Has anyone make any money at knitting

General Knitting
21

This is a funny, true story:

Recently, at church, I was wearing my Cocoon cardigan (Babette) and matching cloche (Jenny). It was before service, everyone was standing around chatting a bit. A lovely young woman, about age 30 I’d say, commented how much she loved my set, and asked if I knit this set, too. I said yes. She said, “I’d just love to learn to knit! Do you teach people how to knit? I really need to learn. Because I’d have to pay $50 for a sweater like that otherwise!”

I didn’t “get it” it at first. So I just smiled and kept my mouth shut about yarn costs, etc. After a few seconds we took our seats! Saved by the bell.

During services (forgive me Lord), I was still puzzling on her unusual comment.

LIGHT BULB! :figureditout: She thought that a hand-knitted sweater like “Babette” would be less than $50…maybe $30? $20? $10?

Has anyone ever priced Rowan Cocoon? Babette sucked up 10 skeins.

So, how in the world could I expect to make money knitting for someone like her? It isn’t that she’s cheap or a cheat. She’s as sweet as can be. She’s just plain uninformed!

The only money I ever made on knitting are my Scrubbies, but let me tell ya, I’m keeping my day job!

I have no advice for you! Do what your heart tells you! People love you, and love your knitting! If you enjoy knitting for a little money, do it! When you stop enjoying it, stop.

Please do remember our moderator’s (Jan in CA) warning! Designers protect their intellectual property very zealously these days. Even FREE patterns. If you’re gonna knit for profit, make sure you are not using a copyrighted/protected pattern. It’s uncanny how they can find out! :wink:

22

I have seen this statement in alot of “answers” here…If you modify/change something in a “pattern” (just use the basic pattern) how is it that you are “copying” it? Just thought I’d ask:thumbsup:

23

LOL – if you write a novel by copying someone else’s work, but you change a few paragraphs, are you copying or writing something new?

24

LOL too… never thought of it that way…thanks for your reply

25

I have an idea … let’s say you see something you wanna make to sell. You never look at their pattern, just the FO. Next, you create it. Then it would be yours. Chances are you wouldn’t have done it the same way it was originally done, you may even have used different stitches. But if you got a chance to look at their pattern first, you’re kind of cheating. Sorta like peeking at a test before taking it and it had all the answers already written in.

26

dito…on what I replied to Globe…:aww: never gave it that much thought… I just knit and donate:teehee:

27

Thing is, anyone can copy something they’ve seen and wear it proudly as proof of your ability to copy something. It’s when they copy it and then SELL the thing that’s the problem.

Copyright and intellectual property right law is an enormous area of concern to those who are trying to protect their rights.

Anyway, I think that’s it soooo much more satisfying to make (and sell!) something that’s your work from start to finish!

28

Unless a story is taken from real life and repeated exactly it has probably already been written before. After a few thousand years everything is in reruns.

Where am I going?
Some designs are nothing but standard basics that have been knitted since the beginning of time with just a few paragraphs changed.
They shouldn’t have been given copyrights in the first place.
Like one I just knit that is two stitch patterns taken directly out of a cable dictionary. The fact that I changed one of those cables because my way is more pleasing to my eye makes mine more worthy of copyright than the pattern I was following.

She took basic sweater design and matched it with 2 cable stitches.
If anything she’s the one who infringed on someone else’s intellectual property for her own gain. Just because the stitches were invented before anyone thought to copyright them isn’t an excuse.

29

Thanks Mike:thumbsup: nicely put!!!:hug: now I can go outside and hook-up my new WATERING WAND:woohoo:

30

Yes you can make money at knitting… but not easily.

today, many knits are done in the 3rd/developing world… and the workers earn a dollar or 2 a day. (when mills first opened in NE 175 years ago, the workers there got paid a pittance but still flocked to the mills… working as milk maids on the family farm paid $0–working in a mill paid $1–hmm, which was the better deal?)

REAL hand knits (on needles) take hours… and even if you are a fast knitter, a sweater is going to take 30 hours.
at $10 an hour (hardly great wages if you have to pay your own FICA or taxes or other stuff!) a hand knit sweater is going to be priced at $300 (+ more for finishing, buttons,cost of material–$400 or $500 is a realistic comp.

Here in NYC there are boutiques that sell hand made baby sweaters for $250 (julia roberts bought a dozen when she was pregnant a few years ago!)

but most people, in most places are going to expect you to produce hand knits on a par (pricewise) as the “hand Knits” (knit on hand (vs electric) knitting machines)–they have seen in Walmart (made in china, where the workers earn $1 a day!)

and that grandmother and others make (and donate) to charity hand knit and crochet blankets that sell for a dollar or 2 over the cost of the materials… just re-enforces the idea that knitting is ‘free labor’ .

You can make money if you are willing to charge $45 to $60 for a hand knit hat (i know knitters in NYC who sell hand knit hats for just that, and more… ($250 for a hand knit, 100% merino wool hat in Bergdoff’s…(not made from Paton’s classic merino, but hand spun… but still, $250 for a hat!)

but try that in peoria, (asking $250 for a hand knit wool hat) and they would laugh you out of town.

YOU could make some money (not a great income, but better return for your effort) if you sell patterns…
or write books, or teach (or all three!) but selling hand knits? its iffy!

31

Another “well” put explanation…“hand knit” too me means “labor of love”…The thought of “knitting to sell” would become tedius and boring, I probably couldn’t produce a quality piece…JMO

32

The copyright thing is iffy at best (and it drives me nuts that you’re not supposed to photocopy something that’s been out of print for 10 years-- just whom exactly are you stealing from???). But knitting is very different from writing. It’s more like recipes. If you write down your grandmother’s recipe for choc chip cookies, it’s likely the same as one in some cookbook, somewhere. Finite list of ingredients, finite things you can do with them to create the cookies. One hundred scarf books are going to tell you to cast on 20 sts and do a 1 X 1 rib for 5 feet. If you knit a basic cardigan, and it happens to be the basic cardigan in some designer’s book? Don’t know how they could nab you on it. But if do one of Lavold’s complicated cable numbers or one of the intarsia designs from a 1980s book when that was so popular? They’ll get you in a second.

33

I’ll have to disagree with you on that one, Mike, because you’re at one end of a very wide spectrum with that viewpoint. (People who think that NOTHING should ever be copied AT ALL are on the other end of that spectrum.) Yeah, a story has been told a million times, and there’s nothing new under the sun. A knit hat with a garter stitch border is almost impossible to copyright, for goodness sakes. Most jumpers/sweaters have some form of a neck, and are a tube, possibly with sleeves.

That’s about it, that’s about where the story ends in the simplistic view. How the thing fits, drapes, the proportions of the thing, all of the things that make a garment absolutely unique to the designer and then in turn to the maker, are the things that go into what copyright is protecting.

I can write, all right, but there’s no way I’d tell the same story the same way as a Hemingway or a Nabokov or a Pratchett, not if I sat at a keyboard like said monkeys til the end of time.

Copyright law is so fussy simply because it ISN’T possible to be simplistic and formulaic about it. Lawyers make a whole lot of money off the fact that you can’t be simplistic about it!

Bottom line is: if you don’t want to have to worry about it, simply always sell your own work and designs or only use patterns where they clearly state the work is saleable.

34

I understand what you’re questioning. And, truth be told, there can be a lot of patterns that are very close in design just by accident. Artists run into this issue a lot. Matter of fact, you can’t really ‘copyright’ a painting, but you can get sued in court if another artist thinks you used his painting too closely as a guide for their own version. Artists challenge other artists in court all the time. They win some, they lose some. There are some guidelines that are followed when the decision is handed down, like how many significant changes did the defendant artist make? Etc. I don’t know if that type of artistic rule is applied in court cases between designers of clothing, knitting, etc.

This is the exact copyright wording in a pattern PDF that I bought recently from Chic Knits:

[COLOR=Navy]“You are allowed to make a copy of this pattern
for personal use only.
In Whole or Part: Editing and using this pattern as the
basis for another pattern or as a template, publishing, transmitting, e-mailing this pattern to others, or
posting online, is strictly prohibited.
For Non-Commercial Use Only -
You are not allowed to produce patterns or make garments from this pattern then sell them anywhere[/COLOR].”

Globaltraveler also gave a darn good analogy!

Anyway, if I came across as stern or heavy-handed, I apologize. Totally unintentional! :hug:

35

No feelings “hurt” this way:hug::heart:…I am just “fascinated” by all the input…ya learn something everyday

36

You could make a copy of the pattern IF you found the pattern in a book in the library. I do it all the time and it’s perfectly legal, whether the book is out of print for 10 yrs or brandy-new on the market.

37

Exactly! :thumbsup: Well said, of troy!

This is exactly why designers are so protective of their designs! They are trying to make a bit of a living from their designs and patterns.

Anyone ever try to design something AND THEN write it all down in various sizes, and with wording that everyone can understand, and with positively no errors (so that you don’t get tarred and feathered!) ?

It ain’t easy! I’ve got to take my hat off to them! They deserve to make money on their patterns, not me. :wink:

38

LOL, Here in the real Peoria you wouldn’t sell that hat. But go to the local community college and it will cost you something like $120 to take “advanced” crochet classes and learn up to double crochet because the basic class where you learn to chain and single crochet for $60 is a prerequisite.

Actually anything is very easy to copyright. Winning a copyright infringement case over it in court is a different matter.

You assume I’m at the extreme of a viewpoint when I am not. I have had original designs stolen, stolen some more, eventually stolen by a big company who changed a “few paragraphs” trademarked and copyrighted it. There was nothing I could do because enough paragraphs were changed and one of my witnesses was one of the ones stealing my design.
I know exactly what is and isn’t kosher.

What I’ve seen in a lot of books are not actual copyrightable designs but rather a book that is copyrighted.
I’ve seen a lot of “public domain” basic designs with copyright threats that wouldn’t stand up in court for that design.
Copy the book and sell the patterns as written and yes you would be infringing. Make that basic design and sell it, no you are not infringing. Take a Kaffe Fassett design and make up your own pattern to mimic it and you are likely infringing.

39

As I said, we’re just going to have to disagree there.

Personally, I don’t want to be the one to find out if selling something made off of someone else’s pattern is going to get me in trouble or not, and I’d rather someone didn’t decide one of my patterns is “basic” and sell something I’ve designed. Granted, I’d probably not market what I or anyone else would consider a “basic” pattern, but who wants to be the guinea pig?

40

this whole discussion is very interesting. a friend loved the hand warmers i had made and asked if i’d make her a pair. i really like making them (keeps my hands occupied while watching tv), and told her i would, as i had some free yarn someone had given me . knitting is kind of like therapy , so i really don’t mind making small items, but wouldn’t dream of trying to make a sweater, etc for non-family members. i am a fairly slow knitter and if charged for time spent,no one would be able to afford it!! linknit41