  Ah what a respected and rewarding career.

May karma bite you on the ass,
Tracy

Monday, November 10, 2014

Where did October go?

Somehow in all the hubbub of preparing for the big Trail of Orts tour, I neglected to update the blog and the Roll Your Own Wiki with the latest mandala in the series. The charts went out to all the subscribers on October 1st, but nobody else got to see and I didn't preview it in the typical variety of colorways. October was the 7th and final installment in the Merry Go Round RYO series. These were all named after lines of latitude, and October was the Arctic Circle. Whether or not any visible cues from where I drew my inspiration still remain distinct in the design is open to your judgement, but these always do end up being a study in abstraction.

Arctic Circle in its titular colorway:
Navy 336/312/334; Christmas Green 701/703/472;
Jade 561/562/564; Desert Sand 632/407/950.
Here she is in some of our other colorways. It's always fun to see how the different colors tend to accentuate one part of the design or another. As usual, it's going to be a tough choice to pick colors for stitching.
Top Row: Clean the Fan, Orchids, Halloween
Middle Row: Zaszlaja, Basil, Tropic of Cancer
Bottom: Seahawks, Fall Daisy, Geode

RYO charts are now available only in printed form from your favorite shop or directly from my webshop.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

November New Releases

Two new charts for November.  If you ran in to me on the Trail of Orts Tour, you will recognize the Spot On set of mini-mandalas that I brought along.  Susan at Red Gate Stitchery makes these very cool little drilled pendants of wood and acrylic and my thoughts immediately ran to tiny kaleidoscopic jewels that would fit just perfectly. You can ask your favorite LNS to stock or special order the pendant blanks, or you can buy them directly from Susan in her Etsy shop. The chart is $10 and should be available from your favorite shop.

DMC and a few hours to make a sweet little necklace!
 The Stitchers' Village is sponsoring a series of charts themed by asking where several designers' ideal home would be.  Ink Circles was #3 in their series, with the chart Village Square. (Rosewood Manor and Glendon Place were #1 and #2.)  "My village home is in a small town full of parks and trees and flowers. I can easily walk to the bookstore, the stitching shop, and the pub." I stitched it in Gloriana's Bluegrass Silk (you'll need 2 skeins) and Picture This Plus Icon Belfast linen, but it will obviously adapt to many a combo.
Village Square - #3 in the the Village Home series.
So, wherever it is that you call home, I invite you to pour a mug of your favorite brew (be it coffee, tea, or beer) and sit for a while and stitch. I'm pretty sure you deserve a little break.