Category: General Posts
Piracy isn’t cool
Forget Peter Ustinov playing Blackbeard or Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow – piracy isn’t cool, it isn’t clever, and there is nothing endearing about it!
I don’t usually attempt to produce topical posts – my embroidery is a very long-term sort of occupation! – but I care about the health of the needlecrafts industry, and there is something we all need to be aware of. I’ve let my thoughts settle over the weekend, and this is my two-pennyworth.
Monique over at Inside Number Twenty has recently discovered her charts being “shared” without her permission and has done a few sums to see what the actual financial costs are to her and to the other businesses associated with hers. The results make sobering reading. No wonder designers are shutting up shop, as Jen Funk Weber reports – not merely because designs are being “shared” (read “pirated”), but because people are downloading free charts rather than paying for a designer’s work. Eventually the designers will have to do something else to earn a living, and then the range of designs available will no longer develop and grow.
A few months ago Tricia Wilson also discussed the financial and social aspects of needlecrafts in a post on The Embroiderer’s Story. There’s a great deal of subtle interplay between the buying decisions we make and the ongoing effects that spread throughout the industry.
The music industry has been complaining about piracy ever since file-sharing became possible, and has been ignored because people consider that pop stars make so much money they won’t miss the few pounds from file-sharers. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know about margins in the entertainment industry, so I can’t comment on that.
Copyright and intellectual property law was originally devised to support and encourage artists – in all media – so that society as a whole can benefit from their work, while they receive just recompense for their efforts.
As for needlecrafts – most of the businesses are so small that “industry” conjures up entirely the wrong image. The margins are small, and loss of even a small portion of revenue may make a difference between a viable business and a designer giving up and getting a non-creative job to pay the bills.
As Yvette has already commented, sharing a copyrighted design is theft. There are a whole range of people who suffer as a result, including ordinary people who enjoy stitching and would never dream of using a pirated chart.
We were all told at kindergarten that theft is wrong. How come people have forgotten?
Planning The Golden Fleece
Jason bringing the Fleece to Pelias. Photo by Jastrow (2006) Public Domain Licence
I know Janice suggested I should finish the Dreams of Amarna before getting wound up in The Golden Fleece, but I had a long train journey recently, and started idly thinking about the idea.
So:
Obviously, the scene to do is the one where Medea takes Jason into the grove where the Fleece is kept.. Lots of twisted branches and tree trunks, the sun sinking low in the west, and the Fleece glimmering in the light of the torches.
The first design challenge that occurs to me is that the Fleece will over dominate the picture if I am not careful with all that textured, gleaming gold. On the other hand, gold looks better with a dark, rich coloured background, so I can’t just settle for a daytime scene.
I can ease the problem slightly by dressing Jason and Medea in their best clothes, with rich colours and gold details, and perhaps rather than sunset, have it in moonlight (cue a silver kid moon!), with a line of torches to indicate the approach to the grove.
If I make sure that the Fleece has several shades of gold in it, that may also settle it more happily into place as only part of the panel..
There are several books I can use for reference – Tim Severin built a replica of the Argo and sailed and rowed from Greece to Georgia, which is where Colchis is thought to have been. Robert Graves wrote on the subject. I’ll have little trouble finding other references, either. We’re back to myths, legends, and archaeology…
Beautiful Blogger Award – Seven Things About Me
My second post meeting the obligations of the Beautiful Blogger award – here are Seven Things About Me.
I bellydance for fun – Yes, really. I did ballet as a child, ballroom dancing as a student and now I’ve taken up bellydancing. It keeps my spine supple and gives me a weekly chance to dance – what could be better?
I lived in Paris for nearly a year – Now you know why Paris Breakfasts strikes such a chord with me! And in Paris, by the way, I danced Rock’n’Roll, which was astonishingly popular. Nightclubs had “rock’n’roll nights” where nothing else was played at all, and the standard of some of the dancing was really astonishing!
I read as much as I embroider – Possibly more. This might not be a great surprise since so much of the embroidery that I am blogging about has a vaguely literary background. My tastes range from biographies (a good Christmas present a couple of years ago was a very academic book about John of Gaunt!) and similarly factual stuff to fiction of pretty much all sorts (Tolkien to Georgette Heyer, via Margery Allingham and Terry Pratchett), except horror stories. I see no good reason for giving myself nightmares…
I used to play the violin – Not very well, but I got a lot of fun out of playing in orchestras. Frequently, something heard on the radio will result in a pause, head a-tilt and a thoughtful “I’m sure I played that in Youth Orchestra”. Fortunately my husband has chosen to find this amusing. My musical tastes run from medieval up to the present day, although I can’t get to grips with Wagner, and I get very picky after about 1860!
This I Know – when I was a teenager I found this saying of Dame Julian of Norwich in my studies of T.S. Elliot :
“Our dearworthy Lord said not thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, but thou shalt not be overcome”.
It is much less immediately appealing than “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”, but I have clung to it in bad times and found, indeed, that I have not been overcome. Don’t underestimate the uses of perseverance!
I have very long chestnut hair – length subject to radical change without notice!
I draw and paint in watercolours – not very well, but my husband insists that I tell you that I do better than I think I do (if you follow me..)
Beautiful Blogger Award
Janice at Postcards from Wildwood has passed a Beautiful Blogger award on to me. It never occurred to me that I might get an award at all, still less one so early in my blogging career, still less passed on by a blogger I admire so much. Thank you, Janice, for your encouragement and support when I was still thinking about this project, and your further encouragement and recognition now it is actually underway.
So, here are the rules as Janice passed them on to me:
- Thank the person who gave you the award. (Thank you again, Janice!)
- Pass this award along to 15 bloggers you’ve recently discovered and whom you think are fantastic! (Maybe not fifteen, and these aren’t all recent discoveries, but they are all bloggers whose blogs I enjoy visiting)
- Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.
- Share seven things about yourself (I’ll do this in a separate post).
Now, like Janice, I don’t expect or demand that you display the award or pass
it on. I’m simply taking this opportunity to say thank you for the hours of enjoyment and inspiration you have given me…
Quirky Quest with Lady Fi – I went for the pictures – wonderful, sundrenched winter photos of the countryside and frolicking animals. I’ve stayed because of her use of the English language, spare and poetic, and because of the delight she manages to find in everyday events. Thank you LadyFi!
PinTangle – This is one of the first blogs I subscribed to when I started following any blogs at all. I’ve found a lot of interesting blogs from Sharon’s occasional series listing sewing, art, and embroidery blogs (she’s reached the letter S), and her band sampler posts were largely responsible for the direction I eventually took for the Autumn Leaves Skirt. Thank you Sharon B!
The Embroiderer’s Story – I can’t remember how I landed at The Embroiderer’s Story, but I was instantly fascinated by the research that was going into the reconstruction of the Margaret Laton jacket which is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Not only research into stitching techniques, but research into the threads used and how they might be made. Then the challenges of sorting out display and maintenance of the finished piece – if you’ve ever wondered why there aren’t more reconstructions on display, this is why! Thank you Tricia!
Contemporary Embroidery – Karen’s work while I have been visiting has been primarily in white with small colour highlights, and inclusions of vintage textiles. Her subtle use of textural variations, and her beautiful photographs of gorgeously uncrumpled pieces, are a constant source of inspiration and delight. Thank you Karen!
White Threads – Yvette created The Left handed Embroiderer’s Companion, for which a good proportion of the sewing population should be singing her praises unceasingly (I’m holding out for the Right Handed Version, which is in preparation). Her posts from Ethiopia have been thought-provoking, too –
there is so much more in the world than any of us can be aware of, and it is
good to be reminded of the fact. Thank you Yvette!
Paris Breakfasts – Nothing at all to do with embroidery, but I find Carol’s blog about Paris and all things Parisian (especially patisserie and fashion!) enchanting and entertaining in almost equal measure. Merci, Carol!