journal

Read the fine print.

Here’s another thing.

Since it was launched, people have been touting Creative Commons as a great idea. And it is, frankly. There are a lot of creators out there who do want to share their work in a spirit that focuses on attribution and perpetuating the work (because the more a work is distributed the more it will live on, one way or another). And — well, I don’t need to promote CC or point out how it’s been used by various publishers and self-publishers.

But just one thing: please, before you decide to use a CC licence for your work, make sure it means what you think it means.

Publishers may choose the non-commercial use version of the CC licence, thinking that by doing so they have prevented anybody from profiting in any way from the use of their work. When you read the bright, clear language on the allegedly “human-readable summary” page for the attribution-noncommercial-noderivs (unported) CC licence, you see this:

Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

That’s great. However, you might not realize that this does not guarantee that the CC licence prohibits any commercial use.

Why? Because the CC licence makes a point of stating that, notwithstanding the rest of its provisions, there is no derogation from the user’s fair dealing or fair use rights. If you read a little further down on the human-readable summary page, you’ll also see this:

Your fair dealing and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

(If you’re reading a US-ported version, it will say “fair use”.)

And if you click through to read the actual licence text (which, by the way, was written by a human, too), you’ll see (unported version again):

Nothing in this License is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any uses free from copyright or rights arising from limitations or exceptions that are provided for in connection with the copyright protection under copyright law or other applicable laws.

The fact is that while much of fair dealing or fair use is non-commercial in nature, some uses of copyrighted works may be fair and have a commercial aspect at the same time. If I do research in order to provide a service to clients who pay me for my work, depending on my activity I may be dealing fairly with the research materials I use, but there is still a commercial aspect to my use.

Let’s take the example of the previous post: the situation where the publisher doesn’t want somebody making money by teaching classes from patterns that are distributed free of charge, even if the teacher directs the students to get their own copies. Clearly, there is some kind of commercial use going on; the teacher (who probably has her own copy) is reading the pattern, and helping her students knit the pattern from their own copies — for a fee. The exam question: would a CC non-commercial licence suit the publisher’s requirements, and why or why not? Would your answer change if the teacher did hand out copies of the pattern, otherwise in accordance with the attribution and non-derivation requirements? Would your answer change again if it was not a teacher, but a retailer who displayed a knit sample next to a pile of yarn for sale, and handed out cards with the pattern’s URL (not the pattern)?

The bottom line is this: if you are uncertain whether a commercial use falls within fair use or fair dealing, and you are interested in prohibiting that kind of use, seriously consider whether a CC licence is your best option. You might need to impose some other kind of licence agreement to protect your work the way you want.

Riddle me this…

How do (hand knitting/crocheting) designers view fair use or fair dealing? A good thing, right?

I assume that, for many designs, we can all agree that some of the elements incorporated into a design or a pattern did not originate from the designer, to the extent that the designer cannot really complain if someone else in turn takes that same element and incorporates it into their own design or pattern: a traditional motif, a stitch pattern from a dictionary.

And it could be that it is that element that really “makes” the design. Sometimes the designer has applied her own interpretation to the element, somehow adapted it to make it work in the shape of the garment or accessory in a way that may not have been done before. Yet, the element itself is not new, and we do not question the designer’s right to take that known element, and incorporate it into something from which she can derive profit.

Why, then, is there such objection to having shops teach from those patterns, for pay, without further permission, provided the teacher who teaches from the pattern does not violate copyright in the pattern (for example by running off unauthorized copies (e.g., paying for one and making copies for distribution from that one) or removing the original authorship/copyright ownership information)? Even in the context of patterns distributed by the publisher without charge, if each student is directed to obtain her own copy personally? And provided there is no implication that there was any connection between the shop and the designer, beyond the fact that it was her pattern being used in the class?

This is not so much about the legal underpinnings, as it is me trying to understand why that next step is so problematic for some designers.

Or maybe I do understand, and I don’t realize it. I remember when I finished writing Rogue: I was so proud of it; I had never seen anything like it. And it was time to price the pattern. I knew what kinds of prices had been charged for PDF patterns at the time (Bonne Marie Burns was my benchmark), but I remember thinking to myself that there was no way I could let it go for more than $10/copy. I talked myself down from that price, obviously, but I remember that it was a bit of a wrench to accept that what I thought I deserved was likely not realistic. It’s hard to be objective about your own work.

And initially, I did not like the concept of people knitting FOs for sale from my patterns any more than others seem to do. But then I realized that the likelihood of anyone earning a living from knitting up my patterns alone was pretty slim. The designs that I care most about are not ones that can be easily replicated by machine; there would still need to be a substantial amount of handwork, even if the construction of the piece were somehow changed to maximize the amount of machine knitting. (I do care that knitters are not exploited, which is why my licence specifies that the seller must be the one who knit the item, along the lines of a typical angel policy.)

It also struck me that there was some kind of incongruity: if I was willing to say that hand knit items were undervalued and if I deplored the fact that people had been taught to value the cheaply mass-produced over the artisanally-crafted works, why did I want to deprive the skilled knitter from realizing revenue from knitting my designs, if my designs could help the knitter realize a higher price for her skills?

Well, that didn’t take… uh… short.

This, finally:

For Immediate Release
March 12, 2009

Contact: Debbie Stoller, [redacted]
Gregory Garvin, [redacted although tempted]

HEADLINE: Sew Fast Sew Easy and Debbie Stoller Reach Agreement on Trademark

(New York, NY) ­ Sew Fast Sew Easy and Debbie Stoller have reached an agreement over the use of the marks ³Stitch and Bitch Cafe² and ³Stitch ‘N Bitch.²

Under the terms of the agreement, Sew Fast Sew Easy’s ³Stitch and Bitch Cafe² mark will be limited to goods and services in the areas of sewing and embroidery, while Stoller¹s ³Stitch ‘N Bitch² mark will be limited to goods and services in the areas of knitting and crochet.

“I am glad to report that we have amicably resolved our dispute and differences to the satisfaction of each party,” said Sew Fast Sew Easy’s Vice President, Gregory Garvin.

“We are all happy to put this dispute behind us and are urging all of our respective supporters and other concerned parties to likewise put this dispute behind them and discontinue any remaining boycotts,” said Debbie Stoller, author of the ³Stitch ‘N Bitch² series of knitting books.

# # #

This was in my inbox, not quite 10 months since it was announced that the press release would be “forthcoming”.

On that note, I suppose my next pattern is roughly “forthcoming”. Good! I have enough deadlines.

I lost it.

I can’t find the yarn I’m looking for.

It’s the Zara that was on sale at elann four or so years ago. The yarn that people bought, and then discovered smelled funny? Like kimchi? That yarn.

I bought it in ecru and green, and however much I got (I haven’t looked it up), it was two sweaters’ worth. I can’t find it in the kid’s closet (which has nothing of theirs in it, it’s all my stuff), I can’t find it in the Rubbermaid Bins of Mystery in the bedroom, I can’t find it in the Closet of Further Mystery and a Great Deal of Fabric in my room, it’s not in the list of yarn in the Offsite Storage Locker of You Realize You Have a Problem With All This Yarn, I see no mention of it in my e-mail about having sold it off (would you sell somebody yarn that you knew used to smell like kimchi?) unless I was looking in the wrong folders… the only place I haven’t checked is the downstairs Storage Locker, because I’ve been putting it off because the Storage Locker is of Doom and the entire parking garage has this parking garage musty smell (not really musty, but I don’t know how to describe it) that sticks to you, but which fortunately has not permeated the yarn in the of Doom Storage Locker, because the yarn down there is in Rubbermaid Bins of Fortitude. But aside from that, I have no recollection of putting the yarn down there so if it’s there I will be surprised.

The end.

Public service captcha

(I had been procrastinating regarding work. Nothing surprising.)

So, the simple, custom anti-spam plugin failed and I was getting tons of spam comments. I’ve just installed reCAPTCHA, which I used to hate when I first encountered it (on the USPTO website), but once I realized that it actually provides a public good by helping to digitize books, I forgave it. The only sad part is that I can’t customize it to throw up words like “disagree” or “saskatoon” or “bunker”.

Five minutes, and no spam yet. Hurrah!

ETA: not true, it’s not working to stop spam. I just installed Bad Behaviour, but I’m kinda doubtful because it seems to be slowing down the response time. I’ll test it for a bit and then decide what to do.

Also, I may choose to add “saskatoon” and “casein” or however it is “king teddy bear” is supposed to be spelled to the blacklist, but I don’t think that’ll speed things up.

Guess the year

So, I was doing a search for an old e-mail address of mine, because… uh, I have no idea why I decided to do that. I think I must have seen something in passing that made me think of it. (Great. This was only about three minutes ago, and I simply can’t remember what it was I was thinking that made be decide to search.)

Anyway, I didn’t find anything interesting, but one of the hits was this:

http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/stats/pweb/months/hosts/uwproxy.4.total-remote-hosts.html

Pretty uneventful… for the 90s. The second site listed is Netscape. There is no Google. Honda, SGI, and OpenText must have been the big employers on campus. I’m guessing 1995, because toystory.com is on the list.

Now why did I just waste my time (and yours reading this) on this? Oh, right. I’m procrastinating.

Answers (the procedural kind)

Answers to the complaints were filed in both the Bliss and Noro actions by the U.S. defendants (Bliss Answer, Noro Answer). The answers simply deny (mostly) the allegations in the complaints, admitting some non-contentious issues, and denying any knowledge of others.

There is not a lot to read between the lines here; however, one thing caught my eye. The answering defendants admitted, for example, that TKW “purchased hand knitting yarn from KFI spun with 12% cashmere”. Yarn that was spun with, not yarn “containing” or “comprising” (Noro Answer, paragraph 51). This is consistent with the rest of the answer, which does refer to the various tests of fiber composition that were made on the their behalf (or on behalf of someone in the supply chain) and says that the documents speak for themselves.

Some affirmative defences are also set out, including the assertion that the plaintiff had voluntarily assumed a known risk (presumably the risk that the goods were not what they purported to be?) and unclean hands (an equitable defence; where a plantiff seeks equitable relief from a court, the plaintiff itself should not have behaved inequitably itself in relation to the matter in dispute).

I’m not clear what the plaintiff’s inequitable conduct might have been, unless it was the subject of the counterclaims made by KFI: the plaintiff has “engaged in a course of conduct that, upon information and belief, is designed to impugn the reputation of KFI and disparage the quality of its yarn products” — pointing out in particular the yarn recall notice that TKW sent to its customers, and a May 2007 article that was published in The Chestnut Hill Local about the cashmere issue (if you do a Google search for relevant terms, you should be able to find the article). It is alleged that KFI experienced a loss of customers and sales as a result of TKW’s statements. So, KFI is claiming statutory defamation, disparagement, and tortious interference with both existing and prospective business relations.

Where’s the cashmere? (14 Jan 2009)

TKW v. KFI, Debbie Bliss, et al.

Complaint filed September 2, 2008: document in two parts, here and here (and exhibits in three, here, here and here), posts here, here, (an aside), here, here and here.

Motion to dismiss filed September 24, 2008: document, post.

Plaintiff’s Response to motion to dismiss filed October 8, 2008: document (sorry, no post on it; haven’t had time, but if all you are concerned about is where the cashmere is, you won’t mind).

Moving Defendants’ Reply in motion to dismiss filed October 23, 2008: document.

Plaintiff’s Sur-reply in response to the above reply, filed November 10, 2008: document.

Memorandum and Opinion in motion to dismiss issued December 18, 2008: document.

Order consolidating the two cases, issued December 23, 2008: didn’t bother uploading the document.

Answer filed by US defendants, January 6, 2009: document, post.

TKW v. Noro, KFI, et al.

Complaint filed October 6, 2008: document here, posthere. Certificates of service on all defendants filed on October 21, 2008.

Motion to dismiss on behalf of all defendants except Noro filed November 10, 2008: document.

Plaintiff’s Response to motion to dismiss filed November 17, 2008: document.

Moving Defendants’ Reply in motion to dismiss filed November 23, 2008: document.

Plaintiff’s Sur-reply in motion to dismiss filed December 8, 2008: document.

Memorandum and Opinion in motion to dismiss issued December 19, 2008: document.

Order consolidating the two cases, issued December 23, 2008: didn’t bother uploading the document.

Answer filed by US defendants, January 6, 2009: document, post.

Will it come with a CD, too?

As Susan pointed out in the comments to the last post:

Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting. In paperback. August 2009. From Dover.

Dover doesn’t only publish public domain works or collections of clip-art; they publish new works, too (you know, like presidential paper dolls). This title isn’t listed on the Dover website. I thought these books weren’t going to be republished… is there news?

As luck would have it, this is one of the Starmore books I’m missing from my collection. This leaves… well, seven I’ll be missing, but at least a couple of them are available at reasonable prices.

ETA: PDF news on spring 2009 releases from Dover. It’s in there. If the deal was between Dover and Taunton Press, perhaps Taunton had a (sublicensable) right to reprint for its territory. Taunton was the US publisher; there was a different publisher in the UK.

Back when the great Starmore-Jamieson/Unicorn blowup occurred (in 2000), Herself had stated that she would not republish “the books that I produced during the distribution period of Broad Bay and Unicorn”. In her letter to retailers, she was silent on the earliest works and those that didn’t use Unicorn-distributed yarn. Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting was only book published by Taunton. (She had written articles for Threads magazine, but Taunton has already republished those in another book.)

Moving forward…

A bit.

When we last left the cashmere conundrum, we were waiting for developments on the motions brought by certain defendants (the US-based ones) in both the Bliss and Noro actions. And now, we have them.

If you recall (what, you don’t?), certain defendants had moved to have the parts of the complaints that were based on federal law dismissed, so that all that remained were the counts based on state law. If the counts based on federal law were dismissed, the defendants argued, then the rest of the action ought to be dismissed from U.S. District Court as well because the proper venue would have been state court.

The defendants had mixed success. Last week, the court issued orders for both lawsuits (Bliss PDF, Noro PDF). In the Bliss action, the count based on the Lanham Act (false advertising under federal law) was dismissed, but the count based on RICO was not (although the grounds for the RICO claim were cut down).

In the Noro action, the Lanham Act count was dismissed, which left only allegations based on state law. However, the court retained jurisdiction over the action because of the diversity of citizenship (there are companies based in Japan, Pennsylvania, and New York, and individuals from New York and New Jersey).

If you need a scorecard, this is what remains in each lawsuit…

In the Bliss action–

I. (state law) Breach of Express Warranty of the Merchantability of Goods for Resale to Consumers
(against Knitting Fever, Sion Elalouf and Jay Opperman)

II. (state law) Breach of Implied Warranty of the Merchantability of Goods for Resale to Consumers
(against Knitting Fever, Filatura Pettinata, Sion Elalouf and Jay Opperman)

III. (federal law) Explicitly False Advertising Claim Pursuant to the Lanham Act
(against Knitting Fever)

IV. (federal law) Injury to Business and Property Pursuant to Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act
(against Sion Elalouf)
allegations of mail fraud and wire fraud remain; allegations regarding witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and exerting influence to obtain documents from a Coats employee struck out

V. (federal law) Conspiracy to Cause Injury to Business and Property
(against all defendants except Knitting Fever)

VI. (state law) Perfidious Trade Practices (Deceit) under the Common Law of Unfair Competition
(against Knitting Fever and Sion and Diane Elalouf)

VII. (state law) Motion to Pierce the Corporate Veil of the Elalouf-Controlled Entities
(against Knitting Fever and the Elaloufs)

In the Noro action–

I. (state law) Breach of Express Warranty of the Merchantability of Goods for Resale to Consumers
(against Knitting Fever, Sion Elalouf and Jay Opperman)

II. (state law) Breach of Implied Warranty of the Merchantability of Goods for Resale to Consumers
(against Eisaku Noro & Co., Knitting Fever, Sion Elalouf and Jay Opperman)

III. (federal law) Explicitly False Advertising Claim Pursuant to the Lanham Act
(against Knitting Fever)

IV. (state law) Perfidious Trade Practices (Common Law Unfair Competition)
(against Knitting Fever and Sion and Diane Elalouf)

V. (state law) Civil Conspiracy
(against all individual defendants, not companies)

VI. (state law) Motion to Pierce the Corporate Veil of the Elalouf-Controlled Entities
(against Knitting Fever and the Elaloufs)

The files linked above include the reasons for judgment. If you hadn’t read anything up to now, finding it tl;dr, the memoranda (reasons) provide a good summary of the allegations made in each lawsuit. I feel compelled to caution first (due to certain earlier observations) that just because these allegations are summarized in the reasons here does not mean that a court has determined that all the allegations are actually true; the test for whether allegations should be dismissed generally requires the court to assume the allegations in a pleading are true.

What’s next? The actions could go forward, or one or more of the parties could appeal one or more of these orders; the moving defendants, for example, did not get everything they asked for. In any event, this action will move about as quickly as… my knitting. Which is somewhat existent, but not quite.

ETA: also, the court ordered that these two actions be consolidated for the purposes of discovery and trial.

Where’s the cashmere? (Nov 21, 2008)

TKW v. KFI, Debbie Bliss, et al.

Complaint filed September 2, 2008: document in two parts, here and here (and exhibits in three, here, here and here), posts here, here, (an aside), here, here and here.

Motion to dismiss filed September 24, 2008: document, post.

Response to motion to dismiss filed October 8, 2008: document (sorry, no post on it; haven’t had time, but if all you are concerned about is where the cashmere is, you won’t mind).

Reply to response to motion to dismiss filed October 23, 2008: document.

Sur-reply in response to the above reply, filed November 10, 2008: document.

TKW v. Noro, KFI, et al.

Complaint filed October 6, 2008: document here, posthere. Certificates of service on all defendants filed on October 21, 2008.

Motion to dismiss on behalf of all defendants except Noro filed November 10, 2008: document.

Response to motion to dismiss filed November 17, 2008: document.

Where’s the cashmere? (Nov 15, 2008)

If I wind up reporting most of the steps in these actions, it’ll get pretty boring. So, this post will be reposted periodically with updates, with extra posts when there’s something pithy to say.

Observation: the more you type the word “here”, the funnier it looks.

Complaint filed September 2, 2008: document in two parts, here and here (and exhibits in three, here, here and here), posts here, here, (an aside), here, here and here.

Motion to dismiss filed September 24, 2008: document, post.

Response to motion to dismiss filed October 8, 2008: document (sorry, no post on it; haven’t had time, but if all you are concerned about is where the cashmere is, you won’t mind).

Reply to response to motion to dismiss filed October 23, 2008: document.

Sur-reply in response to the above reply, filed November 10, 2008: document.

TKW v. Noro, KFI, et al.

Complaint filed October 6, 2008: document here, posthere. Certificates of service on all defendants filed on October 21, 2008.

Motion to dismiss on behalf of all defendants except Noro filed November 10, 2008: document.

The other 5% is made of love

You have to feel sorry (or not) for a yarn distributor these days. Every claim you may put on a yarn label or website will be scrutinized.

… like this one!

Maybe the missing 5% is a fudge factor.

(Don’t worry, it’s not cashmere. I’m sure KFI will fix it sometime. Everybody else, including Katia, says that the composition is 50/25/25 wool/silk/nylon.)

Speaking of yarn composition, something else has been bothering me for a long time:

This yarn contains “10% Donegal”. Just… Donegal.

Last I checked, Donegal was a type of tweed fabric. It doesn’t seem that they’re snipping little bits of fabric and sprinkling them on, or maybe spinning in bits of grass imported from Ireland. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that a yarn containing Donegal…

… is PEOPLE!

(If you don’t believe me, look at the pictures on Wikipedia of Donegal and County Donegal. There is a suspicious lack of people in those photographs, except for a few hapless tourists.)

No(ro) cashmere

Here we go… TKW has sued Noro in U.S. District Court as well (along with KFI, the Elaloufs, and Opperman): false advertising, breach of express and implied warranties, perfidious dealing, civil conspiracy. Complaint here.

(ETA: this is fresh — Noro would not have been served with this complaint yet.)

(ETA2: page 7 of the complaint is out of order, but it’s there.)

We have progress

A first response in the cashmere conflict: a motion to dismiss (PDF) three of the seven counts in the complaint, filed on behalf of the U.S. defendants only. (In other words, VVG, Designer Yarns, and Debbie Bliss are not part of this motion, but if the moving defendants are successful this may benefit them as well.)

These defendants are asking the court to dismiss the counts of explicitly false advertising contrary to the Lanham Act, injury to business and property under RICO, and conspiracy to cause injury to business and property under RICO. If these counts are dismissed, the defendants argue that this court should no longer exercise jurisdiction over the remaining claims, because they do not have an independent basis in federal jurisdiction (the remaining causes of action would therefore belong in state court).

The arguments against the Lanham Act claim are based on TKW’s standing to obtain relief under that act. (I’m not summarizing this at this point; go ahead, read it if you wish.) But with regard to the RICO counts, the defendants argue that the claims are time-barred because TKW should have discovered its alleged injury in 2001, which makes it too late to bring an action in 2008. (TKW alleged RICO-related activities by the defendants through 2006, but the defendants here argue that they are not separate and distinct acts.)

The heart of the argument is this:

The Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939, 15 U.S.C. ‘ 68 et seq., makes unlawful the manufacture, importation, sale, distribution, or advertisement of any wool product which is misbranded. 15 U.S.C. ‘ 68a. Misbranding is specifically defined and includes failing to properly identify the fiber content of wool products. 15 U.S.C. ‘ 68a. Importantly for the present case, the Act imposes liability for misbranding on any person who shall manufacture or deliver for shipment or ship or sell or offer for sale in commerce, any … wool product which is misbranded. 15 U.S.C. ‘ 68a. In other words, every person in the chain of commerce, from importer, to wholesaler, to retailer, has an independent responsibility under the Act to ensure that the yarn products they sell are properly labeled, including as to fiber content. Id.

In the present case, The Knit With was under a duty of inquiry as to the fiber content of the yarn products they purchased from KFI, not because of storm warnings of culpable activity, but because of its obligations under the Wool Products Labeling Act. As a retailer of wool products, The Knit With had an obligation under the Act to take reasonable steps to avoid selling misbranded goods. Wherever inquiry is a duty, the party bound to make it is affected with knowledge of all which he would have discovered had he performed the duty. In re Hackett, Hoff & Thiermann, 70 F.2d 815, 818 (7th Cir. 1934) (quoting Cordova v. Hood, 17 Wall. 1, 8 (21 L.Ed. 587). In the face of this duty, however, it appears from the complaint that The Knit With failed to take any discernible actions whatsoever from 2001, when it began purchasing the allegedly mislabeled yarn products, until 2006, when it alleges to have submitted yarn samples for testing (Id.66 38-41). Having failed utterly to discharge its duty under the Act, the exercise of which, presumably, would have detected the alleged injury many years ago, The Knit With cannot now maintain that was not on inquiry notice of its injuries prior to 2004. As a result, The Knit Withs RICO claims accrued prior to 2004 and, therefore, are timebarred.

There is often a time limit within which lawsuits must be commenced, which varies according to the type of injury and the governing law; the clock usually starts running from the time the plaintiff knew or ought to have known of the harm done. Here, the defendants say the time limit is four years, and that TKW should have known about the harm it had suffered prior to 2004.

And why should TKW have known about all this prior to 2004? The argument is that because TKW (like other people in the distribution chain) is liable for misbranding wool products, it follows that TKW had a duty to inquire into the fiber content of the yarn products it had purchased from KFI since 2001, and should have taken reasonable steps to avoid selling mislabelled yarn back then.

This is interesting — just what is the nature of the duty of the craft yarn retailer? Section 68b(a)(2) of The Wool Products Labeling Act says (emphasis added):

(2) If a stamp, tag, label, or other means of identification, or substitute therefor under section 68c of this title, is not on or affixed to the wool product and does not show -
   (A) the percentage of the total fiber weight of the wool product, exclusive of ornamentation not exceeding 5 per centum of said total fiber weight, of (1) wool; (2) recycled wool; (3) each fiber other than wool if said percentage by weight of such fiber is 5 per centum or more; and (4) the aggregate of all other fibers: Provided, That deviation of the fiber contents of the wool product from percentages stated on the stamp, tag, label, or other means of identification, shall not be misbranding under this section if the person charged with misbranding proves such deviation resulted from unavoidable variations in manufacture and despite the exercise of due care to make accurate the statements on such stamp, tag, label, or other means of identification.

What constitutes a “reasonable step” or “due care”? Does this mean that all other yarn shops are not taking reasonable steps or due care when they purchase yarn from their suppliers, because they are not paying $400-500 for tests on every wool-containing yarn or obtaining guaranties from every distributor? Should they be suspicious and pay for tests whenever a distributor offers a luxury yarn at a good price?

If the defendants are successful here (and on appeal, if there is one), then this might mean an end to this particular lawsuit, but not necessarily an end to all possible claims against the defendants — at least, not in other courts.

Finally, for the idly curious: some non-binding staff opinions from the FTC to various manufactures about their cashmere products. The recipients have nothing to do with this lawsuit, but there are some familiar names…

Letter to Deanna Dee Inc. (PDF) about correct labelling of a cashmere/wool blend; the correspondence attaches a test report from K.D. Langley.

Letter to Amicale Industries’s counsel (PDF) observing that Amicale’s quality control practices seem exemplary, but declining to advise whether those practices constitute “due care” under The Wool Products Labeling Act. The correspondence sets out Amicale’s procedures in sourcing and testing cashmere; as part of the process, Amicale has its subsidiary W. Fein & Sons test the fibers. The manager of the Quality Control Laboratory at W. Fein & Sons is Julie Smith. Her CV (circa 2002) is at page 12 of the PDF.

Letter to May Department Stores (PDF) about an investigation into cashmere blend coats. The FTC’s letter says that their experts “tell us that although some wool fibers have been bred to be ultra fine - with the same diameter as some cashmere fibers - the difference between wool and cashmere can be discerned by a qualified expert using a microscope, based on differences in structure, appearance, and height of the scales on the fiber. I want to emphasize that we place great importance on regular testing by qualified and independent labs, to ensure accurage fiber content labeling. Garment manufacturers, importers, and distributors are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of fiber content labels on their garments.”

“It don’t take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep”

Imagine that… a page of goat quotes!

Now, let’s move on to what we do know about the yarns in question here — at least, what the published test results tell us. (Edit: oh, and some complaint exhibits (large files): one, two, three.)

1. May 26, 2006: light microscopy test report by K.D. Langley Fiber Services, as requested by CCMI (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 10 of complaint).

Sample (as identified in the test results and attachment): Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky, labelled as containing 55/33/12 merino wool/microfiber/cashmere.

Result: “The sample contains Wool and Acrylic fibers. No Cashmere fibers were observed” (this was not a quantitative test).

After this test was conducted, there was a TNNA show where the cashmere content issue was a hot topic of conversation (Complaint, paragraph 45). When the story broke, I don’t think that the second page of that PDF linked above was included; the inference I draw from the complaint is that it was circulated by Cascade Yarns later (Complaint, paragraphs 49 and 57).

After TNNA, KFI’s counsel sent a letter to Cascade Yarns alleging that Cascade Yarns had made “false and defamatory statements” at TNNA (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 11 of complaint). This letter references KFI’s “independent lab reports analysing larger and more reliable samples” (not attached).

In response to this letter, Cascade Yarns’s counsel responded, requesting these test results (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 11 of complaint). KFI’s counsel responded with a letter enclosing the lab reports (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 11 of complaint (covering letter only)). And so we have:

2. January 2006: lab report from Laboratorio di Analisi Prove e Richerche Tessili (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 11 of complaint).

Sample (as identified in the test results, from what I can make out in this grainy fax using the magic of online translators): a sample of 100% protein fibers.

Results: 55% cashmere, 45% wool or some similar fiber.

This appears to have been a microscopic examination in accordance with an ASTM standard. The requester looks like a Marcopolo srl.

Why is this sample a wool/cashmere blend only? Well, it might be a test of an input into a wool/acrylic/cashmere blend yarn, or it might be a test of the animal fiber component of an acrylic blend. However, we can’t tell from the document itself what was done with this fiber; if it were to be combined with acrylic microfiber to produce a yarn that was 33% acrylic, then 67% would have come from this wool/cashmere blend, meaning that the blended fibers would contain 36.85% cashmere — too much, unless cashmere fibers were lost in the manufacturing process. To arrive at the target cashmerino blend, you’d need 33% acrylic, 45.2% wool, and 21.8% of this blend (assuming I got that right), which seems like an odd way of going about things, but then again I know nothing about how the fibers are sourced by the mills.

(I don’t know, not being a spinner, of the likelihood of shorter-length fibers falling out of a properly blended top prior to spinning. As a knitter, I know that the shorter fibers are more likely to fall out with even casual use or pill on the surface of the garment with abrasion, but I’m relying on conventional wisdom and observation and not on an analysis of the contents of my vacuum cleaner bag; the latter would require that someone actually did the vacuuming around here.)

3. Rapporto di Prova (unknown date): page 2 of a lab report from “Laboratorio Accreditato No 0331 ITS” (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 11 of complaint).

Sample (again, with difficulties in legibility and translation): tops containing wool, cashmere, and acrylic? The report looks like it has the word “Tops” (which makes me wonder if there is no Italian word for tops).

Results:: (1) 83.98% wool, 16.02% cashmere, as determined by microscopy at 500X and using some measurement software of the animal fiber part of the sample, apparently; (2) 61.7% animal fibers and 38.3% acrylic, as determined by a bleach test; with a conclusion of 51.8% wool, 38.3% acrylic, and 9.9% cashmere.

If this was meant to be a 55/33/12 wool/acrylic/cashmere yarn, the results are close; the cashmere is within the 3% tolerance, but the wool and acrylic are a bit off. However, we seem to be missing the first page of the report, which might have included identifying data such as the customer, the date, and the name of the lab.

4. July 7, 2006: report from TFT (Ilkley), Ltd., addressed to Designer Yarns (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 11 of complaint).

Sample: “samples of ‘Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran’ yarn in a range of six shades”

Results: cashmere was found in all samples.

This was a qualitative analysis, not quantitative.

5. June 20, 2006: report from Quality Control Laboratory, for customer Designer Yarns (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 11 of complaint).

Sample: three yarn samples, identified as “Brown 300008″, “Blue 300005″, and “Pink 300603″.

Results: From an examination of 1000 fibers, it was determined that the wool content was between 50.4 and 52.4% in all samples; the microfiber content was between 34.8% and 36.3%; and the cashmere between 11.9% and 13.3%.

However, TKW followed up with this tester; this report, apparently, was informal and done for a “friend of a friend”, and when the tester conducted the test she only looked at “three small wraps of yarn” (PDF: Exhibit 13 of complaint). And, in fact, she recommended Langley for testing in the United States. (Paragraphs 63 and 64 of the complaint contain the factual allegations detailing the “friend of a friend” chain.)

After these lab reports were exchanged, further tests were commissioned from Langley by TKW:

6. July 18, 2006: report from K.D. Langley Fiber Services for customer TKW (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 9 of complaint).

Sample: three samples: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, KFI Cashmereno, and Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran

Results: From an examination of at least 500 fibers using light microscopy, no cashmere found in the samples.

7. July 25, 2006: report from K.D. Langley Fiber Services for customer TKW (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 9 of complaint).

Sample: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran.

Results: At least 500 fibers were examined using light microscopy, and a further test was conducted using a chemical method (essentially, the animal fibers are removed using bleach). No cashmere was found; moreover, the reported composition was 57.2% wool and 42.6% acrylic.

Another lab also carried out tests for TKW (with the same identifying lot numbers):

8. August 31, 2006: report from STR for customer TKW (PDF: Exhibit 15 of complaint).

Sample: three samples: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, KFI Cashmereno, and Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran

Results: No cashmere found in the samples.

This was a qualitative test only, using a microscopal method. The test report indicates that it had been “revised”: some kind of modification for fiber analysis and for overall rating was made to the original report of August 24.

Finally, KFI reported the results of a DNA test:

9. September 7, 2006: DNA test sent from KFI with a covering letter (I don’t have the actual test results, nor do I have a copy of the signed letter of compliance that was also attached). (PDF: Exhibit 21 of complaint)

The covering letter states:

These tests show categorically and unarguably that there is cashmere (goat) in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino yarns. It is not possible for the spinning mill to forget to put the cashmere in the blend. Making this yarn requires a very sophisticated process and unlike forgetting to put sugar in a cup of tea, it is impossible to forget to include a specific fiber. One thing for sure is that DNA testing does not lie. There is cashmere in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino.

No quantitative results are given. But sure, you can forget to put your sugar in! You taste the tea, make a face, then add your sugar. Unlike tea, however, when you discover that you forgot a fiber in your yarn, you can’t just spin that extra fiber in — you’d need to spin some more.

After test #1 was provided to KFI, KFI had this to say in a letter to its customers (which was also copied in a post on Knitter’s Review) (PDF: excerpted from Exhibit 11 of complaint):

… We have been informed that KD Langley always scores lower than TFT on “blind tests” that CMMI [sic] members receive from time to time to check their accuracy.

Third, as we have repeatedly pointed out to Cascade, it is difficult to test accurately for cashmere content, which can result in “false negative” results — i.e., findings of no cashmere content where cashmere in fact is present. Specifically, fiber experts we have contacted all state that, when one uses a projection microscope to examine Iranian or Mongolian Cashmere that is blended with extra fine merino wool — both of which have the same micron of approximately 18/19 — there will be some fibers that can be identified as wool, some as cashmere and others that are “indeterminate”.

CCMI does indeed hold round trials in which they send samples to their accredited labs for testing. The results of a 2005 trial are reported on CCMI’s website in this article, which also notes:

Wool may have been chemically altered to make it more difficult to distinguish from cashmere. Fine micron wool produced by a Chinese native sheep, which some in China have the unmitigated gall and effrontery to call sheep cashmere, is unfortunately painful and hard to distinguish by light microscopy. All of these products present challenges to the qualified laboratories able to identify these fibers.

(Look back at the stretched merino (in the second picture of that post) and compare them to the cashmere in the first picture.)

In the round trial reported here, some labs used light microscopy exclusively; others used scanning electron microscopy (think of those pretty Vogue Knitting pictures), BIO (I don’t know what that is), or DNA. CCMI states that in this trial of 28 labs, 24 used light microscopy (LM) exclusively:

Three labs using LM correctly identified all six samples. Four labs using LM correctly identified five of the six samples.

The four worst performing labs were one using LM that failed to correctly identify any of the samples and three using LM that each correctly identified only one of the six samples.

The results indicate that the “worst” labs used LM, and that the most difficult samples to analyze were the cashmere/wool blends since less than half of the labs got that right. However, that also tells us that some of the labs using LM — at least 8 of the labs using exclusively LM — must have correctly identified those blends.

KFI’s statement about Langley scoring “lower” is ambiguous — does this mean that given the same cashmere blend samples, Langley routinely finds a lower percentage of cashmere in the sample than TFT (which does not tell us which lab is more accurate)? Or is KFI suggesting that Langley does not correctly identify as many samples as TFT in the round trials? From the use of the word “score”, I guess they mean the latter.

However, even if you were to discount all of the microscopy tests, that probably leaves only tests #7 and #9. Test #7, which measured only the proportion of animal fibers to acrylic, does not rely on visual cues or magnification of fibers or the ability to distinguish cashmere from wool; and this test showed that there was nearly 10% acrylic than expected (these percentages are being expressed in absolute terms, obviously). And the excess amount of acrylic happens to be in the range we would expect for the cashmere (12%, plus or minus 3%). Thus, assuming these results are accurate, either the cashmere or wool content (or both) is less than the labelled quantity. Test #9 claims there is cashmere, but even if we assume this is accurate we do not know if this meets any legislated (after 2006) or accepted industry standard definition of cashmere (for example, if the micron count was too high), nor do we know how much cashmere was in the sample.

So, there we have it. We don’t need to accept anybody’s printed report (such as the ones we’ve seen here) as absolute truth without further investigation, but we’re not in a position to inquire into the conditions of each of these tests, and the origin of the samples provided. The parties will get to do that eventually.

Today’s spam

Dear Madam/Sir,

Have a nice day!

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twist colors etc

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Handspun 100% yak in natural brown

Weaving yarns collection:

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[contact info redacted]

Gosht masaledar (with edits)

The Host, one of my favourite Indian restaurants, used to have gosht masaledar on the menu — a goat stew with a mellow yet deep blend of spices. I miss it.

Just for the sake of flogging the dead goat (since this was hashed out two years ago online, and again now), before we wait for further developments in the lawsuit let’s recap what we, the innocent and unsuspecting public, know about cashmere and wool:

(And in the meantime, here’s the second half of the complaint, which sets out the causes of action in necessarily exhaustive detail (no exhibits included).)

1. Cashmere and wool come from different animals.

2. The fibers may appear similar, but with close scrutiny they are distinguishable.

Here’s a scan from page 12 of Vogue Knitting (the 1989 edition), showing magnified longitudinal views of keratin fibers (this is an excerpt; the entire picture in the book shows other fibers).

You can readily see differences between the fine wool, cashmere, and alpaca in the arrangement and configuration of the scales. In this picture, we don’t know the magnification factors, nor do we know the size (fineness, in microns) of each of these fibers; the coarse wool ought to be thicker than either the fine wool or cashmere, and so it is in this picture. We also know (see below) that fineness-wise, fine wool and cashmere can be in the same ballpark, while alpaca is a bit thicker than cashmere on average. I do know, based on information published by the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) (you don’t, because I’m not reproducing the photographs here) that the scales on cashmere are discernible at 240X magnification, thanks to the relative distance between the scales; at 240X, it is difficult to discern the scales on alpaca (look how close they are in the Vogue Knitting picture above, compared to cashmere). At 500X, you can see the scales on wool (not certain what fineness), but not as clearly as in the Vogue Knitting picture. I’m guessing that what we can see in Vogue Knitting is at least 1000X magnification.

Now, some wool is just as fine as cashmere. But the technology is available to “stretch” wool fibers so that they wind up feeling as soft as cashmere, too. This is Optim wool, produced using a technique that alters the structure of the wool, at the same time reducing its micron count and increasing its staple length. The resultant wool can feel very much like cashmere. (Apparently there are different machines and processes for producing stretched wool; Optim wool is produced using the Optim process, presumably.)

I don’t know the market prices for Optim or cashmere fibers, but if we go by the retail prices of undyed tops for spinners, cashmere currently seems to run at about $160/lb and up (Paradise Fibers has cashmere down for $89/lb). Optim is about $128/lb and up. Optim is thus cheaper, but is that cheap enough and is there sufficient supply to make it a cost-effective substitute if one were to… well, allegedly defraud customers?

I had bought a ball of SWTC’s Optimum yarn to try it out (it seems to be discontinued). It is quite soft, and I’m sure a lot of people would think it felt like cashmere. But what does it look like under a microscope? If the fiber is stretched, what would the scales look like?

This is the only example I’ve found, and I’m so happy that Liu et al. decided to include this in their paper:

From Liu et al., Characterization of Secondary Structure Transformation of Stretched and Slenderized Wool Fibers with FTIR Spectra, Journal of Engineered Fibers and Fabrics, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2008 (www.jeffjournal.org)

3. Even if you can’t tell the difference between the scales of wool and cashmere, you can distinguish wool or cashmere from acrylic.

Again, sorry, I’m not reproducing the pictures, but there are different methods of producing acrylic fibers, and while the results each look a little different, I’m pretty sure I, with my untrained eyes, can distinguish between an acrylic fiber and a wool or cashmere fiber (or a stretched wool fiber!) at 500X, maybe lower, like 300-400X. I might be less certain about acrylic vs. alpaca at a low magnification level, because it’s harder to see the alpaca scales. I don’t know, because the photographs I’m looking at have probably been a little compressed or otherwise digitally munged from what I’d actually see through a microscope.

4. Also, you can tell the difference between keratin and acrylic fibers chemically. For example, keratin fibers are soluble in sodium hypochlorite, whereas acrylic is not — meaning, that if you follow all of those proper procedures for weighing, cleaning, and drying samples you learned in undergrad chemistry, you can mix up a weighed sample of your yarn in NaOCl until everything that’s going to dissolve has dissolved; filter out, wash and dry the residue; then weigh the result to figure out how much acrylic was in there to begin with. (There are a number of reagents that can be used for a number of different suspected blends; you would select your reagent and methodology based on the fiber types you are trying to detect or measure. The AATCC test methodology (20A-2007) for this provides a table that identifies the best method/reagent for different fiber compositions.)

5. Ignoring any legal definitions, wool is generally available in a large range of thicknesses — a fineness of 10 to 70 microns. Cashmere may be anywhere from 5 to 30 microns, and alpaca (for comparison) from 10 to 50. The average cashmere diameter is 15 to 18.5 microns (AATCC, test methodology 20-2007). The point being, you can have “cashmere”, wherein “cashmere” is the stuff you get from the right sort of goat, that is thicker than wool from a sheep…

6. However, for the purposes of labelling in the U.S. there is a legal definition of what doesn’t constitute “cashmere”. Edit: I was just reminded that this was effective January 1, 2007; prior to that, there was no such definition codified in the law. The yarns at issue in this lawsuit, of course, were first released prior to 2007.)

15 U.S.C. 68(b): A wool product shall be misbranded…

(6) In the case of a wool product stamped, tagged, labeled, or otherwise identified as cashmere, if–

   (A) such wool product is not the fine (dehaired) undercoat fibers produced by a cashmere goat (capra hircus laniger);

   (B) the average diameter of the fiber of such wool product exceeds 19 microns; or

   (C) such wool product contains more than 3 percent (by weight) of cashmere fibers with average diameters that exceed 30 microns.

   The average fiber diameter may be subject to a coefficient of variation around the mean that shall not exceed 24 percent.

(”Wool” includes cashmere, and “wool product” is defined to mean “any product, or any portion of a product, which contains, purports to contain, or in any way is represented as containing wool or recycled wool”.)

This is the definition paraphrased on the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturer’s Institute (CMMI) website.

Somebody, please tell me that in Canada there is more to the definition of “cashmere” under the Textile Labelling and Advertising Regulations than “a textile fibre that is obtained from… Kashmir goats”. The Canadian Cashmere Producers Association doesn’t mention any quantitative standard for Canada.

Next, a comparison of the test results we know about…

Interesting (1)

KFI has published this statement on Ravelry (copied wholesale):

The allegations and claims in The Knit With’s recently filed complaint are without merit. We intend to defend the lawsuit vigorously in the proper legal arena. Our attorneys are currently in the process of preparing the appropriate legal response.

~ KFI ~

And looking at a previous post by the same user (KFI, usually(?) Jeff Denecke posting), two months ago:

KFI is a very different company from what it was even 3 years ago. Internal management has changed, customer service staff is all new and improved, warehouse staff is improved - in reality there are only a handful of people left in the company that were here during the height of complaints about KFI. We have improved ourselves, and hope folks will give us a chance to show it.

Interlude

I will admit it. I read Perry Mason mysteries (uh… in between reading other stuff). I find this back cover (which is all that remains of the book because somebody was playing with it) particularly amusing.

Aside

I am intrigued by the fact that Bliss consented to KFI’s filing for a US trademark registration for DEBBIE BLISS for the new magazine (you can look it up). Previously, when she had filed for a trademark registration in the US for her yarn (never registered — the application was abandoned, I don’t know why), it was in her own name.

Allowing another, arm’s length company (I assume — we do not know the arrangement between them) to be the owner of a trademark of her name reminds me of Another Designer Who Should Not Be Named and her problems with Another Distributor — although mind you, it was not the same situation. In that other situation, She didn’t like what She thought the company was doing in Her name, and She severed Her relationship with the company and obtained trademark registrations for Her name, Herself.

Trust no one?

To recap:

1. There was a big blow-up two years ago about Debbie Bliss Cashmerino yarns (distributed in the US by Knitting Fever (KFI)) not containing the cashmere they were said to contain. After the initial scandal, nothing concrete seemed to come of it. (However, you might have noticed that as a result, at least one yarn — not a yarn distributed by KFI — had its content relabelled as a result of the manufacturer’s self-examination. I’d name the yarn, but I honestly can’t find the e-mail/wayback magic/ball band I need to back it up.)

2. It’s back, because The Knit With (TKW), the yarn shop that was most vocal about what was viewed as KFI’s duplicity, and that had actually procured its own test results, sued KFI and others last week (including Debbie Bliss herself) for the alleged deliberate mislabelling of yarns. This is not a class action suit for the end users, in case you’re wondering.

3. This lawsuit came hot on the heels of the news that Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, also distributed in the US by KFI, had been mislabelled for a few years. When it was first released, Silky Wool had been labelled (and apparently manufactured as) 65/35 silk/wool. It turns out that shortly after its release, the composition had been changed to 45/35/20 wool/silk/nylon because the mill determined that the original blend was too fragile; however, the product was not labelled correctly until mid-2008. In this case, KFI asserted that it only learned of the mislabelling shortly before it contacted its customers (retailers) and took some corrective action. (Not every KFI customer is happy, though, but this seems to be an ongoing theme.) For more info: Rav thread and Rav yarn page.

4. The next public blowup will either be about silk or organic fibers. (That’s a prediction, not fact. It’s also a pretty obvious guess to make.)

I had been trying repeatedly to upload at least part of TKW’s complaint to Scribd. I can’t get it to upload, so I gave up and tried another service. You can view the first part of the complaint here — this is the part with the backstory.

A quick summary of the rest of the complaint (since I had done the factual allegations previously), after the jump.
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Paging Martha

Oh. Maybe they were going to make her the Martha Stewart of knitting.

Incidentally, Yarn Market News (like Vogue Knitting, published by SoHo) had published a report on cashmere debacle in 2006. Sadly, I don’t have a copy of that issue.

I am a lawsuit/PR shill

… so apparently, I am a primo target for press releases when somebody in the craft yarn industry sues someone else. That’s it. Is that it?

I received an e-mail from a PR agency with an interesting subject line and a PDF attachment. I downloaded the attachment and read it.

(Uh… so apparently, I am stupid enough to download attachments sent from an unknown source called “Communications Specialists”, simply because I am led to believe the subject matter is interesting. Why yes, this computer is running Windows. Why did you ask?)

Actually, when I read the subject line — “Knitting Fever Sued in Federal Court” — I thought, wow, if that’s about the cashmere, that’s old news, kind of. The public part of the tiff started so long ago, and seemed to have died off, that the general public has probably lost interest except for dropping a random comment in a yarn shop about whether one’s yarn contains the percentage of cashmere indicated on the label, followed by a vague explanation that there was a dispute aired publicly between some company and Knitting Fever about Debbie Bliss Cashmerino and how somebody had a lab test done showing that the yarn didn’t contain the claimed cashmere, and how somebody else had a lab test done showing that the yarn did, and each side claimed that the other’s tests were flawed and that Cascade Yarns (who contaced yarn shops with information about Cashmerino content) was just jealous because Knitting Fever’s Ella Rae line was barging into Cascade 220’s market space and that James Casale, co-owner of The Knit With (a yarn shop in Pennsylvania) who also took up the dispute was just bitter because KFI and his shop weren’t doing business anymore.

And I never posted about it. I started to, mind you, but I draft posts like I knit sweaters: I start lots of them, and never finish because I get distracted by something else. I found a couple of drafts, and they’re not in great shape. For now: The Knit With’s “Yarn Recall” page, with many PDFs. Carol’s (love ya) names changed to protect (against) the litigious. Eleven pages of speculation at Knitter’s Review. Two other pages from Knitter’s Review, in which it appears Cascade launched a salvo.

(By the way, speaking of cashmere: that thing I’m knitting of yarn that I firmly believe is pure cashmere and obtained from a source not mentioned in this post that I messed up by inserting a single twist is doing just fine, thanks. Decided to reknit in the round, and not a twist in sight. Had a momentary lapse when halfway done, wondering whether I had just run out of one of the yarns I was using. Fortunately I found the other cone.)

And then nothing really seemed to happen, more exciting things like Ravelry turned up, and aside from the resolution that I would never buy a wool-blend yarn that claimed to have 15% or less cashmere — because, well, why, really? What difference does that amount of cashmere really make? — as I was saying, aside from that resolution and a general mistrust of labels (exacerbated by the recent disclosure about Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, also distributed in the U.S. by Knitting Fever), we had nothing to show for it.

(Another aside: speaking of the pointlessness of low cashmere content, I bought some Fiddlesticks Knitting Luscious Tweed recently, and to my fingers it felt just as soft as Jo Sharp Silkroad (Aran/DK) Tweed. Luscious Tweed is 90/10 wool/silk; Silkroad Tweed is 85/10/5 wool/silk/cashmere. I remember reading about an acceptable 3% variation (provided it is unintentional) in content; what does that do to 5% cashmere?)

Anyway, here I am, folks, doing exactly what you and those unknown PR people would expect.

Newsflash! On Tuesday The Knit With sued Knitting Fever, Designer Yarns, Filatura Pettinata, Sion and Diane Elalouf, Jeffrey Denecke, Jr., Jay Opperman, and Debbie Bliss (hands up those of you who think the last individual was named out of pure swank). The complaint alleges false advertising, breach of express and implied warranties of merchantability, unfair competition, and even invokes RICO.

The complaint is a hefty 60 pages that I haven’t read through yet, and I’m certainly not going to finish tonight. I’ll edit this post once I’ve finished the first 82 paragraphs.

Edit: here we go…
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Just to dispel any misconceptions…

Well, the cashmere double-twist loop is back to its original state (a misshapen ball of four strands of cashmere held together). Despite the fact that it had been knit up for close to half a year, when ripped the yarn wasn’t as kinked up as I might have expected. Could it be the fibre, or all the oil in it?

When I got to the last (first) two rows, I saw that I had even used that trick for avoiding twists when joining in the round. You know the one where you work the first bit flat, and then join in the round? In theory, because you have a few rows of fabric flapping off your circular needle, you’ll be able to see whether you have an inadvertent twist or two when you join for working in the round.

Yeah, well, here’s a hint: work more than two rows flat before joining in the round. Also, consider using a long enough circular needle so that your stitches aren’t crammed together so tightly you can’t distinguish twists from ruffling. I think I had 40+ inches’ worth of stitches in aran weight packed onto a 24 inch circular, so the cast-on edge ruffled up and down, and I missed the place where it ruffled all the way around the needle’s cable the two rows I had worked didn’t stick out far enough to be obvious.

Andrea (in the comments in the last post) took comfort from that flub. Uh, I also have this one hanging around:

(the fabric is not my bedsheet, it’s cotton voile from Emma One Sock)

I think this one predates the cashmere. It was supposed to be ribbing for a hat. After I noticed the twist, I decided to keep going and steek it (just the ribbing, not the whole hat) because it was too big, anyway.

(Also, Rachel, on the mismatch between a bottom-up body and top-down sleeves: well, it doesn’t bother me… it may depend on the stitch pattern, but it doesn’t seem to be glaringly obvious here. I think it bothers me more with colourwork.)

No-sew, no-knit

I love top-down set in sleeves. After the initial effort of figuring out how to pick up the stitches along the armscye and working out any decreases that are needed before I hit the bicep line (I think I pick up the stitches at a different rate than suggested by Barbara Walker in Knitting from the Top), which isn’t painful at all, there’s the fun of working short rows. And even though the short rows continue to increase until they reach the full width of the sleeve, that’s not painful either, because the rows will never get too long and unbearable, because hey, it’s only a sleeve.

And then throwing in some cables is not only fun, but it impresses yourself because it’s just so neat that you’re working a short-rowed, cabled, set-in sleeve knit from the top down.

(Okay, it doesn’t look like much, but the recipient is at least acting like he’s pleased.)

This is a cabled pullover or jacket knit gansey-style, with the body worked from the hem to the shoulders. The jacket will have no side seams, and the pullover body is worked in the round for one neckline (crew/turtleneck), and flat for another (shawl collar)… I had wanted it all to be in the round, but the shawl collar neckline begins below the armhole bind-offs, and the alternatives didn’t seem to be much more fun (either steek something — and this is an aran-ish gauge — or begin rounds on the body front, or break yarn after the tubular part is finished and rejoin at the neck edge).

I started one in Colourmart cashmere mill ends, four strands in natural-ish colours. The yarn had an oily yet acrid smell (the yarn was meant for knitting machines, after all), but I could deal with that because I knew just how soft it would become after laundering.

It was going to be nice. Was . See the problem?

Maybe another picture will help…
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Ease over decades, again

Finally — and actually, it’s been sitting on the server for a while, now — here’s the table comparing the pattern measurement/drafting instructions from the hand knitting design books listed in this post. The table also includes Righetti and Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book from 1938, which I didn’t have at the time I started compiling this information. I have also since acquired Elalouf’s The Advanced Knitting Architect, but I haven’t checked whether it gives the same drafting instructions as his first book.

As I said in the first post, I compiled the information when I decided to write about ease. I can’t remember if that’s completely accurate; either I decided to write about ease, or I needed to figure out what kind of ease to use myself. Whichever. I also used this information to learn out how to draft the typical set-in sleeve of a knitted sweater, but in the end figured out that I preferred a more mathematical approach to the sketch-on-graph-paper (such as Thomas, Vogue, and Michelson & Davis) or the knit-until-it-fits-together (such as Duncan and Elalouf) — hand knit sweater sleeves generally being designed with front-back symmetry (even though our bodies aren’t), it’s easy to compute the numbers for pattern instructions in advance.

There’s an obvious trend in the amount of ease recommended overall — as we progress from the mid-20th century to the early nineties, sweaters get looser, reflecting the styles at the time. Righetti even mentions including sufficient space for shoulder pads; the styles depicted in the 80s-era books include gathered sleeves, which I always associate incorrectly with the “Princess Diana Black Sheep Sweater” (a stranded colourwork sweater in red, patterned with an array of sheep, all white, with the exception of one black sheep). Once Diana appeared in public with that sweater, it got knocked off right quick. I had one of those knock-offs (somebody bought it for me, I didn’t choose to get it); while I don’t think the original had puffed sleeves, for some reason the tween-sized version I had did.

The looseness of the fit determines the shape of the set-in sleeve cap. For example, Newton gives a final bind-off of 4 to 6 inches, which is frankly huge and appropriate only if the sweater is rather loose fitting; having such a wide final bind-off implies a relatively shallow sleeve cap. The fit of the sleeve around the bicep is loose, since she suggests the same amount applied to the body (4 to 6 inches). She also says the sleeve bicep measurement should be about twice the sleeve cap height plus 1 inch, which is a bit odd: Newton says the set-in sleeve armscye depth (the vertical measurement) should be 2 to 3 inches less than the drop-shoulder armscye depth of 8 to 10 inches; this gives a maximum value of 8 inches for the set-in sleeve armscye depth. She also says that the height of the “classic”-fitting sleeve cap fitting into this is about 2/3 the armscye depth; that’s 5 1/3 inches. But twice this height plus 1 inch is 11 2/3 inches. That’s nowhere near the same amount as a bicep measurement plus 4 to 6 inches, which suggests there’s either an error in my notes, or Newton was referring to the bicep measurement of a drop-shoulder sleeve, or she was referring to the bicep measurement of a set-in sleeve but really meant to say that the finished bicep measurement of the sleeve is supposed to be twice the armscye depth plus 1 inch.

If I had to recommend only one book for use in drafting knitting patterns, it would be Righetti; it actually deals with different body shapes and teaches fitting techniques (e.g., short rows) to accommodate larger bumps and curves. My second choice would probably be Michelson & Davis. Both Righetti and Michelson & Davis offer a “worksheet” method for computing pattern instructions (they work through examples, and present the process in a sort of fill-in-the-blank way), but for those who are really arithmetic-phobic, Michelson & Davis do demonstrate the graph-paper method of drafting. Righetti, of course, has the advantage that it is still in print.

… and the cat is still really pissed off

Yeah, hi, it’s me.

I thought I had been clever a few minutes ago in coining the phrase “Schrodinger’s copyright” to describe “poor man’s copyright”. You know the folk alternative to copyright registration where you put your work in an envelope, and mail it to yourself using registered mail (or your country’s post office’s equivalent), then keep the sealed, postmarked envelope in your files until such time that you need to prove you were the copyright owner, at which point you would produce the envelope with a flourish and open it in court?

The fallacy of poor man’s copyright, of course, is that it is not actually proof of copyright; it is proof that somebody, presumably you, stuffed an envelope with the work in question on a given date. It might prove the date at which something existed and was in your possession, but it doesn’t automatically follow that you are the author or copyright owner (it’s probably more convincing evidence of non-infringement of somebody else’s work in some circumstances).

The drawback of poor man’s copyright, though, is that while the envelope is sealed, no one (except you) knows what’s in there. And once you’ve broken the seal to produce the contents, you can’t use that same method of proof again. Just like a maybe-dead, maybe-alive, cat caught in a thought experiment.

Then I did a bit of searching, and found somebody else started using the phrase first. Damn.

However, on reflection, that applies to a contemplated situation of infringement as a consequence of the DMCA. So it’s not actually Schrodinger’s copyright… it’s Schrodinger’s infringement, and henceforth I shall refer to poor man’s copyright as Schrodinger’s copyright, which will necessitate a five-minute explanation about cats, poison and an aside about Dirk Gently.

Well, something happened.

Evidently I was waiting out some kind of development to prompt me to blog… about anything.

Withdrawal (by Deb Stoller) of cancellation proceeding against STITCH & BITCH CAFE trademark (except I can’t get the second page of the filing to show up right now — I can only see the cover page).

Settlement? Moving on to the next great catchphrase? Anybody?

ETA: press release should be forthcoming.

Let’s make a deal

There are some things I’ve written in bits and pieces to others about publishers and publishing contracts and whether it’s worth it for an author of hand knitting patterns (or rather, the designer and pattern writer, since these roles are frequently combined) to self-publish, or publish through a third party. I figured it was time to collate some of them in one post. (A lot of this is on Ravelry, which already does have several thousand members and everybody will be assimilated soon, but those posts are buried in old forum threads, now.)
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Reduction to practice

Leigh Witchel did some investigating for his article in the most recent knit.1, looking for the first knitting blog. And what happened? Nobody owned up to having posted a knitting journal entry before me (March 19, 2001). Me! Surely that’s impossible (Leigh was specifically looking for knitting blogs/journals, not just knitting websites).

As he writes, I could have sworn that someone must have done this before me, but I couldn’t figure out who it was — all the suspects claimed to have started later. I even had a printout from Dangerous Chunky’s website (an entry in which she wrote about my site, and I thought that was so awesome I printed it out and I still have it) but apparently no joy was to be had from the links on that page, either.

But do I count, anyway? I blogged back then the way I blog now, which is to say quite infrequently, and in between my first post and my second, other people started up their online knitting journals and did a better job of it.

(I leave it to those of you with nothing better to do to dig up that post on the Way Back Machine. I’m not going to link it, because it was lame. About stashing too much. With a poll, I believe.)

If it’s on a t-shirt, it has to be true.

They will fight using trademarks, and they will fight using t-shirts?

I confess that because of the early hour I don’t know what to think. It would make sense as some kind of third-party guerrilla tactics designed to lower the brand’s value, because otherwise it seems like a misguided attempt by the company to have a little fun, but with the same end result of damaging its own goodwill. You decide. And see who else hearts this New York sewing enterprise, too!

I don’t know who this Jenna in Toronto is, but if Google is correct, she’s a 22-year-old Russian model working as an escort. That’s some classy clientele!

I wonder, whom do Elissa and Gregory love?

Meanwhile, back in New York…

No progress, check.

Request extension of time for another 2 months, check.

Request granted, check.

Ease over decades

When I set out to write about ease, I decided to survey a small number of books in my knitting library to see what they had to say on the subject of “average” or “typical” ease when designing a hand knit garment; specifically, how they translated actual body measurement to garment dimensions. I actually took notes — I recall making notes from one book while I was on a train (somewhere along the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor) while the person across from me exhausted his laptop battery playing some video game.

The books I surveyed were:

1. Ida Riley Duncan, The Complete Book of Progressive Knitting (Liveright, 1940) and Knit to Fit, 2nd ed. (Liveright, 1970)
2. Sion Elalouf, The Knitting Architect (Knitting Fever Inc., 1982)
3. Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book (Random House, 1989)
4. Carmen Michelson & Mary-Ann Davis, The Knitter’s Guide to Sweater Design (Interweave Press, 1989)
5. Deborah Newton, Designing Knitwear (Taunton, 1992)

As you can probably tell, only two of these books are still in print. The other three I bought second-hand at various times. Obviously my design instruction library is seriously focused on the 80s and 90s; not too long after the survey, I finally bought Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English. At the time I did this survey, I also had (and still have) Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns (that’s the first one in the series) and Barbara Walker’s Knitting From the Top; I didn’t consult them for the survey, I think because neither discussed ease or measurement in absolute terms the way the other books did. Budd’s “Handy” series, of course, isn’t really directed towards designing your own patterns, but rather provides a framework for basic knitted garment shapes. All three of these books are still in print.

Before I go on, I’ll say that while I’m happy to own all of them, I find I’m most inclined to go back and re-read Walker, Righetti, and Newton. With Walker and Righetti I’m likely to read out of idle interest; from time to time I agree, but I do find myself disagreeing with points here and there. I just read Newton over because of her description of her creative process — not because I’d do the same thing, oh, no! I shudder a little when I look at the lavendar cabled motorcycle jacket. But it’s interesting that Newton wrote a book with concrete examples about how she translates her ideas into swatches and garments. Walker’s book, of course, is most unlike all of the others I’ve mentioned here, because it goes into great detail about knitting many garment shapes from the top down. (I also own stitch dictionaries, including Walker’s four treasuries, but I tend not to use them. I look at stitch dictionaries from time to time, note interesting patterns, but then… tend not to use them.)

The book I’m least likely to consult out of the numbered list is Elalouf; while that is in part because I can never find my copy (but it’s available for free from Knitting Fever on its website! it’s not a big book; rather, it’s a cerlox-bound booklet), it’s also because the designing methodology is covered in significant part by Michelson & Davis. both Elalouf and Michelson & Davis explain pattern drafting with a similar chart format and with worked examples, too, Michelson & Davis has better diagrams and provides worksheets and formulas to follow when doing your own calculations. Both books also cover different sleeve shapes; the content of both books is similar, but Michelson & Davis has more detail. If you’re hunting for books on drafting knitting patterns and are wondering whether it’s worth the effort to hunt down Michelson & Davis, then look at Elalouf’s book online, ignoring the section on “constants” (this is Elalouf’s way of explaining certain constant-but-still-variable numbers in a pattern, like a 7.5 inch armhole depth for a size 38 sweater; Michelson & Davis do a better job of explaining where numbers like that come from). If that kind of methodology works for you, but you want a different (or better) explanation, you might be happier with Michelson & Davis.

Both The Knitting Architect and The Knitter’s Guide to Sweater Design stick with hem-to-neck construction. I’ve never seen Elalouf’s second work that goes into different construction methods, The Advanced Knitting Architect; evidently it’s back in print now, because here’s a review. But the information in the first Elalouf book is generally covered in Michelson & Davis, and Michelson & Davis has more content.

Next, once I format the tables: a survey of how these books identified body measurements and instructed its readers on ease.

Incremental

First, there was the skein. The ball of yarn. The one and only.

One Skein.

The One Skein Wonder.

One Skein Wonders (the book, not to be confused with One Skein Wonder, the pattern. Don’t make me post a responsive comment about copyright, trademark, and titles, thanks).

What’s next? Why, why not two balls of yarn?

You know those television commercials for men’s disposable shaver heads that feature three — no four! five! blades? That’s what I’m thinking.

Doubly addicted

Another gem pulled in by Google: spinsters welcome needle exchange programme

The Minister of State with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy, Pat Carey, has said the Government will have to look at introducing needle exchange programmes across the country…

[T]he move has been welcomed by spinsters representative group NEVERADIT who said that the programme will do wonders for the knitting industry.

“We’re stuck at home all day with nothing to do but to write to the papers giving out about filth on the telly and saying how things are not like they used to be,” said their spokeswoman Ida Lovett…

“Our only outlet is knitting and if we have to exchange our knitting needles every few weeks, sure it will get us out of the house, and save us a few bob on buying new needles,” she said.

Ahahaha. (Ahem. While I am guessing that The Register appreciates the significance of its news sources, some readers of MetaFilter may not get it. And that should be enough of a hint as to whether this is for real.)

Dog stock

Since I don’t actually get a paper copy of The Globe & Mail, I have to rely on Google Alerts to tell me that Jo-Ann’s stock (the company doesn’t even have outlets in Canada) is a dog this week:

Yesterday’s close: $22.50 U.S., down $2.40 over week It’s hard to know what would be worse - spending a day in jail, or being forced to wander through the aisles of yarn, fabric and knitting supplies at Jo-Ann Stores. Actually, we’ll take jail. Shares of the largest U.S. fabric and crafts retailer got a knitting needle in the eye after the company posted a second-quarter loss of $18.4-million, hurt by markdowns to clear out discontinued items.

Sure, if “jail” is the Nicole Richie version. If wandering through Michael’s is the equivalent (without as much fabric and sewing stuff), I’d rather spend an equivalent time in a lock-up (damn dried flowers and other whatsits gathering dust make me sneeze). Although, on the whole, I’d rather wander through Toronto’s textile district.

If it’s on the Internet, it has to be true

Let us all give thanks, and a tasty seed-filled treat, to our little bird who tells me it’s time for an update. This time, two things:

1. Another extension of time in the cancellation proceedings. The “remember I said?” schtick has officially overstayed its welcome, so let’s just check back on October 13, 2007.

2. I think I didn’t realize (or I had forgotten) that there is a Wikipedia entry for Stitch ‘n Bitch. This ignorance isn’t really surprising; a review of my search history indicates that I had recently consulted that site for “content management system” and “Lynda Carter” and “DIY culture”… but nothing knitting related. Sites like this, which pool the knowledge of users all over the world, are a terrific resource — as long as you realize that sometimes the contributors have their inherent biases or axes to grind.

At this point, you’re probably expecting to see an example illustrating this very point. How fortuitous!

Clicking on the link above will provide you with, of course, the current version of the Wikipedia article. It was actually a hard-fought battle to get it, and (temporarily) keep it, in that shape. Fortunately for us, Wikipedia tracks the changes that were made to an article since its creation, and you can see by following the edit history and the talk page that there have been several skirmishes over the article’s content. Even skimming the edit history gives you a hint of what happened. In short, the content of this article has flip-flopped between a version that mentions knitting groups using the name, the SFSE boycott, and various issues regarding the disputes involving SFSE, and other versions that omitted one or more of these things but expanded on SFSE’s services, like this one. (If this is an example of a pro-SFSE editor’s work, one wonders why the references to Debbie Stoller were left in. So that people searching for Stoller’s name would find this information about SFSE? Because deleting it would have been too radical an edit? I wonder.)

What has happened to this article is called edit warring, and as a consequence the article has been protected against further edits for a month. This isn’t the first time that this sort of thing has happened to this article, according to the history, but just for fun let’s take a look at the latest straw that might have broken the camel’s back.

Specifically, let’s step back to earlier today. There was some radical cutting and pasting to line 19.

It used to read:

In fall 2005, Sew Fast Sew Easy took legal action to police its trademark to prevent consumer confusion with products found on the internet. Due to letters claiming trademark infringement from Sew Fast/Sew Easy’s lawyers, knitting groups that had accounts with [[CafePress.com|CafePress]], an online merchandise site, were forced to remove all items featuring the phrase “Stitch ‘n Bitch”. Local groups that communicated with each other through [[Yahoo! Groups]] were similarly forced to remove “Stitch ‘n Bitch” from the name and description of their group.

But then it was changed to:

In fall 2005, Sew Fast Sew Easy took legal action to police its trademark to prevent consumer confusion with products found on the internet. In 2007, the internet encyclopedia [[Wikipedia]] was sent a cease and decist order requesting their company information be posted in the online encyclopedia since they are the legal trademark owners or have the entire article removed.

(Note: we don’t know that SFSE had its lawyers do this, since it could have been SFSE’s personnel who did this work, so the sentence referring to “Sew Fast/Sew Easy’s” lawyers may have been inaccurate.) But otherwise, who could have wished to delete this information about actions taken against knitting groups? I wouldn’t know. All I have are clues.

Item: IP address (which I didn’t bother looking up myself).

Item: Spelling and sentence structure.

Item: The edit refers to cease and desist correspondence. Unless this action were publicized (was it?), generally only two parties would know that a C&D letter had been sent: the recipient, and the sender. (Also their lawyers, but their lawyers wouldn’t be editing Wikipedia.)

Plus, the talk page for this article, where contributors can explain and debate the changes made, includes this unsigned comment in support of the August 17 edits:

This article will continue to be changed back until either Wikipedia removes this article or Debbie Stoller stops attacking Sew Fast Sew Easy. I support Sew Fast Sew Easy in their endevours to continue using their trademark which they have been using for years until Debbie Stoller decided to sue Sew Fast Sew Easy because she was denied trademark status.

Could this be the aforementioned “cease and desist order”? No, that would be too circular.

Hmm.

An inherent axe is a painful thing.

Knitting is dangerous

A three-year-old boy in Bahrain required drastic surgery (that would be cutting open his skull) to remove a knitting needle impaled through the roof of his mouth. But he was lucky, and doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill effects.

I am cringing.

New cable charts

Two new charts: the Simple Celtic Panel and the Composite Celtic Panel.

They are both worked on a foundation of 15 stitches, which means that they can be used as a non-waist-shaping alternative side panel for Rogue.

… and then they ended it

Further to the earlier post: Artyarns voluntarily dismissed their action against Tilli Tomas on July 25. TT had never served an answer or taken any step with the court.

Perhaps they’ve arrived at some agreement?

Personally, I still don’t like most twisted singles, much less aran-bulky weight ones containing silk. They still look worn out too quickly for my liking.

Live! Now!

We interrupt the previous rant to bring you the latest news flash from the administrator of the Stitch & Bitch Cafe. I’m not certain what motivated the mass e-mailing, because this information has been posted on their own forum since June 22. But still, I know you’re not all checking that forum, so you’re missing the posts by “Hipster” about “big belts” and by “joefrankberg” about “How to earn money”.

I really enjoy that bit right after the header.

From: stitchnbitch@sewfastseweasy.com
Mailed-By: swishmail.com
Reply-To: stitchnbitch@sewfastseweasy.com
To: stitchnbitch@sewfastseweasy.com
Date: Jul 31, 2007 10:11 PM
Subject: Opening of the LIVE Stitch & Bitch Cafe

The following is an email sent to you by an administrator of “Stitch & Bitch Cafe”. If this message is spam, contains abusive or other comments you find offensive please contact the webmaster of the board at the following address:

stitchnbitch@sewfastseweasy.com

Include this full email (particularly the headers).

Message sent to you follows:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sew Fast Sew Easy proudly presents our newest project - the LIVE version of the Stitch & Bitch Cafe. Digital learning workstations in our retail location.

Stop into the cafe to learn to knit, sew or crochet, get your notions or find our when the next Stitch & Bitch nights are. Learn all the basics to knit or crochet or learn to sew a fly zipper or make a pair of low-rise men’s briefs for yourself or your boyfriend.

Thank you so much for the many letters of encouragement and for your continued patronage.

Sincerely,

Gregory Garvin

Vice President

Sew Fast Sew Easy, Inc.

Oh, look. He’s still there. And he’s the vice president!

Three lessons

In the April edition of KnitNet (I know, it’s the end of July; I only happened to look today) we have a pretty brief editorial based on the theme of “no good deed ever goes unpunished”. This moral is supported by a very brief story about why the current issue of KnitNet was low on patterns:

[W]e think of [the April] edition as our chance to welcome new designers — not just new to us, but new to the business of designing — in order to give them a chance to work with professionals. Our hope is that they’ll be able to hone their skills, particularly the difficult and exacting art of pattern writing…

Sometimes, it doesn’t work out quite the way we intended.

This year, for example, after more than a month of working with her, one designer balked at her patterns being brought into line with KnitNet standards. We pride ourselves on offering consistent, accurate patterns so felt we had to insist. Ultimately, she took her socks and went home.

Too bad for all of us because, not only did it delay publication by weeks, it leaves us a little shy on patterns for this edition.

The editrix thinks there’s a lesson to be learned with. I spot two:

1. The designer — even a new one — should have realized that all publications have standards for pattern writing (and this page links to KnitNet’s standards in PDF form). Assuming that the tech editor wasn’t proposing to do something that changed the meaning of the pattern instructions, well, that’s the way it is, but somehow I find it hard to believe that even a first-time contributor would object to a particular style of abbreviation or formatting. I wonder what happened?

2. I am apparently old-fashioned enough to think that it is not professional for an editor of a periodical to describe, in an editorial, how difficult it was to work with a would-be contributor, and to use that story to explain why an issue was late or otherwise lacking.

And an exercise for discussion: what was the “good deed”, anyway?

And as a bonus, lesson number three can be found here, in a reprint of an earlier gem penned by the publisher:

Everywhere I look on the Web, every search I do turns up, not useful and valuable information any more, but increasingly, somebody’s personal opinion, on their website or blog or podcast.

Now there is nothing wrong with this… The problem is that all this opinion on the Web makes searching for the facts more and more difficult. Now I have to wear my hip waders when I surf the Web. It gets harder and harder to find the pearls in amongst the straw.

There has been much talk of creating two separate Webs, one for business and one for personal use. I think it is a great idea. It can’t come too soon.

Hey, Web 1.0 called. It wants its web-safe palette back. Will his opinion change in 2012 when he learns about the companies engaging in topical or vertical searching?

I can understand being overwhelmed by the volume of user-generated content out there, but the individual searching the web for answers doesn’t cope only by taking information with a grain of salt; he needs to learn how and where to ask questions… and sometimes the “where” is “not on the Internet”. (That’s a fact.)

Dividing the world of information into “business” and “personal” (excuse my ignorance, but what is he talking about? .biz? a non-HTTP protocol? what “separate Web”?) doesn’t solve the problem of separating fact from opinion. (That’s an opinion.)

Also, Ravelry + this guy = some kind of explosion that will tear a hole in the universe. (Is that fact or opinion?)

Gynewhat?

I have already lived to regret glibly posting that I’d see if Mrs C’s gynametric pattern drafting instructions had any relevance to an uncorseted, food-loving twenty-first century body. If you’re going to follow along, you’ll need the PDF that Kathleen posted; I’m starting at page 11.

The style of English language has evolved over the years, which sometimes makes reading old texts slightly challenging. A well-written text, though, will not present a problem to the modern reader. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. For just about every sentence I’ve read so far — and I haven’t got very far — I’ve come up with about three interpretations of Mrs C’s instructions before I’ve hit on (what I think is) the right one.

The meandering post after the jump is my thought process as I tried to follow the instructions in the book. The first part was done very late at night, right after I had finished drafting a patent application, so I wasn’t in a mood to make allowances for ambiguity.

Here we go…

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EPS this (now with edits!)

Elizabeth’s Percentage System, nothing.

Kathleen Fasanella just posted pages from The Science of Gynametry by Mrs. M.V. Coleman, published in 1887. Instructions on drafting a (sewing) pattern based on a single body measurement: your wrist! When I have time, I’m going to try this out to see how it works with my body.

ETA: I started going through this very late last night. My text notes, on review, are indicative of the lateness of the hour, but I’m going to keep ‘em as is when I post them. For now, I’ll note that after deciphering half a page of instructions, despite her introductory claim, Mrs C did not derive every single dimension from the wrist measurement; she had to account for the variation in our relative amount of flesh, so she divided bodies into “classes” and “orders” based on back waist length and waist measurement. Ha!

RIP Jaeger

If you’re on the Colourway mailing list, you’ll have seen the notice about the end of the Jaeger line of yarns that had been sister to Rowan for so many years. (Colourway has marked down the yarns by 25%, and is offering a free Jaeger book with each order of ten balls or more, any kind and colour, as long as it’s Jaeger — they say to include the book in your order and type FREE BOOK in the special delivery instructions box when you order.)

The blow is softened, of course, by the grown of the RYC line. Creatively speaking, I won’t miss Jaeger terribly, although the only RYC yarn that holds any attraction for me is their Silk Wool DK. I’m just sorry to see the end of venerated brands.

This means something.

Everytime I take one of those “sorting” quizzes, I get sorted into Slytherin. Woo!

My stream of consciousness derailed

What, exactly, fuels Courtney Love’s (ecstactic) writing?

(I note that she can spell. She just can’t type.)

When shall we three meet again? (now with edits!)

In thunder, lightning, or in court?
When the motion for costs done,
When the new lawsuit’s lost and won.

ETA: since Kim has taken the time to post a comment, I’ve edited this post to reflect some of what she wrote. Read it over, and see if you’ve changed your mind.

What do you do when you lose one trademark battle in court against an adversary with deep pockets, and wind up owing a lot of money?

You sue the same adversary again, apparently. If you know the story, skip the next five paragraphs.

Those Harry Potter (or Canadian trademark law) aficionados among you might recall that in 2005, a Canadian band called Wyrd Sisters (if you’re reading at work, if you click on that link all the naughty bits are obscured by the guitar — but if that still concerns you, try the Wikipedia entry instead) sued Warner Bros. Entertainment, among others, over the release of the fourth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

The fourth book of the HP series introduced a band called the “Weird Sisters” — a name evidently drawn from a phrase used repeatedly in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and referencing the fates — and Warner Bros. had apparently planned to include references to the band name in the Goblet movie and in soundtracks and had engaged in some publicity regarding their plans. The company did, first, engage in some due diligence, and contacted bands already using similar names to obtain consent for the use of the name. One was a U.S.-based band, Three Weird Sisters. Another was the Canadian Wyrd Sisters. Warner Bros. entered into negotiations with the bands (the starting point of Warner Bros.’s offer might have been zero). Three Weird sisters, the bands some payment in exchange for permission to use the Weird Sisters name, and the U.S. band, at least, was going to accept some deal.

The Canadian band, on the other hand — which had already met with some significant measure of success in Canada after nearly twenty years — didn’t like the idea so much. Whatever compensation While Warner Bros. might have offered would have paid offered some compensation for their use of the name, the band leader didn’t think it was enough – what she wanted was acknowledgement in the film credits, but that was apparently not acceptable to Warner Bros. Whatever popularity the band had in Canada, it certainly would be overwhelmed by the notoriety of the Harry Potter franchise, and in her view, the public would think that the band had copied their name from Harry Potter.

In the end, negotiations between the Canadian band and Warner Bros. broke down, and the band leader sued Warner Bros. in Ontario Superior Court and sought an interlocutory injunction against the release of the film. Before the hearing, Warner Bros. decided to pull all reference to the Weird Sisters band. While there is still a band performing in the movie for a short period of time, there’s no reference to the band’s name at all; only those who were acquainted with the book would know what the band’s name might have been. This apparently didn’t find favour with HP fans (if you scroll down on that Three Weird Sisters page, you’ll see a reference to angry e-mails received by that U.S. band as a result of Warner Bros.’s decision), but it was, after all, the safest thing for Warner Bros. to do. They screened the movie for the Wyrd Sisters band leader and her lawyer to show that the movie would not contain and Weird Sisters reference.

But that wasn’t enough. The band leader proceeded with the injunction hearing anyway. sued Warner Bros. in Ontario Superior Court anyway, and sought an injunction against the release of the film. (Although it was reported that the band leader would have been happy with a one-line acknowledgement in the movie, who knows if that was on the table during negotiations, or only after the lawsuit was started.) According to the reasons for judgment issued by the court, the argument was that despite the removal of verbal references to “Weird Sisters”, the damage would be done anyway, because the public would be confused, and would think that in buying the Wyrd Sisters CDs and attending their concerts, they were buying the music or attending the concerts of the band referenced in the Harry Potter franchise. However, the court found that the evidence on this subject was too speculative, and that Warner Bros. had taken every reasonable step to avoid confusion; the motion was dismissed, and months later the band leader was ordered to pay C$140,000 in costs.

After she lost the interlocutory injunction motion, the band leader also filed a Canadian trademark applicaton for THE WYRD SISTERS. When it was advertised for opposition in 2006, Warner Bros. (who by then was owed the $140K) opposed her mark; it seems that opposition is still pending. The band leader also filed a U.S. trademark application in October 2006, which is still pending; it hasn’t reached the stage at which Warner Bros. can oppose it yet.

Presumably, there would have been some attempt to settle the costs order, if not a further attempt to settle the entire dispute. We can at least guess that the latter, if it happened, didn’t succeed, because the band leader has sued Warner Bros. yet again — this time, in Federal Court.

While the timing of the lawsuit anticipated the release of the fifth movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, she did not seek an interlocutory injunction restraining the distribution of the movie pending trial (and for that matter, unless someone can tell me differently, there is no reference to the Weird Sisters band in the fifth book, nor in the movie… what about those Famous Witches and Wizards cards? and there’s only one reference to the Weird Sisters in the book, easily avoided in a movie rendition). I haven’t seen any of the court documents, so I can only guess that this lawsuit is intended as leverage in negotiations, but Warner Bros. isn’t planning to let that happen: they’re bringing a motion to stay the action.

Chain of title

In Spanish, it means chain; in French (if you add an “s” to the end) it means lock. Either way, it seems that somebody secured the resolution they wanted. Now we know why the action was discontinued.

In text (the notice is on the KnitPicks website, too):

Special Note: In August, our Sierra yarn line will be renamed to Cadena - the exact same fiber content, construction and weight, just a brand new name, and we’ll be adding new colors!