An Open Letter to Knitting.com

You’d closed comments and shut down your original post before I, or many others, were able to respond. You realised you’d walked into a community that is strong and progressive, and that we are far more diverse than you imagined. But I still don’t think you’re listening. You’ll find the comment that I wanted to share on your latest post below.

The image shows the crown of my Traversa pattern. It features the post title “An Open Letter to the Owners of knitting.com”

I'm a knit designer, I've been a professional in this industry for 17 years. I'm also disabled and provide my family's only income solely from the work I do in this industry. I’m far from being the most well-known knit designer, but I’m not unknown and I’m respected and established.

One key reason why I, and many others, have struggled to earn even a halfway decent living in this industry is because people like you believe that making good content is easy or quick or cheap, which only serves to devalue the work we do. You believe that our thoughts, ideas or skills don’t have tangible value.

You seem oblivious to the fact that creating good content - whether it be patterns, tutorials, workshops or articles - takes skill, expertise and experience. That it takes time to build a reputation and gain the trust of our customers. And that creating good content is essential to the growth of the community and industry alike.

Had you done sufficient research you'd have learnt that many of the content creators in the yarn industry are marginalised. We're not all white middle class women choosing to do this because we can. You'd have learnt that we're tired of our work being devalued and tired of our incomes being kept artificially low because someone with more privilege than us can afford to take the hit, or because some dude wants to throw money around to make a quick buck.

By failing to take all of this into account you're not only hurting marginalised creators like me, but the knitting industry and community as a whole. We don't need another race to the bottom.

If you’re still reading, can I make some suggestions?

What we need is recognition of the hard work, skills and expertise that already exist in this industry, and not just of those folks who shout the loudest or are savviest at marketing or photography. We need accessible resources and websites. We need those with privilege to lift up folks who don’t share their good fortune.

And we need the people who don’t bat an eyelid at $80,000 for a domain name to research their new market thoroughly, and to not only pay the kind of rates that similar skills and expertise would garner in other industries - because clearly they can afford to - but we also need them to take the experts in their new market seriously.

eta/ this post was updated on 11th March 2022 with a new post graphic. The image shows the crown of my Traversa pattern.