Should patterns be free?

Georgia Denham (00:00): Where's Taylor Swift when you need her?

Adam Cleevely (00:03): You've got a great choice of patterns that are free why would you ever pay for one?

Adam (00:07): I'm afraid I haven't looked at what Rowan have–

Georgia (00:08): I ain't paying 80 quid.

Adam (00:15): Hello and welcome to episode two of Yarn Library podcast with me, Adam Cleevely of CleevelyKnits.

Georgia (00:21): And me, Georgia Denham, Tulipurl on Instagram.

Adam (00:25): And we are so much better prepared for episode two, but episode two is all about pattern design and we wanted to talk about pattern design as one of the themes in our podcast at some point.

Georgia (00:35): Yeah.

Adam (00:35): But there's been some news in the last 24 hours, which we feel, merits bringing this up the episode order.

Georgia (00:43): Yeah. So I was on my way over about to head over to Adam's this morning so I've sort of deliberately not done any kind of deep dive on my way over here. So Adam is going to fill us in.

Adam (00:54): So I was quite surprised by this, and it's a neat segue into pattern design in general, but someone on TikTok pointed out to me that, or they said to me that the patterns in the Game of Wool are being released by Rowan, and that Rowan are not paying anything to the designers. And at first, that felt like a rumour to me, but I started looking around for evidence of it. The person didn't get back to me quite yet. But then someone pointed out that it is on the Rowan release themselves on their Instagram page (RowanYarns, 2025). So I went to have a look and I can read it out to you, Georgia, you haven't heard this yet.

Georgia (01:36): No, I haven't. And I just feel like, why? I'm super curious to know in what world or in what way, what method of delivery– So please.

Adam (01:45): So here we go. So A Yarn Story– who you might know, that's quite a big account down in the southwest of the UK. It's a beautiful, beautiful yarn shop. But A Yarn Story asked Rowan Yarns, are the contestants whose designs are being sold in the bundles being compensated? So if you don't know, the designs for the tank tops that some of the contestants designed on the Game of Wool within 24-48 hours were published by Rowan Designs as kits. They're selling those kits for between 80 and 140 pounds, I think.

Georgia (02:22): What! I didn't look that far at it. I just thought, oh great, okay, they're selling some patterns. And you see the Rowan yarn on the show and I thought, oh yeah, product placement, funny, funny.

Adam (02:33): No, no, no, they're making serious cash about it. The price range is because they're size inclusive, so if you're buying a small, that is only 80 pounds. As we know, yarn can be expensive if you choose to make it. So Yarn Story asked, are the contestants being compensated? A couple of people piled in saying, "I'd love to know this as well". Rowan Yarns were quite quick to respond and said, "Hi, Yarn Story, our partnership is with Game of Wool and Channel 4, who run the show and therefore own the rights to what has been produced, not the individual creators in the show. However, we've ensured that the makers are credited and that we give them a spotlight on our platform".

Georgia (03:20): Where's Taylor Swift when you need her? I say that if you're not aware, like her re-records being representative of the fact that she didn't own the masters to her music. Okay, well, good that they were– that they responded to the comments, I suppose, and gave us transparency, but like...

Adam (03:36): Absolutely, but I will say a lot of people and some big accounts, Knit Purl Girl has jumped in and, you know, cosigned that the thread and a lot of people have jumped in to say things like, I'm going to read out something from Scotknit here. "I think that many of us feel that designers deserve a lot more than just accreditation as the Game of Wool is aiming to broaden the appeal of knitting amongst the wider audience, compensating the designers appropriately would help them to develop their talents and spread the word." More people piling in. "Thank you for articulating what many of us wanted to know." And someone pointing out quite succinctly, "nah, this sucks." I quite agree. I think now–

Georgia (04:15): Sorry, I'm just still processing.

Adam (04:17): I'm going to give you more time to process, Georgia, because I've got one important point that I want to share on this, before we pile in on Rowan, because I think we probably think quite negatively about that.

Georgia (04:30): I don't think it's just Rowan. I think the whole, there's a whole power dynamic going on in this. Yeah, anyway, right, carry on.

Adam (04:37): Now, I will say, if you don't know, before my ventures into Wool, I have a lot of experience in fairly senior positions in corporate environments. I've run a company for a long time. The Rowan Yarns message, may have been highly curated to obfuscate a potential financial benefit that's gone on. And let me explain that to you. So they have said that the partnership is with Game of Wool and Channel 4 who run the show and therefore own the rights to what has been produced, not the individual creators in the show. Now, that doesn't mean that the original creators haven't been paid. And I've reached out to Game of Wool to ask them that, and they haven't responded yet, but they haven't had much time. But it could be that because they've got a partnership with Game of Wool and Channel 4, they've bought those patent rights from Game of Wool and Channel 4. Now, the question really is, for me, what had Game of Wool and Channel 4 done with the rights? Because, yes, I completely understand the contestants having assigned their rights to Game of Wool and Channel 4 or the production company and all the rest of that. I get that, but the question is... How then have those rights been transferred or have they been transferred to the underlying designers? Because it could well be that the designers have been or are being compensated in a monetary way. Now, I guess, so that is my corporate reading on this using years of how I would bend and twist PR in order to, you know, try and, potentially try and obfuscate something else that's going on. But I mean, the fundamental truth is here. Rowan Yarns are selling the, are able to, they have obviously bought the rights to a lot of advertising on the show because we see their yarns on the show and now they are just running away with – running away with, maybe that's cruel – but they are just able to sell those patterns where they are saying that they are giving accreditation and I mean, that's–

Georgia (06:48): Exposure.

Adam (06:49): That's the thing that really hurts, right? Well, you've got exposure and therefore that is compensation in itself.

Georgia (06:56): There are other contexts where exposure is not a good thing. And I think that maybe we need to also reconsider exposure in this context as well. Yeah. We can come onto that though. But I mean, as a pattern designer, you you've released patterns. What are your... If you were in the same position...? I mean, that's the difficult thing for me. I'm thinking like, okay, you get onto Game of Wool, you're all happy and excited, then you get presented with this contract, and you really, really wanna be on the show, but then you read the fine print and it says, okay, they're going to have the rights to anything that you create and any of your patterns. So if one of them happened to like, basically design like a Sophie Scarf (PetiteKnit, 2022), for example, on the show, does that mean that those rights are, you know, that they've got a hit and they've got a hit pattern. Everyone loves it. Everyone's knitting it. And then they're never going to see any kind of compensation from that?

Adam (07:58): Well, you say no compensation from it, Georgia, but obviously they've got exposure.

Georgia (08:01): How could I forget? Oh!

Adam (08:05): Aside, I mean, I mean, this is a really tricky, this is a really tricky point because I think as a contestant, I, you know, I looked at the profiles of the contestants, obviously before the show started and a lot of the contestants, certainly on social media, you know, they had a few hundred followers. They're not, for the most part, they're not rock stars of the knitting world. We haven't got a Stephen West yet. And they're not Stephen West, for example, turning up. You know, I guess part of it as a contestant is that you are looking for an opportunity to be launched and you're probably looking for exposure as well as the fun in being involved in it. So when I'm thinking about whether someone on that show has the choice and the power to be able to sell their pattern independently or how that works.

Georgia (08:53): I mean, from a business perspective, you'll be familiar with, like, know, non-compete causes and things, but... You might not be so familiar with specific makeup brands where that's been a really big thing. So I'm thinking of Bobbi Brown makeup, Bobbi Brown's an amazing makeup artist, very much been around for a long time. And she kind of, her brand was a part of, was sold early on to like a big company, maybe Estée Lauder, don't quote me, one of the big sort of conglomerates. and she launched her Jones Road brand. She'd left the actual Bobbi Brown brand, even though she was Bobbi Brown, like quite a long time ago, I think. And then she launched Jones Road on the day that her non-compete clause ended. I'm pretty sure it was like on the day. I remember reading an article about it. And it's great, it's great makeup. It's super, goes along with her sort of original view, which was very much like kind of on the go makeup, quick and easy makeup, enhancing your natural features, and Jones Road's become super, super popular. But there was a period of time where she was just really, really waiting for that that clause, that thing that she'd signed away that ultimately gave her a lot of money.

Adam (10:05): So I have seen this so many times in business myself where, so I've been responsible for being part of teams that have bought other companies or where my business itself has bought other companies. And absolutely, you see that with founders and founders are often tied in for a period of time. And then something significant changes after that. And that's, you know, it's fair enough. And maybe that's exactly what's happening with the Game of Wool here, that there are designers where they are locked in for a period of time and they're maybe they're exclusive with Rowan for a while and then the patterns will come out. I don't, you know, I am a bit outraged. I don't like the idea that... You know, as you say, it's like Taylor Swift or any other music artists selling the rights to all of their music to an album and then having, you know, that they don't then have access to their creative process again. I think, you know, it's early days to pass full judgement on that.

Georgia (11:05): I was just going to say I'd also heard on a podcast about Taylor Swift, it's called Every Single Album, and I remember them saying that actually some of the industry contracts now are specifying from record labels that people will not re-record their, or that they can't re-record their masters because this changed. I will say I'd like to side on the part where actually what Taylor Swift has done with this whole re-recording, raising the profile of masters is super beneficial, I think, overall. And I'm not trying to say that it's had a bad outcome in the end, because it's just, it's interesting the response. But I mean, also, if we just ground this back, we're talking, you the examples are like, Bobbi Brown, and Taylor Swift. Like, Mega, mega money here, guys. We're talking about knitting patterns, not mega money involved here. I just, it just feels, You know, we said on the last podcast something about like charity knitting and how actually do we create an expectation that, you know, if we, if they just knitted for charity all the time on the show, like, does that create an expectation that actually you're just gonna knit? Have a national expectation that knitters should just be knitting for charity. And if we're also doing this Rowan, like are we creating an expectation that pattern designers shouldn't be paid for their work?

Adam (12:25): That's a really, really tricky thing. And that's also, so I wanted to talk about why patterns are free, because a lot of patterns are free. If you go onto Ravelry, roughly, I think there's about three million patterns on there at the moment. Think of which about half are free patterns and I totally understand why you would have patterns for free but there is a sort of economic problem with providing patterns for free which is that if patterns are free and you've got a great choice of patterns that are free why would you ever pay for one and so there's a fundamental problem with should free patterns even exist because they potentially damage the artist opportunity who wants to go and earn money from creating patterns. But the reasons for free patterns are totally legitimate. One, you might be a fibre artist who's going to create one or two patterns ever. A friend wants them. You want to share them with the world. You write them down. You articulate them. You publish them. But it is a pain to set up a payment method for them. And therefore, you're not going to earn a living from them. But that is a reason that you just make it free so it isn't any hassle for them. Another one might be that you don't want to support the pattern in future. Sometimes I see designers where they reach a certain point, they think I've had enough of pattern design, and they make all of their patterns free so that they are not obliged to provide any pattern support. Then you get to companies who want to give a free pattern when you do XYZ. So spend 50 pounds or 100 pounds on yarn and get a free pattern. Or you get the pattern free when you buy a sweater quantity worth of yarn. Or they're combined somehow as a kit with yarn. Or designers also give a free pattern when you are buying other patterns or to promote other patterns. So I know a designer who I've talked to a lot about this and they put a pattern online and sold basically nothing. They put heart and soul into it. It's a complex pattern, thoroughly tested. It was really, really well done. This is a very, very good designer and has also successfully launched sweater patterns before. Put this pattern online and nothing happened. Absolutely no sales. I've been through that myself as well. But then put the pattern free for 24 or 48 hours and got a thousand downloads.

Georgia (14:58): Wow.

Adam (15:03): And you can see that as also a heartbreaking moment as an artist. Well, I want my work to reach people. I want to give it to people. That is part of the ambition of what you want to do. And so I can understand that as why you would then want to make sure that it gets out to a of people. And also maybe it promotes your work in general. If 1,000 people are making your pattern and they do even if half of them go ahead and make your pattern, there's a good chance that they might come back to you in the future. People ask them, where did you get that? I got it from XYZ. So it's a sort of marketing tool as well. But the problem is that free patterns create this very big issue in the industry for me, which is part of there is very little value. And people think about the pattern as being ultra low value. And then you come across, how– also, because they are potentially four sides of A4, people can photocopy them and pass them on to a friend or take a picture of them on their phones. We've talked to our local yarn shop about people take photos of the patterns in the shop and take photos of all the pages. I mean, that is theft, isn't it?

Georgia (16:11): Yeah, yeah. But then, I mean, if you've got it from the library, is that theft? I mean... No, because it's a library, the library paid for the rights for it. But I think it's not even just with knitting patterns specifically. I think we're in a culture now where we're so used to having things seemingly for free when actually there's probably a lot of advertising revenue that's like folded in. So, you know, when we do streaming, for example, that that's kind of like, you know, I have, I pay my money to Spotify every month so I don't get ads, but that's the thing is I'm, psychologically I'm just used to getting things instantly. So I think that that does then start to translate and I'm not saying that this is right, but I think it translates into people not realizing actually that this is something that is an intellectual property. You know, that this is something that people deserve to be compensated for. Because we're just, I think our... Perception of all of this is just so skewed because of the world that we live in now.

Adam (17:13): Yeah, in a way it would be a nicer model if Ravelry were a subscription model, you know, if you paid, say, a pound a month or a dollar a month or whatever it was, and that was your rights to all the free patterns and the database access or something. Maybe that would cause enormous amounts of...

Georgia (17:33): That would be a big headache, And you could also probably find ways... I mean, would be so interesting to figure out how they actually did the distributions based on those. Yeah, when you look at the economics of streaming services, it's so fascinating because you see, OK, how is this actually being distributed? Is it per play or is it disproportionately towards one group? And then what's the algorithm doing to that? Who's that privileging? And so, God, it's a whole. I was going to say a can of worms, but a basket of worms, yarn, yarn for worms.

Adam (18:09): Well, the other issue that I want to talk about in terms of pattern design is how you do market pattern design for different skill levels. So one of the things that I've noticed certainly from Instagram, where I share techniques and how-to videos, I absolutely see that the simpler techniques I do, tend to get much bigger reach, much bigger audience, much more likely to go viral than when I do extremely complex stuff. And naturally that is because something that is simpler is more approachable by more people. If you think about the world of knitting, or in fact in anything, you could think about piano players or bricklayers or any skill that you want to take. There are going to be loads of people that can do it at a more amateur level and as you go through to higher and higher levels of skill, are going to be...

Georgia (19:05): A beginner a level, yeah.

Adam (19:06): As you go through a higher level of skill, there are fewer people that have stuck with the process, that have put the hours in, that have gone to that very expert level. So when you come to thinking about patterns, in terms of the market size that you've got to be able to sell a pattern into, you're going to have a very big market if you've got a very basic pattern out. And if you going to have an expert level pattern that is going to typically be done by many, many fewer people. It's going to be a much smaller market. I've got a really big problem there because it just so happens you're wearing a Sophie Scarf today. Hello.

Georgia (19:45): Hello!

Adam (19:47): Because the Sophie Scarf is a wonderful example there because most expert knitters– And I would think that you are absolutely a good enough knitter, Georgia, to be able to knit that without the pattern. So, right.

Georgia (20:01): I kind of almost wanted to pull you up on something around the idea of like, when you were saying before about skill and like people who've put in the hours and put in the time. I think that, and this is something that comes up a lot in my research and we've had chats about it before as well. I think that craft as a definition kind of sometimes assumes that there is a pursuit of mastery and a pursuit of building skills and of carrying on to what, that's ultimately the goal. It's like, a friend of mine was a medical student once and said to me, well, "basically everyone's aiming to be a consultant", but that's not really true. And I don't think that everyone who knits, everyone who's listening to this podcast, some people don't actually see that as a thing that they want to do. Like it's not a goal for it. So I don't always think that like beginner friendly patterns or Sophie Scarf patterns I don't think that the Sophie Scarf being as popular as it is, is completely indicative of just lots of beginner people who have not put in the time to develop the skill. I think it's also a choice that sometimes people don't want to figure it out, which is kind of my perspective. Like maybe you'd figure out, you'd figure out in a different way. Maybe you just want to, maybe your knitting is down time. Maybe you're knitting, you've got a million and one of other things going on and you don't knit super complex stuff. I remember recently I was talking to you about two colour brioche and you seemed a little bit taken aback that I'd like never done brioche. But one of the reasons I hadn't done brioche is because I knit a lot on the go. I knit a lot in seminars, lectures. I can't, I don't have the time to sit down and really figure these things out sometimes. So I knit lots of Sophie Scarves. I think that it's, it is a big thing in craft studies actually. Like at some point we'll talk about a whole, the can of worms of craft literature and amateurism and all that kind of stuff. But I have to kind of challenge you on that a little bit because I am a very happy knitter of Sophie Scarves when I need to be.

Adam (22:09): Well, so I don't mean to say that you shouldn't have bought the pattern because you could have made it without.

Georgia (22:16): I actually don't know if I could. I mean, it would have been different. I could have come up with it in different way. But actually, like, if you haven't done that kind of thing, you don't know what you don't know. Yeah.

Adam (22:25): So, well, I'll come back to my point about Sophie Scarf though. You're quite right.

Georgia (22:29): Sorry. I just got on my little soap box.

Adam (22:32): Full disclosure, Georgia, I have bought the Sophie Scarf pattern.

Georgia (22:36): Well, well then! Looky here!

Adam (22:40): If you wanted the mic drop moment, it is that I have bought Sophie Scarf. I haven't knitted it though, and I don't intend to, but–

Georgia (22:46): Yet more judgement, more pattern snobbery. Should rename this episode "Pattern Snobbery from Adam".

Adam (22:53): I was curious, I'll explain why I wanted to buy the Sophie Scarf because it's one of the, it is possibly the most popular pattern in the world, one of the hottest in the last two years. And I really want, like I'm interested in writing patterns. I don't see myself as a brilliant writer, but I can see shapes and articulate them in knitting and I like being able to do that. I wanted to see what, what the secret sauce was, what was in this pattern, why it was, was there something special as well written within there, some magical words that made it so very attractive for people to want to like and share and all the rest of it. And so that's, so I bought it on the grounds of research. But also one thing that I noticed then was that the Sophie Scarf is two pages. When I look at a Stephen West pattern or my more complex patterns like my dragon scarf and so on, those are patterns where they run to 10 pages. My longer pattern's 3,500 words. And that is a real difficulty when we come back to pricing, because Sophie Scarf is more, it has a much broader appeal. It's gonna go to a much bigger market. And also, because it is a simpler pattern, is a couple of pages. That means it is less time to... It's less time to knit. It's less time to test. It's less time to have tech editing. All of those costs are lower. It is less yarn costs in doing your test knits. Then you contrast that with the other end, where you have a complex shawl or a complex sized jumper or something like that, which might run to 10, 15, 20 pages of text. And you also have something which is now applicable to a much, much smaller market of experts. And yet the price difference that you see, Sophie's scarf is around £3.50. The most expensive patterns you see are £8, maybe £10, £10, $12, something like that. But there's not a lot of money difference. But I tell you that the time and effort that goes into an expert pattern, I mean, it could be 10, it could be 50-fold in terms of the difference of the resource that goes into the pattern design. And I think that's a really big in the industry for how people are compensated and what the opportunities are. And I think it drives a lot of, "let me create simple patterns" without people wanting, mean, Stephen West is probably one of the few exceptions where he's built enough of a market, he's built enough of a very large following, and he's convinced enough people that you can try these– Most of his patterns, I'd say, were intermediate. Some of them step into the more advanced techniques, but they're, you know, that where enough people will buy them, and that's a very rare thing.

Georgia (25:57): I'm going to be honest, though. I am quite a sort of a minimalist dresser, and I have huge respect for Stephen West patterns. I think they're gorgeous. I think when the right person knits and wears them, like if they like it, then great. And I think that they look lovely on the p... I'm prefacing this a lot because I don't want it to sound like I think all your Stephen West shawls are ugly. Like, it's not that. I think they're great. They're not for me. And when I'm looking at what is in my wardrobe, I kind of put myself on like a jumper ban a couple of years ago where I was like, I'm not going to buy any jumpers because I can knit all of them. And then didn't get through that many jumpers so recently just bought some from a shop and I don't know. My life's got better, I'm cosier because I'm not just cycling through the few jumpers that I've had time to knit. But I like the aesthetic of PetiteKnits patterns and I don't want to knit something more complex a lot of the time on an aesthetic grounds and yes there are kind of visually simplistic visually minimalist patterns that might be actually very complex or have a really interesting stitch pattern, for example. But, I like the aesthetic of simple patterns. So I feel like there can be like quite a lot of, technique, skill, snobbery sometimes around people knitting simple patterns when actually that's an aesthetic motivation for them. I don't think that everyone has to pursue complexity in what they're doing.

Adam (27:36): I think that's totally fair enough. I mean... I have a funny position on that simply because my personal motivation and I understand my personal motivation is so utterly different from most other people's. When I started knitting, I really felt like surely I was one of everyone else and I was pursuing what was a normal knitting journey. But as I went to class after class and started to engage more in knitting groups, I started to see that my personal view of knitting where I am trying to learn every possible technique and practice every possible technique and combine all of them and then invent stitches and push the boundaries of what I can do and what can be done with knitting. Where I'm trying to do that, I now realize, and it's not a realization this week, it came to me some time ago, but I do realize that that is not a normal stance to take within knitting. And I do get that.

Georgia (28:37): At least not intentionally. I think I have ambitions for developing skills of knowing how to do things. But I think if I made that my primary goal and then I knew that my life was not set up for that to be the case, because I've got other things to do, then I'd just be down on myself all the time for not actually pursuing this expert level of skill. And so I do get what you're coming from. And I don't want to cast myself as someone not wanting to try new things or just wants to stay in her lane. But I think that as a result of the kind of relationship I have to knitting and the opportunities I have to knit, you're not always going to more complex things that I'm knitting because I just simply don't have the time. Maybe in the future when I'm not doing a PhD and running myself into the ground, then maybe I'll be able to branch out and actually really fall in love with those kinds of things and maybe you'll see me in a Stephen West shawl where actually I've kind of got to a point where like part of the attraction for that is that I've made this really detailed thing that brought on my skill level that kind of expresses all of this skill that I have developed.

Adam (29:47): I mean, think that's one of the central and beautiful things about knitting, crochet and crafts and that sort of art area, is that there is a basic fundamental which allows you to do something very productive and very constructive. In knitting, you need to know how to cast on and knit and you can make a scarf. I mean, you have to know how to cast off as well, but...

Georgia (30:17): Funny story about that.

Adam (30:18): You can create something quite constructive with the most basic and fundamental thing. And it's the same with crochet. Once you can get it going, once you can make a chain and then you can build from that, you can create objects of significant complexity. You can make fabric and fabric is a flexible and usable item. And that's where you come back to this. When I think about knitting and the sort of market for patterns, that's why you have– because a lot of people do do it for the meditative practice, the just doing something because it is a constructive or meditative or, you something to do with my hands. You want to work with a particular yarn that you like the colour or texture of. And so that is the sort of the mass, I don't mean mass market to sound like any way to rotatory. Like that is where most people sit with knitting.

Georgia (31:20): And it's also an element about it's a very women-dominated craft and like generally speaking within society in terms of actual downtime or time available to people to knit, women statistically will have maybe less time to engage with things like that. So you might see a different kind of emphasis or different focus depending on different seasons of people's lives and how they're working. It's a whole amazing thing actually in craft studies of how do you define craft because if you just defined craft as inherently a pursuit of mastery– And there's a guy called Richard Sennett who wrote a book called The Craftsman (Sennett, 2009) who really kind of instinctively advocates for it. And then you read it and it sounds like it's a very like pithy romantic book about being a craftsperson. Then there are other academics who've actually kind of responded to that and said, yeah, but if you define it by, okay, being a craftsperson is always being in a pursuit of skill– There's an amazing paper by a woman called Alanna Cant (Cant, 2021), and she said that it excludes people who are maybe professionals, then for all kinds of socioeconomic reasons or cultural reasons, they don't want to pursue an excellence or an expert level of skill. And if you were to define craft by the former, you'd exclude people. I mean, look at craft and well-being. If you think of the pursuit of mastery or the pursuit of excellence as a defining characteristic of craft, where are we when we're thinking about craft and disability? Where are we when we're thinking about craft and people's health? So, yeah, I mean, we didn't expect to get in a bit of a debate today, did we? Yeah, we were supposed to be having a debate with Rowan.

Adam (33:08): With Rowan. I mean, we can take it back there because they're... Because there's one other thing about those patterns which is pointed out and again, this points the meta purpose of Game of Wool and why should it exist as a show and is one of its core purposes to show us what can be done and to broaden the reach of knitting. And so I came across this other interesting point on the Rowan patterns online. Thank you for all the comments on Instagram. But someone pointed out that Rowan selling these patterns looks like it is a beginner friendly pattern. And should Rowan be trying to do beginner friendly patterns? And particularly, Holger is going to come up a lot in our conversations, I think. But if you look at his pattern, which they didn't go into in detail on the show, but you can see there is a twisted rib at every stage. And the decreases that he's done, okay, a knit two together isn't too hard. A slip knit is one level up from that, but he's got central double decreases, center double decreases in the twisted rib on the V-neck. That isn't, that's definitely not beginner level.

Georgia (34:27): Are people gonna buy these kits and then think, they can get really put off by knitting?

Adam (34:34): Well, exactly. I guess that's the worry that they, it's, I hope that, I mean. The different patterns have different complexities embedded within them. It's a nice example there of where Holger's finished garment looks very elegant and it's relatively simple looking. And part of it, part of the success, if I think of it, of that as a garment is that it really does look amazing from– amazing and simple. But when you look at the details of it, it absolutely isn't simple. And he's got that the fine details within it are also not, they're not beginner friendly. And I haven't looked, I'm afraid I haven't looked at the... what Rowan have–

Georgia (35:21): I ain't paying 80 quid. Do you wanna pay 80 quid research, like with the Sophie Scarf?

Adam (35:28): I think I- I'm not gonna legitimately expense that. I would love to experiment and see what I could knit– whether I could knit that in 12 hours and I really thought when Game of Wool was going to come out, I genuinely thought I was going to be doing the challenges. But I just, where do I find 12 hours this week? It's brutal.

Georgia (35:48): Well, that's the question.

Adam (35:50): I'm also just going to quickly be looking at my phone because I wonder whether Game of Wool, they saw my post. Yeah, they've seen my question an hour ago, but they haven't come back. So I imagine I've upset someone there.

Georgia (36:06): Oopsie!

Adam (36:09): Is there anything else we wanted to say about selling patterns? I mean, I was going to ask you lots of questions about this in music, Georgia, because that's also your field of expertise as a composer. But what's the similarity between?

Georgia (36:23): Well, generally people don't get paid for things, unless you're like Hans Zimmer. I mean that's an overstatement. When you're kind of growing as a composer, and I'm saying this with the awareness that composer is a very broad term and, you know, however someone wants to identify as a person who writes music, makes music, I'm including all kinds of people in that. So I did an undergrad in composition in Birmingham at a music college and... you write as part of your degree for a lot of different ensembles that gives you a kind of a learning experience, right? And so I did lots of workshops, lots of courses, and I wasn't getting paid to do those because I was a student in a learning environment, in a learning experience. And then there's sometimes, you're building a career, you're building a sort of platform, and then what happens if you're at that stage and then someone comes to you and asks you to write a piece and then one of those pieces does really well and then you're in a very different phase of your life where you might agree to something and not get paid. But to be honest, there's so little money kind of rolling around in the new music field that people don't tend to get paid for their music. I'm at a point now where I have been paid for things, but it feels like there's a big disconnect when you're a younger composer and when you're an established composer in your like 40s and 50s. So the Musicians' Union provides a sort of a list of different rates (Musician's Union, 2023) that you could expect to be paid for a composition and they're kind of based on different instrumental numbers, different groups, if it's got a keyboard included, and it doesn't scale in exactly a sort of a linear way. It takes into account that a piece that is shorter is actually kind of hard to do, and often it tends to be more intense. I'm pretty sure that these are publicly available, you can go and have a look at them. I will tell you now that trying, I've tried to cite even like an MU rate and even ask for half of that sometimes, and... it's just been like a non-possibility. It would have eaten up the entire budget available for this thing to happen. And I had some friends they were starting to set up an ensemble and they asked me to write a piece for them. And a bit of a back and forth of how much do you wanna be paid? No, how much can you pay me? And then... effectively the money that they were going to be able to pay me for this one piece that would have taken weeks to write– kind of like a pattern you have to have, there's a lot more in it than just having an A4 piece of paper. I was effectively being paid for what I'd got teaching for like a day for this piece. And it was like, I knew that they wanted to pay me more. But I think there is a disconnect sometimes even for musicians who look at what a composer does and they equate it to a day of playing their instrument when actually if you write four minutes music or five minutes music, that's a long time. And I do think that it's having an interesting effect on musicians where people are getting maybe looser about the way that they write music. I know I've been guilty of it at points where I feel like I've been stretching out the music I've been writing and it's become really slow and moody and temperate because actually it's really hard to write intense music and it's hard to write fast music, it's hard to write detailed music. I recently did a workshop with a orchestra in the UK and I really took on a challenge with that. I decided to push myself stylistically, aesthetically, kind of like knitting or designing a pattern for something that was super, super complex. And it was so hard. It was like the hardest thing I've ever done. And I did not get paid for that.

Adam (40:28): I mean, that's where it comes back to just being a, it comes back to very much passion projects. I mean, I'll tell you specifically about the economics of my patterns very briefly, but first of all, I want to tell you, I went to, because it's topical, I went to the opera a few days ago and I saw a wonderful, absolutely mesmerizing performance of The Magic Flute. But honestly, the conductor came on and the orchestra was off like lightning and he cantered through it and was so many movements in it which were at pace. All I thought was that's a conductor that's being paid for the performance, not by the hour.

Georgia (41:08): You know, one thing before you say about the pattern things, I would really go and have a look if you're interested in this. Ireland have just made that universal basic income scheme (Citizens Information, 2025) that was a pilot permanent for 2000, I think it's 2000 musicians in Ireland. And they already had a similar scheme as well that was for sort of established artists and makers who had really contributed something to Irish culture. It's now going to be a permanent scheme because they saw all kinds of economic benefit and like it was really paying for itself and more. And that's almost in recognition of the fact that artists don't necessarily get paid what their work is worth.

Adam (41:49): Well, also, I mean, it becomes internationally attractive. I saw a wonderful knitting designer, Paul, who I follow. He lives in, largely lives in New York. He works in the costume industry as well around that, he's a fantastic knitter. But that's how I learned about it is because he was excited by what Ireland were doing and was asking anyone, can anyone help me get to Ireland? It's an awesome thing. But also, if you want to celebrate culture, that's fundamentally a brilliant way of doing it. So just to tell you, my latest hat pattern release, because I think sometimes people think that the large Instagram following that I have is a key to financial success in the pattern composition designing world. And I just want to make sure that if you are listening to this and you're thinking about it, that you do have the numbers available to you. So I reckon I spent about 20 hours on the three prototypes I did of that hat. I reckon it took me round about five hours to write the pattern and make the corrections to it. And I think I probably put about five hours into the marketing. And by marketing I mean producing videos, liaising with the testers and getting the hats, know, photos of the hats and so on. One of the videos I produced actually it probably took five hours by itself. But let's just say that's a total of 30 hours. Now, I don't know how you want to value my time. Let's value me at less than minimum wage and put me at 10 pounds an hour. But that's 300 pounds invested in that so far. I also bought the yarn. So I bought yarn obviously for myself. Actually for this knit, I also bought the yarn for the testers. Helen at the Wool Kitchen was extremely kind and she gave me a bit of a discount on that. So I ended up paying £100 for the wool, which was a great bargain for what I got for hand-dyed yarn, certainly. But all in, if you want to value my time, that means that there was 30 hours, £300, plus £100 of materials. So we're at £400. I'm reasonably happy with how that pattern has sold, and I've sold 30 copies of it at £4 a piece. So that's £120. And then I'll pay taxes after that as well. So you can see, you know, that is a significant loss for me, but it is not an emotional loss. Well, I mean, I mean, it's sad, obviously, I'd love to be, I'd love to make millions from patterns, but that's, you know, it's a very real fact of it. Other patterns I've sold have done better, some do worse, but that's the horrible thing as a designer is that you never know whether a pattern is gonna do well, or isn't going to do well, regardless of that, you have to put the effort in because it might do well and you want to give it everything the best possible chance. I feel for the initial designers on Game of World, hope that they do feel, mean, ultimately that's what it comes down to. Yes, I want them to be financially successful if that's what they want, but I also just hope that they feel happy and satisfied with the relationship that they have with Channel 4 with the Game of Wool and with Rowan Yarns. I'm sure that a lot is being done there with the best of intentions. And I really hope that they feel good about it. And that's the one thing I guess we don't know.

Georgia (45:21): That's the big thing. It's like we have our opinions on it. You might have your opinions listening to Yarn Library podcast. Ultimately, it comes down to how individuals feel. I mean, yes, we've acknowledged in this conversation, like, sometimes those things have an impact for other people. If someone wants to make a living off it and then there are all these free patterns because someone's just doing it for the fun of it or because they can afford to pay their bills another way, like that does in a sense devalue things, but also it's... It's complicated. It's super complicated.

Adam (46:07): We'll have to one pick it in another episode.

Georgia (46:07): Yeah, I think we will. It's nice to be transparent as well. I think more people should just be transparent about what they're making, what they're earning. I mean, my goal with being a composer is just to kind of break even. And that's sometimes all we can hope for.

Adam (46:26): Well, we'll leave it there, but thank you so much for listening to Episode 2 of the Yarn Library of Art. I can't even get my words out.

Georgia (46:33): Drop the "the"!

Adam (46:34): There's no "the" there in it, there, Georgia? Thank you for listening to Yarn Library Podcast. Please make sure you're subscribing on whatever platform that you're listening to this on. And we'll hopefully you'll hear from us in Episode 3.

Georgia (46:47): We'll try not to argue too much next time.

Adam (46:49): Or more! Give us a feedback. Do you like it?

Georgia (47:53): Do you like the conflict? Are you coming here for cosy, harmonious chit chats?

Adam (47::59): Let us know on social media at CleevelyKnit and we will respond to your comments and use that in our future podcast. But thank you for listening.

Georgia (47:08): Bye!