This post was originally published on the now-retired Make & Meaning blog on February 13th, 2010.

Normal curve by Greg Werker (used with permission granted while he was sitting next to me)

Kids, there is a pervasive opinion out there that in order to appeal to a massive audience, you have to be bland.

Not that anyone actually says “bland” but that’s totally the gist of it.

Folks holding this opinion say things like, “Let’s tone this down,” and “We need to make sure this appeals to our suburban and rural audiences as well as to the edgier urban types.”

But what they really mean, even if they won’t admit it, is that they think a thing will have mass appeal if it’s bland. Banal. Benign. And I’ll even ruin my alliteration by tossing in generic.

I drive myself nuts thinking about this because at the same time that I think this way of thinking doesn’t give people credit as freethinking individuals and displays a conservatism that gives me hives, I also know that the business or marketing sense behind it is somewhat sound (of course there are exceptions like, you know, Lady Gaga). In any realm you examine, benign reaches a wider audience than whatever we call not-benign in this context. Let’s call it challenging.

I don’t like to believe it, but I know most people don’t like to be challenged constantly. I mean, I don’t either. I like to feel comfortable and safe and warm and cozy. I want to look at pretty pictures and listen to pleasing music and read books that don’t give me a headache. Well, most of the time. The other part of the time, I want to encounter ugly things so I can think through why I find them so revolting. I want to read a book that requires thought in addition to escape. I want to hear opinions that are very different from my own and I want to do my best to understand them.

Lately I’ve been signing up to receive a lot of email newsletters. Some of them are awesome. Most of the crafty ones are great, and so are the ones about books. They’re written in the business owner’s own voice and that voice comes through naturally, they’re playful and fun, and they get to the point.

And then there are the ones that aren’t so great.

The ones that aren’t so great fall into the category of those three Bs and a G listed above. They might contain a headshot of the person writing, but that person’s voice lacks personality. There’s solid information, but the topics fall into the middle part of the bell curve – it’s the same stuff most people talk about, the same stuff written about in most books and blogs and magazines, without any new angles or information or humour or graphics or exploration or fun.

It bothers me that businesses put out stuff like this, mostly because I’m bothered by it working. They do it because people click and link and buy.

And so when I go down the rabbit hole thinking about this stuff, I end up depressed. Selfishly, I get depressed because so much culture out there isn’t interesting to me, and I take the time to think about why I don’t find it interesting, and that spirals into a general lament about pretty much everything. I get depressed for the state of our culture.

But my therapist once pointed out to me that I’m an optimist. I’m a kind of unflappable optimist, really. So this despair doesn’t last long. Instead, it turns into drive. Drive to do my best not to contribute to the blandness, not to get lazy when I’m tempted to just repeat the easy stuff, to put in good effort to contribute work I’m proud of to the community and larger society I love so much.

And so I’ll take this opportunity to implore you to do the same. The next time you’re tempted to make or write about something popular, make sure you add your own take. Say what you think, dig deeper, take a step back, insert something unexpected. Or simply follow the rules to the letter, but show it off extraordinarily. Make a scarf exactly how the pattern says to, but take stunning photos of it.

See? We don’t have to be constantly coming up with edgy, brand new ideas that push the fringes of culture. We just owe it to ourselves to really contribute, in whatever way we can.

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This post was originally published on the now-retired Make & Meaning blog on January 30th, 2010. It’s not very topical now,  five months after the Olympics, but I wanted to save this post in a public forum. (Also, heh, look how jaded I was before the Games! Look how I totally failed to anticipate the amazing community vibe!)

I spent much of this week wanting to write about the Olympics. I’m not an athlete and I shudder at the thought of competing athletically (heck, I had to be taught to want to win a board game). I’m not really a sports fan and my main interest in the last winter Olympics was the sweater I wanted to complete for the Knitting Olympics (I think I finished it two years after the Games).

But I live in Vancouver, and so this year I’m very interested in the Games. I still don’t care much about the sports (though we’re totally going to see an Olympic hockey game ten minutes away from our house!), but I do love massive events. There are just so many variables! This event has been seven years in the making, and that’s not counting the time it took the committee to put together the bid package that laid the foundation for the tasks that have taken seven years to complete.

Anyway. When it was announced in 2003 that Vancouver and Whistler would host the games, people were pretty psyched. I was psyched.

And then seven years passed and now the Games are upon us. Road closures and traffic restrictions have begun, security checkpoints are being set up, bus routes are changing. And you know what? The locals are grumbling. A lot. Me among them.

Then I put my finger on what’s really going on. The committee in charge of the Games, Vanoc, has been ignoring us. In their focus on making their sponsors happy, they’ve neglected the actual community that’s hosting the games. And that’s had me thinking about how to engage communities, which is something I think about a lot, but not often in the context of my own geographical backyard.

Still, online communities, crafts communities, local communities – they’re all the same.

I wish Vanoc had remembered to psyche us up for the Games. I wish they’d acknowledged our feelings, positive and negative both. I wish they’d spoken to us, human being to human being, about all sorts of things – about world-class athletics, about multiculturalism, about hospitality, about the homeless population of our city and how they’ll take care of our most vulnerable neighbours, about parties and celebrations, about inconveniences and road closures and working from home when we can’t get to our downtown offices.

Richmond Olympic Oval Vancouver 2010 Olympics by Duncan Rawlinson (CC-A license)

That human-being-to-human-being bit is significant. Vanoc has spoken to the people of Vancouver as a corporate entity, not as one of us. They’ve spoken to us as an authority with power over us, but not as fellow Vancouverites who feel honoured to host such an important event. If they had done that, I imagine we’d feel honoured, ourselves – honoured and pleased to be a part of something so huge, something that brings people from all over the world together in our relatively small yet tremendously beautiful home.

That’s what we, as makers, try to do when we want to build community, right? We behave like human beings with other human beings. We open ourselves up to learn from others at the same time that we teach. We listen. We laugh it off when things go wrong and explain where we’re coming from when we put a stop to things going really wrong.

We relate to people who behave this way, just as we’re trying to make it so people relate to us or to our businesses or to our brands.

And so this massive event that’s putting my small city on display for all the world is really still about community. I hope my friends and neighbours can dig through the corporate sheen and press-conference drivel to find that community they’re already a part of. To celebrate in it and with it. To enjoy this insane event which will certainly change our city forever, and to enjoy it together.

Will you be watching the games from wherever you are? Hey, where on earth are you? I’d really love to know.

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As you may know from my vague and sporadic tweets and all my allusions to stress, last week was a tough one.

Dad and me. The inclination to make stupid faces when a camera's in view is genetic. I was able to fend off the urge here, but I think I compensate well by being bedecked so ridiculously in crochet.

See, the day before we left town for Greg’s grandfather’s funeral, we got a call from my parents after one of my dad’s routine pancreas screenings. He gets those about four times a year. The short story is this: About 10% of pancreatic cancer cases are hereditary, and my family’s one of those affected. My father’s mother, brother and sister all died before the age of 70. After my uncle Bruce died several years ago, we discovered the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, and it has given my family something to rally around instead of feeling like walking cancer time bombs.

One of the main reasons pancreatic cancer is so deadly (95% of patients don’t survive five years) is that the cancer is asymptomatic until it’s too late. And if there isn’t a familial link, there’s no reason to do the invasive, expensive screenings to test for it before symptoms arise.

So the bitter irony of the story I’m about to tell you is that the only reason my father gets routine screenings is that so many of his loved ones died young.

Mom, Dad and Greg at Webs for my book launch in 2007. I loved that they all came, all the way to Massachusetts.

Dad, and some of my older first cousins, participate in a study of hereditary pancreatic cancer that’s funded in part by the Lustgarten Foundation. At his last screening, about ten days ago, his local doctor in Albany, NY, found a mass in the tail of his pancreas. They sent the results to the leader of the study at Johns Hopkins, and she said she wanted to see Dad as soon as possible. Six days later he flew down to Baltimore for more tests. It was the day after Greg and I returned from the funeral.

That one full day waiting at home was one of the most stressful, trying days of my life. There was nothing to do. No emergency flight home to arrange. No doctors to call. Just me and my overactive imagination, doing dances around each other.

I did my best to hold myself together. I didn’t pace too much. I spent lots of time on the phone with friends and family.

It was only come evening that Star Trek made me cry. Greg and I decided to distract ourselves with television. We’ve been watching The Next Generation. Surely great sci-fi would do the trick.

Irony, however, seems to be the theme of the month. Season 3, Episode 5: The Bonding. The entire damn episode is about a boy whose mother died on an away mission, leaving him an orphan. Wesley Crusher, teen phenom with some astonishing ’80s coifs, played by Wil Wheaton, was brought in to talk to the boy about his own father’s death a few years earlier.

Seriously, people. Give me a break.

I lost my shit.

Actually,  don’t let my overdeveloped tendency toward melodrama fool you. It felt pretty good to lose my shit. I love fiction for its ability to help us work through the confusing and overwhelming plane of reality. As Wesley talked about his anger and his grief, I sobbed and thought about how much I love my dad. I acknowledged how terrified I was that the tests would show a metastatic tumour. That the prognosis would be grim. Grim prognoses are what we’re used to when pancreases are involved.

Poor Wesley Crusher was like the Dawn Summers of the late ’80s – decried as a dreadful whiner and as just plain annoying – but after the moment we shared the other night, I’ll forever be his champion.

Did I mention I'm a geek because I grew up in the presence of my father's love of sci-fi?

I got a call much earlier than I expected the day of the tests. It was my brother, who told me it seemed to be good news. Excellent news. Preliminary findings didn’t indicate cancer at all. No dire prognosis. No emergency flying.

My dad still needs surgery. At a minimum, he needs to have the tail of his pancreas removed, and along with it his spleen. He’d like to take the whole damn organ out, which is something people with a family history like ours can do. If he’s able to work that out with his doctors, he’d live the rest of his life like a diabetic, dependent on insulin and also digestive enzymes to survive. But he wouldn’t feel like a time bomb anymore. He’d know he wouldn’t again experience the same terrifying shock he did this month.

And all this six weeks or so before the annual fundraiser. The fundraiser that takes on new meaning for me this year because I credit the study, and the foundation whose money helps fund it, for catching my father’s tumour before it could morph into a deadly beast.

The boy on Star Trek was twelve. I may be thirty-four, but I’m certain I’m too young to lose a parent. My parents have a lot of life left to live.

So this year for the fundraiser I’m again asking you for money. Even the tiniest donation can go a long way, but I know times are tough and you have your own causes to support. So I’m also asking you to go shopping, which as we all know is different. Some very special crafters have volunteered to donate some or all proceeds from some of their products to the Lustgarten Foundation as part of my campaign. They rock, and you probably want their stuff anyway. If you’re a maker, please consider donating some proportion of the proceeds of something you sell. This way you can jack up your prices, and help to spread the word about this very important research. If you’d like to participate, please fill out the form in the middle of that page, or drop me an email.

Ah look, a not-ridiculous candid shot. This was at Dad's 60th birthday party four years ago, which, as you might be able to pick out from the banner behind him, he coupled with a fundraiser.

Right now the research supported by these funds is important to me and my family in ways I hope you can understand from this post, but as the research advances I hope it will produce answers that will be important to absolutely everyone.

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This weekend was all about digging in at home for some quiet time as we try to exorcise the stress of the last few weeks. I slept in, finished a book I’ve been reading for ages, started a crochet project, and spent the entirety of Saturday afternoon making earrings.

We had a clock we couldn’t fix, see, and instead of just throwing it out we busted it open and dug around for parts. I loved the hands most of all, so grabbed a couple other parts along with them and started fiddling around.

They looked too sparse with only the clock parts, so I started adding chains, and then some not-so-well-conceived spacers between them, and finally a bead. The spacers are just small spirals of wire, and they aren’t perfectly useful because I made them too small and the jump rings attaching some of the clock parts can move over them. Still, they do manage to keep things somewhat spread out on the big rings.

I originally made ear wires for them (see below), but they just didn’t look right, so I switched to a simple post (see above).

These upcycling projects are making me see all sorts of disposable items in a new way. We throw away less, and I love the things I make more. WIN.

Also, have I mentioned recently how much I’m loving making earrings? I mean, these may have taken me a couple of hours to figure out, but I still have such a yarn-focused mindset that I delight in having a finished project in such a small amount of time.

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This post was originally published on the now-retired Make & Meaning blog on January 16th, 2010.

So I’ve been getting these press releases from the Craft and Hobby Association. They’ve been arriving with increasing frequency and a directly proportional increase in my feeling of annoyance.

Why, oh why, are the events these press releases promote so utterly banal?

I mean, ordinarily, I do expect press releases to promote banal things. Call me jaded.

But I’m working on not expecting banality from businesses in the creative space. Businesses that sell products or services intended to inspire others to create should not put out a press release touting banal promotional efforts. They should put their well-exercised imaginations to the task of creating outstanding promotions, no?

I mean, why try to sell the same-old way if you’re a business founded on doing things creatively? Surely there are promotions that expect more of consumers than their desire to emulate the once-famous or to be the biggest or fastest at something. Surely crafty folks might be turned on by new ideas, twists on old conventions, or some plain-old friendly humour, right?

(Really, a business selling paper clips could come up with some pretty freaking creative ways to promote such a simple product, so do feel free to apply my gripe with very broad strokes.)

One of the recent CHA press releases had “WORLD’S LARGEST CROP ATTEMPT” in the subject line (all the subject lines are in all-caps, because apparently that seems like a good way not to make someone immediately delete the shouting in their inbox). Even though I’ve since discovered that this apparently refers to a scrapbooking event, every time I re-read the headline I think it’s about agriculture.

Press-release mechanics aside, is the best way to promote scrapbooking really to try for the world’s largest crop? Can’t we do better than to default to trying to make the biggest of something? I don’t scrapbook, but I’ll tell you what I might have felt compelled to pass on to my readers had I found mention of it in my inbox (the purpose of a press release is, after all, to have the recipient pass on its contents):

• Some group event involving memorializing a common thing like embarrassing or confounding notes other people wrote in a high-school yearbook
• A gallery of artists’ scrapbooks. (Notice I didn’t say “celebrities’ scrapbooks”, but that I rather prefer to see some outstanding and likely inspiring examples of scrapbooks from wildly creative people.)
• Some kind of group effort to create something from the individual contributions of scrapbookers and paper crafters. Something like a wall mural for a kid’s wing at the hospital. Something very decidedly not piecemeal-looking and ugly.

If I think my readers will relate to something in a press release, I pass it on. Well, in theory. I’ve never actually done it, though, and all the press releases I get as a blogger are from crafts businesses or organizations (not just CHA; I’m only using it as an example because of the recent spate of releases I’ve received).

We enjoy an industry that exists because of creativity. Let’s apply that creativity to our industry, hey?

—
Photo credits: Muffet (top, bottom); both CC-A licensed

Unfortunately, all comments were lost when Make & Meaning was taken down. Don’t hesitate to repeat yourself here, or to join in on the new conversation!

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We didn’t have our act together to participate in our block-wide yard sale today, but we had a lovely morning walking around catching up with our neighbours. I honestly can’t think of a more delightful way to start the weekend. Especially a weekend devoted to moving passed the stress and angst of the last couple of weeks.

I bought this chair from my neighbour for a buck. We’ll spiff up the wood a bit, and though I love the worn green paint, Greg only agreed to accept the chair if we paint the legs yellow to match the new upcycled table. I’ll miss the well-used look of it, but I agree with him that it’ll look great in yellow, too.

Other scores: a clay dish made by our 13-year-old neighbour who’s into pottery, a handful of books from a new neighbour I want to invite over so we can talk more about books, a big carrier thing for the car roof-rack from our neighbour whom Greg could have talked with about tools for hours, and unopened Mulder and Scully figurines from around the time of the first X-Files movie from our next-door neighbour we’ve known for eight years without knowing she’s a big geek just like us.

Sometimes we fret that we live on the other side of town from all our friends. But it’s days like today that make us so happy to be here.

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I’ve become the keeper of my partner’s grandmother’s sewing box. Mimi died several years ago, and I never really knew her. I feel like I can kind of get to know her now, though. A little bit, through the stuff in her sewing box.

In it are a few pairs of scissors, countless sewing needles and safety pins (many with dry-cleaning tags still attached), more iron-on patches than I’ll ever use (but I can already think of some applications), and lots of thread. Lots and lots of thread.

In addition to around ten plastic spools, there are a couple dozen wooden spools of thread. I don’t know much more than that they’re old – some stamped with a cost of 19¢.

Do you know anything about the history of thread? I’d love to learn more about when she may have purchased some of these. Leave a comment, or make a note on the photos on Flickr. I’d very much appreciate any help you can give!

And don’t worry, I’ll use the thread. Though some of the spools have certainly remained nearly unused for decades, I get the impression from the rest of the contents of the box that Mimi was practical about mending.

I could be totally wrong. But that’s okay. It would be a shame for items of such practical beauty to sit unused.

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This post was originally published on the now-retired Make & Meaning blog on December 11th, 2009.

Paul recently wrote about his desire to drop-kick commenters who say “Great tutorial! I could never do that.” The same kind of self-deprecating denial often follows phrases like, “Great photo!” “Great project!” and “Great post!” Like Paul, I’ve spent many an hour fantasizing about going all Buffy on these commenters’ heads.

In all honesty, people’s tendency to respond to an inspiring event, object or article by immediately concluding they could never do such a thing is one of the odd phenomena that keep me working in this field. I simply love to kick people in their collective patooty. Paul pretty much summed up all the reasons why we feel this way.

There’s a little bit of a difference between us, though, and it’s one that makes me smile – people’s different ways of getting to the same place can just be so interesting.

Paul wrote this at the end of his post:

“One of my favorite bloggers, Hugh MacLeod put up a great illustration on his blog the other day. It was a drawing of a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘die trying’. In two words, this perfectly encapsulates the philosophy of my life.”

The summer I turned twenty-one I worked at Eastern Mountain Sports, an outdoors store. I wasn’t really into “the outdoors” but working there sure beat folding jeans or pushing smelly lotion on teenagers. Plus, most of my coworkers really were into the outdoors and I learned a lot from them. They were fun to spend the day with, wondering aloud if the youth pastor sales guy would sell a kayak during our shift.

"40% of leaning tower to go!" by mariachily on Flickr (CC-A licensed)

One day the assistant manager and one of the guys decided they were going to go rock climbing at a world-famous climbing site a few hours away and they invited me to go with them. I’d been rock climbing a whopping once, and that was in a gymnasium. I didn’t have shoes or gear, but they said they didn’t care. I was very, very intimidated by all this. I’m usually very uncomfortable not knowing anything about what I’m supposed to do in a situation. And I’m a klutz. And I was awkward around cute guys (these were good-looking dudes). I really, really wanted to find an excuse for why I couldn’t go.

I don’t know what was up with me that summer; maybe over those two months I did some serious growing up. One day I just stopped wearing a watch – that was a big, freeing, wonderful change. Another change was that, to my great surprise, I said, “Sure, I’ll go rock climbing with you at the Gunks. I’ll meet you at the store at seven tomorrow morning.”

I don’t actually remember if I climbed. I think I tried a bit, but without good shoes it was sort of a bust. I have other vivid memories from that day, though. The weather was stunning. There was a crazy friendly black lab named Sara. And I remember sitting between the two guys in the cab of the assistant manager’s pickup truck, my hair flying around from the wind rushing through the open windows, and feeling happy and free. No anxieties, no self-consciousness, no worries. I didn’t care where we were or where we were going. I had said yes. They kept asking me what I wanted and I kept saying whatever. It was the first time in my life I was told I was laid back.

My own major life philosophy came out of that day. It’s not that I’ll die trying – it’s that I’ll try anything once. I don’t feel any pressure anymore to be good at something I’ve never done, or even to enjoy doing it. But save for a few things I’m especially uncomfortable with*, my answer is usually, “sure, why not?”

And I’ve never, ever regretted it.

And seriously? With making stuff? What’s the consequence? Certainly not a broken head or a busted ankle.

(* Most of the things I’m especially uncomfortable with are those for which I find the actual risk of death unreasonable or unwarranted.)

Unfortunately, all comments were lost when Make & Meaning was taken down. Don’t hesitate to repeat yourself here, or to join in on the new conversation!

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Des Frawley, Athletics Carnival, Brisbane; by State Library of Queensland, Australia on Flickr

Yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing author Shannon Okey on Twitter* as part of her blog tour to promote her new book, The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design. We had so much fun, and such a productive conversation, that I forgot to do the giveaway we’d planned. D’oh.

The Giveaway

To enter to win a copy of Shannon’s book, leave a comment on this post either asking a question about professional knit- or crochet design or about self-publishing, giving a professional tip on those topics, or answering one of the previous questions. This way we’ll end up with a wealth of information, all shared by our peers.

The contest will close at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern time tomorrow, July 15th. After that, I’ll use a random number generator to pick a winner from the comments.

Now, here’s the meat of our discussion on Twitter yesterday:

Twinterview Highlights

(You can also follow the hashtag #knitgrrlguide for the continuing discussion about Shannon’s book.)

@kpwerker (that’s me): What are two things you’ve learned that every designer MUST know?

@knitgrrl (that’s Shannon): 1. 3 Ps: professional+punctual+personality & 2. Reliability is more important than creativity if you want consistent work! (That is, summed up in less than 140 characters, all you need to know to get a good professional reputation, seriously!)

@kpwerker: Would you expand (such as is possible on the Twitter) on why you say reliability is more important than creativity?

@knitgrrl: Reliability makes you an editor’s best asset, their secret weapon. When someone else flakes, they know to call YOU. +work! Example. @bingeknitter is a fab designer who is FAST+GOOD+RELIABLE. Gave her a lot of work @yarnforwardmag as a result.

@kpwerker: As a once-editor, I can vouch for that, for sure. Isn’t creativity/originality/vision also very important?

@knitgrrl: You can’t discount vision/creativity, but it doesn’t matter HOW creative you are if you can’t get the work in on time!

@kpwerker: Since we’re on the topic of working with an editor, @knitgrrl, what’s one thing brand new designers should keep in mind?

@knitgrrl: Hmm. Just ONE? Relax a little. Editors are REALLY busy. Sending a million unnecessary emails = not endearing. However, if you really do need to solve a problem via email, make it short, to the point, and give them options to choose from.

@kpwerker: Before we leave the world of print to get all crazy about the Twitter and other social media, anything else to add @knitgrrl?

@knitgrrl: There’s a false dichotomy between print / “new” media, I think. They can each make use of each other to all our benefits.

@kpwerker: Would you please expand on what you just said, re: print vs. “new” media being a false dichotomy?

@knitgrrl: Seems to me everyone wants to declare print “dead,” or promo new tech at its expense. Both sides have a lot to learn from each other. I miss the often-more-rigorous editing standards of print, for example. Yet new technologies can foster better discussions and informational transmission (look at what we’re doing now!): there have to be ways to take advantage of both. In short, I wish either side would NOT automatically write the other side off as “antiquated” or “sloppy” (or whatever…)

@kpwerker: Ok, let’s spend the last 10 minutes of the “formal” twinterview chatting about… Twitter! And social media… So, @knitgrrl, overall, do you think professional knit/crochet designers and book authors GET social media?

@knitgrrl: Yes and no. We’re a BIG & diverse group, after all. The ones that get it REALLY get it, the ones that don’t, well… I think @Ravelry was a wake-up call to some more established designers; they’re now seeing what a difference soc med makes.

@kpwerker: How should professional (and soon-to-be prof) designers use @ravelry for their business?

@knitgrrl: Well, @Ravelry is INVALUABLE for research — what are knitters actually KNITTING? trends? colors? In real life it doesn’t matter how stunning something is if no one wants to knit it! On the flip side, if you’re doing something totally unlike all the other patterns on there, there’s an equally good chance YOUR stuff will hit the top of the charts & get popular… you can take more chances, you’re not committing to, say, thousands of dollars in ads to promote something that flops. Apart from trendspotting, I think community is key. @Ravelry helps newer designers learn “on the job” from others. There’s almost always someone with more experience out there who will gladly help you if you ask nicely. I love that.

@kpwerker: What about other, non-specifically yarn- or crafts-related social media sites? How should designers approach those?

@knitgrrl: Carefully. I don’t really censor myself on Facebook, for example, and I have a dual-purpose profile there. If you are a more private person, you probably want to do a 2nd “professional” standalone profile for yourself. There are other sites that count as social media to me, such as @Craftster and @Etsy. Your skills get noticed there & help build your following. I’m on @Ravelry more than @Craftster or @Etsy now, but still have a profile/shop…you never know where you’ll get found!

@kpwerker: What’s a giant social media no-no that all designers should avoid?

@knitgrrl: Spamminess. That’s the number one sin to me. I try not to be overly “sales-y” here. I’ll let people know if there’s something new, but I’m not going to shove it down their throats. People tune you out when all you have to say is “BUY MY STUFF.”

Here’s where we opened things up to Q&A from the audience.

@lelah: What is the first step someone should do after designing a pattern if they want to do this professionally, and have been absent from the Rav/Etsy/Craftster/knit blog scene for some time?

@knitgrrl: Post it for sale on Rav AND Etsy. Do a tutorial for any special techniques used on Craftster. Lots of designers I know STILL get email/attention for tutorials they wrote YEARS ago. Contribute to the community and you become trusted friend.

@Joanna__Johnson: so, @knitgrrl, do you think there are certain genres of book that work better for digital books? some for print?

@knitrrl: Digital will be the savior of indie-pub’d full-color books like crafts titles, due to lower production costs but digital can work well for any type of book, really. I’m looking forward to seeing more multimedia includes like video!

@BethToddCreatz: How do you choose which designs to publish and which will never see the light of day?

@knitgrrl: Good one, @BethToddCreatz! I tend to put a lot of designs “on probation” until they behave themselves. This means backlog. It also means “lots of guilt they’re not done yet.” The best designs, for me, have a real life of their own and WANT to be completed. My most popular sweater, Rivulet, was completed start to finish in less than a month. It just FLOWED…I usually take that as a sign that it’s going to work for the knitter on the other end, too.

@StefanieJapel: Q for @knitgrrl, how have distributors responded to your self-published books?

@knitgrrl: Really well, @StefanieJapel! The distro that sells into the most LYSs picked it up at #TNNA as soon as they heard the topic! In addition, my printer is tied into Ingram, which is one of the largest (THE largest?) distributors around, so that helps.

[I asked Shannon if she has tips to share about working with a distributor.] Doing your research = key. LONG before your book is ready you need to be talking to the distributors. Many distributors have salespeople going out to presell titles up to a year in advance. Our (crafty) niche is a different, but you can help your book by getting the word out yourself. If you already sell patterns to LYSs, for example, you can ask them if they’d rather order directly from you or from the distributor. Find out which distro(s) they buy from, and tell them your book is coming out, the stores that already buy from you are interested, and would they like to distribute it, too?

@zigzagstitch: @knitgrrl is it worth it to take a book you’ve pub’d yourself around to local yarn stores? better to go bigger first?

@knitgrrl: Depends on the audience. Is it something specialized? For ex, a group of Portland crafters did a joint book to help drive business to local craft stores. If the content was very Portland-specific, it might not appeal to a nat’l distro. However, if the content isn’t specific like that, I’d like to start an indie craft book trade assoc so we could all benefit from co-op advertising, shared distro, etc!

@kpwerker: Apropos of nothing @knitgrrl, do you think a brand new designer should self-publish their 1st design or submit to a magazine?

@knitgrrl: Magazine=more eyeballs, but be careful about giving up rights to your work. Tradeoff doesn’t have to be brutal. (An anon. lit. agent in the book talks about the digital rights grabs going on in the publishing world right now…I think we designers need to be aware of what’s happened in other fields, such as freelance writers’ court case on digital rights).

@kpwerker: You said the magic word: “rights.” What should new (and established) writers and designers keep in mind?

@knitgrrl: You take a project for 1 of 2 things: money, or publicity. Sometimes you get both, but if it isn’t worth just ONE, don’t! I have taken projects where I wouldn’t have made ANYTHING after paying the sample knitter/etc, but was great PR. However, it was MY CHOICE — anyone touting a project solely for publicity or “exposure” should be immediately suspect. Our hilarious friends @Ravelry got it right: http://bit.ly/a1wgBm.

@BethToddCreatz What about publishing to online mag like Knitty.com, do you think this is good for exposure?

@knitgrrl: I think @knittydotcom has gone above & beyond to prove its ability to create value for our community. 1. They pay their designers, & 2. readership is enormous, 3. they’re highly respected and 4. they aren’t out for quick buck. So, in short: I love @knittydotcom (and my alma mater @yarnforwardmag ’cause designers get all rights back after 6 months!)

@kpwerker: Any designers/writers doing totally awesome things we all should try to emulate, @knitgrrl?

@knitgrrl: Also, @kpwerker artists who inspire: @VendettaBella (my studiomate), @mollycrabapple @CynthVonBuhler etc. (I mention this because my new pattern collection draws inspiration from some art stuff.) @blondechicken @spunkyeclectic @helloyarn @SisterDiane = examples of good business sense + personality. I follow a lot of book industry people on Twitter to keep an eye on what’s next: such as Apple opening up the iBookstore! A good online directory: http://bit.ly/d2l9mk — you can narrow down depending on your interests. Oh, and @InterweaveNews!

@kpwerker: Nearing the end of our chat/twinterview, what are you working on next, @knitgrrl?

@knitgrrl: My new pattern collection, the Fresh Designs books (http://bit.ly/cMUfdD) and a summer read/knitalong (http://bit.ly/9Q7L31).

@Joanna__Johnson: @knitgrrl now that you’ve published your own book, is there anything you would do differently next time?

@knitgrrl: Next time, @Joanna__Johnson, I am not scheduling publication for the week before 2 giant events! That was madness!

@petitepurls: What do you do when you’ve been accepted into a book for publication but your contact person doesn’t reply to questions?

@knitgrrl: Good question, @petitepurls! I have been there! Best advice = do what you think is best and then adjust if told differently.

@kpwerker: Ok, lovelies. It’s time to wrap up. Thank you so much for following along and participating tonight! Shannon Okey/@knitgrrl‘s next stop on her blog tour is this Thursday on @yarnthing‘s blog. You can see the schedule for her whole tour here: http://www.knitgrrl.com/?p=1129

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* I don’t know why more authors, designers, and people in general don’t use Twitter as a live interview platform. It’s so easy, and has tremendous potential for audience engagement. If you’re intrigued, drop me a line.

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I was reading this article about EduPunk in The Tyee yesterday, and it got me thinking. (Ironically, something else I thought was that I wanted more thoughtful meat, and more concrete history and policy in that article.)

For every formal job I’ve ever had, I’ve been either over- or inappropriately credentialed. I have a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a master’s in educational studies that, despite snobby academic eye-rolling by “real scientists”, may as well be in developmental psychology.

In the last eleven years I’ve been hired as the coordinator of a community centre’s after-school program, a travel-camp counselor, a substitute teacher, a magazine editor and the community dude at a web start-up.

(That’s not very much formal hiring; most of the time I work by cobbling together contracts or by writing books.)

To be clear, I’ve never not been hired on account of being over-credentialed. It’s just that my credentials were never very relevant to the work I sought.

Note that I’m not saying I’ve been overqualified. I reject the notion that credentials equal qualification. Book learnin’ ain’t the same as actually doing. This is why the EduPunk article got me thinking about this.

Except in the case of professions like doctors and lawyers that undeniably require a tremendous amount of study and apprenticing, I think a default reliance on professional credentials is dumb. Of course some fields involve a tremendous amount of learning and mastery, and some people learn best in a school setting or enjoy taking classes. That’s all well and good. My point is just this: When you’re hiring a web designer and your two final candidates have five years’ worth of portfolio for you to judge, do you care which one has an MFA?

No, you don’t. You judge their work on its own. It doesn’t matter if their skill and craft developed in a classroom or in an office or in a lean-to.

To most people school is just school, to some it’s the bee’s knees, but to others school is a place where learning simply can’t happen. I, for example and despite being in school till I was twenty-two, learned very little in the classroom. I’m just really good at being a student. Even when I was bored to tears, which was much of the time, my overdeveloped sense of achievement kept me focused on earning high marks. I’m uncomfortable failing, see, and so on paper I’m the perfect student. In reality, I spent most of my time in the vast majority of my classes completely zoned out. If not for that overdeveloped and totally insane need to get A’s, I would certainly have gone mad and would have dreamed of dropping out. In the few classes that really engaged me, I devoured the material and my imagination took me to countless new places I would have dedicated years of study to. But I only had a semester, and that was that.

So, oh my gods am I glad to see a DIY movement taking hold in education. What’s unclear from The Tyee article, though, is that there’s expertise available to those DIYers. But that’s not what’s got me writing right now.

See, despite my dismissal of credentials as relevant, in my freelance work I’ve been keenly aware of the legitimacy my credentials bring – the illusion of legitimacy, that is. At the first hint of doubt on someone’s face as we discuss my ability to learn the job I’m applying to do, I mention something or other about grad school. It’s amazing what people assume you’re capable of when you’ve already managed to jump through the hoops and navigate the politics and bullshit of academia. Or maybe we’re mostly just programmed to equate respect to initials – M.A., B.A., etc. Even when the degree you have is in a branch of study wholly unrelated to the job.

But here’s the thing, dear creators. Take a look to your left and another to your right and you’re likely to find a high school drop-out who’s written a best-selling book. You’re likely to find someone in their thirties who’s been successfully self-employed for twenty years.

Every day you read blog posts giving you invaluable advice on how to run your business, inspiring you to create, teaching you new skills – all written by people who not only don’t have an MBA or an MFA or an education degree, but who don’t have a GED either.

You might be inclined now to wonder who those folks are. To maybe not take them as seriously as you had. But why? Do you take my posts about creativity any more seriously knowing that I did research with babies for two years and get all nerdy excited about creolization?

No, you don’t. And you shouldn’t.

You value the words of these creators, you value their work and their generosity of knowledge because you’ve benefited from them. Because their work and their personalities have proven themselves. Hell, some of them may even be publishing anonymously. So you don’t even know their name, yet you learn from them, become inspired by them, consider their advice.

Our creative world is all the richer for the varied backgrounds of the people we keep company with and learn from. I felt stress and pain through much of my formal studies because I’m interested in too many things and couldn’t choose. But I lived in a very small world back then, and I didn’t know the option of dropping out was even available to me. I believed drop-outs were destined for poverty, addiction, crime and tearing up their families. I was a very naïve and easily intimidated kid. So I can only try to express to you in words how much I admire and learn from the people who are so much like me, who have such varied interests, who read such fascinating and entertaining books, who make me think hard about so many things, and who did have the presence of mind and the fortitude of spirit to be true to themselves when they were young. Who sought the kind of learning they needed.

Of course I don’t regret my education. I may be totally cynical about the ivory tower, but I know I was not only lucky to have the opportunity to go to university, but to have it be an expectation placed upon me from a young age. But I also grew up being told that I needed a university degree to make something of myself. And now I know that’s just not true.

It’s proven again and again by the brilliant, creative, successful people I have the utter pleasure of working with every day.

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