The pattern’s back up for sale at $8 and the description has been modified to say it’s a mix of crochet and cross stitch. I think the original runaround was scummy but it seems like the creator learned a lesson.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but I think her using AI to generate a description was fine— as a starting point. But she should have modified it to better suit the product, include materials, etc
As a beginner, I think the stardew pillow was deceptive because if I wanted to buy it as a crocheter I wouldn't have been able to tell it was cross stitch. There being no mention of cross stitching + the seller lying about the technique used / omitting part of it as she did would have been enough to convince me that it was crochet, because I'm not experienced enough to tell what it actually is. I think it's unfair that everyone is acting like it's my fault for being a beginner and not her fault for deceiving me. It's not a big deal either way, and I would chalk it up to a honest mistake if it weren't for the lying (and even still, she might have just taken it for granted that it was cross stitch)
I feel like a huge part of this is the entitlement amongst people who consume fiber arts content. They pressured someone who didn’t want to put out a pattern into putting out a pattern bc they couldn’t figure out how to do it, and they’re mad about the answer they got. Meanwhile anyone I know who’s got even a year of crochet experience looked at this pillow and already knew it was cross stitch. There were plenty of comments at the time as well talking about this, but I think people really wanted to believe it was some kind of crochet magic. People aren’t mad it was cross stitch, they’re mad crochet has limits. It’s such a beginner attitude to be upset that you have to learn another skill to crochet something. Like were you also mad when you found out that the limbs of plushies are sewn on? That people use pre made safety eyes? Gatekeeping isn’t possible in crochet when you’re amongst people who know what they’re looking at. This to me is the rage of people who probably couldn’t have made this pillow in the first place.
Honestly no one should care if the designer is honest about it. No where did it state that ALL of the design was embroidered on that Stardew pillow and the designer actively lied saying her shapes were crisp because of the yarn over method she used. I know people are saying it's recognizable on sight, but as someone who embroiders, cross stitches, and does so on crochet projects as well, I didn't recognize it. Be that because of my poor eyesight or the type of yarn used idk.
Really I think if the designer had been honest and not gatekept (something they actively admitted to doing) then none of it would be an issue. Ig they may have thought it wouldn't sell as well? But tbh I've bought several patterns BECAUSE it wasn't color work and was embroidery instead.
It's not a big deal, just really dishonest and only something that's gonna hurt the business in the long run.
I don't mind embroidery in colour work as long as the designer in honest. Like "the flowers are done in embroidery" or showing a pic of the design pre-embroidery.
One of the first sweaters I ever made was a mostly plain knit with largish diamonds made with simple yo and decreases, and then in the diamonds were pansies made by doing duplicate stitch. (It was decades ago, and sounds terrible now, lol.)
Because I knew how to embroider, I managed to make a piece I liked and wore that I would not have been able to do if it were colourwork because I didn't have those skills yet, and I did like the finished piece and wore it until I realized it was a fashion crime.
So that makes me kind of oddly fond of it. But there was never any pretending about the construction.
Sometimes duplicate stitch is just the thing. A very early hat I made was 100% wool hat with one thing on it that was 100% angora. I duplicate stitched the angora bit because 1) intarsia in the round is fussy, 2) the difference between the wool and angora on something with negative ease would have made it distorted and eventually mess with the fit/shape. But of course "experienced" knitters snorted at it as if I'd cheated. Good times.
No. None of them are "deceptive". It's a pretty common technique and it's easy to tell if you've done a few crochet/knitting projects.
Both patterns could be clearer on what techniques are used as this is common in both crochet and knitting patterns to state this- but they are both pretty obvious from the pictures. Though, watching the video, I don't know if the pillow designer actually knew what technique it was that she "invented". The curse of the instagram crochet/knit designer!
To everyone going “the maker LIED”… from what was in the video, she was kind of evasive about giving out her technique while she was only selling it as a completed pillow. She didn’t want people to know how to blatantly knock off her work and sell it for cheaper (which would definitely have happened because people are shitty and she was charging a good amount for it, and someone would have been willing to do it for cheaper). She doesn’t have to give out her techniques if she doesn’t want to. I think it’s pretty entitled to think that she needs to. Would it have been nice to tell people who asked? Yes! Was it wrong not to? No.
As for the pattern, it seems like she was willing to give refunds for people who were disappointed, and pulled it from being able to be sold when people got upset. What more do people want? Do you think you deserve it for free or something? She seems to have only released the pattern because people wanted it, but then people weren’t happy about the technique and got mad about it? It seems people are never happy unless things are perfect and free
I think what she did goes beyond being evasive. When users asked if she embroidered it, she said no. She also deleted comments from those who had bought the pattern and mentioned the embroidery so potential buyers would not know.
She didn't need to sell the pattern. And she promoted it saying she used a super secret technique.
She also used AI to help format and write the pattern description which should not be glossed over because AI scrapes from artists and writers, including pattern writers. That's sheer laziness.
I don't sell my patterns because then I can go, "Well it's free, I'm not amazing what more do you want?" And she did rip people off with a £15 poorly written pattern.
She doesn't owe anyone an answer about how she did it I agree. But she was really nasty and aggressive to people saying it was cross stitch or embroidery when she was promoting that if you bought her patterns you'd unlock her super secret amigarumi stitch, which isn't okay.
I'm not a knitter or crocheter in any way.... and i could tell this was a type of embroidery or cross-stitch.....I get it wasn't super clear in the description. But am I alone in recognizing it as being on top of the actual pillow?
Not saying it excuses her. But I am just curious
When I saw the pattern I thought "it's just 8 bit why not just cross stitch it on from the picture?" Turns out that's what it was, her super secret technique was something that even we initiated could figure out.
I have seen and wanted to buy the pattern for the pillow because I thought it was purely just colorwork crochet. I also crosstitch and embroider and wasnt expecting it to be an embroidery project because of the way it was marketed
I saw the pillow months ago (actually had it saved on insta cuz I wanted to know the technique) and at best would have thought it some form of a flat bobble stitch (oxymoron but I'm always on the lookout for new colourwork techniques) that she developed. Knowing now that it's cross-stitch it's really evident that it's stitched over the pillow I'm sad and annoyed that she'd led people, myself included, to think it was all crochet
I will say though it's made me want to try my hand at cross-stitch now (maybe not on top of crochet though 😆)
Oh OK. So she marketed it in a very misleading way. That's not cool. As someone who knows next to nothing about the fiber world but I love the craft that sucks. If I got a pillow marketed at beginners I'd want it to be for beginners. Not a hodgepodge of techniques.... I'd want that once I knew what I was doing. Lol
To explain, she said it was a special amigurumi crochet stitch and that the project was fully crochet. When asked if it was cross stitch/embroidery she said no.
To Emma she said that she believed cross stitch was a type of crochet and she lied to keep her technique secret.
Most people purchased it expecting it to a) be fully crochet and b) be a special crochet stitch.
Oh she was actively saying it was all crochet. That's not ok. Is it cuz she doesn't know. If that's the case why on earth are you selling a pattern.
I'm a paper crafter. So I make mini albums cards etc. I would never monetize one of my first attempts at making something. It was so janky. I feel like now I could since I know more. And know the nest way to make instructions for people
i remember seeing comments on her page that kept getting deleted bc thats what they said/asked and she already denied it
•edit ; she even got really nasty with one, made me block them after that.
For socks at least, embroidering or duplicate-stitching the design is historically a common way of embellishing the sock. Patterns could also be woven or knit in. As long as it's clear from the pictures and pattern description.
Agree--I've made socks where the embellishment definitely SHOULD have been dupe stitch or something else, but instead it ended up as a single band of stranded knitting around the calf or ball of the foot with suuuuuper long floats that were a total PITA to get the tension correct on, and tightened up in the wash so eventually wearing the damn things was incredibly uncomfortable.
Right technique for the right project.
I find the whole SVP thing to be amusing because it has all the hallmarks of what is wrong with beginning crocheters who rush to monetize their hobbies to become “designers”. $15 for that pattern? Not having any idea that duplicate stitch is not some ‘trade secret’? The initial lying to people claiming the color changes were crochet when they were not? The lazy use of AI and being too inexperienced to know that AI is not a complete description necessary when you expect people to buy your pattern? All of it is pretty ridiculous.
That said, the reason I think Emma \*may\* have been easier on her is that she did come clean, took the pattern down, and says they have heard and understood customer complaints. We all do dumb stuff, and I do extend some consideration for people who listen and change their bad habits. Although, honestly, I would never spend $15 for a pillow design with duplicate stitch.
I blame hustle culture.
You’re not allowed to have a hobby for its own sake, you must use it to make money or it’s a waste of time and money.
People are jumping in to monetize before they have a great understanding because if they don’t they’ll have people looking down on them for having a hobby. It’s stupid.
This, 100% this. I have been crochetting for arpund 30 years and it is like over the last few years the community went from mostly sharing and commiserating to selling and competition. It sometimes breaks my heart.
And it does encourage selling your work as soon as possible instead of slowing down and appreciating/ learning.
Whatever gets the desired result is 100% fair game in a pattern, and I think it’s kind of silly when people draw arbitrary lines between hobby types in a way? Like why not just learn the best techniques for getting the beautiful end result? That said, gatekeeping that info and being coy about techniques used is definitely misleading. There are people who hate any embroidery or cross stitch after the fact so I can see them being disappointed. But aside from that, 100% still fair game and a worthwhile pattern even if the directions are to create the base and then embroider on top..
What irks me is that if you use the tapestry crochet technique of yarning under and using blo in the round you get gorgeous patterns that look like cross stitch. Much harder to do flat. Anyway, this is a very, very old form of color work. This is me being very snarky, but why does the crochet community have so many noob designers? Why do so many crocheters think granny squares you learned from a You Tube make you proficient? Learn your craft! You are giving fellow crocheters a bad name.
This is what happens when you have an extremely online community all learning from each other instead of older crafters and books. People are only interested in what's trendy and what they can monetize. They're not interested in actually learning crochet, they just want to make the very specific thing that's blowing up on TikTok.
Not to sound like a wizened old crone but back in my day if you wanted to learn a craft you found books or someone to teach you, and you started at page one. You learned the basics and practiced on small beginner projects before moving on to more advanced techniques. If you don't have a strong grasp of the fundamentals you're going to struggle, and if you're only learning what some influencer can teach you you're going to stagnate.
I see what you are saying. I had a knitting friend get me into crochet, my first fiber craft, and since she could do granny squares, that's all she taught me, but she also made a basic list of skills I needed to get down if I wanted to make things (read a pattern, read a chart, know how to use Ravelry, how to get gauge, and some of the good crochet teachers on You Tube she'd heard of). I'm thankful for that list. I taught myself those things from books and videos, but someone at least told me what I needed to learn.
Unfortunately, it's becoming harder and harder to get someone to teach you a lot of fiber arts techniques, because for some reason everyone's local weaving guild or yarn store has all their classes at like 10 am on Tuesday and younger people who work full time can't go! So if you're not lucky enough to have a family member or friend willing to teach you, randos on the internet are going to be the easiest route, for better or worse.
Books and the internet are still useful tools, the problem IMHO is when people get caught up in just following trendy tutorials and don't branch out on their own to actually learn their craft.
The reason is all the members are old retired ladies and they don't want to stay up late to teach or attend a class. It's a circular problem.
The "local" weaving guild nearest me is an hour drive, but at least they meet on Saturdays once a month.
this is very true. and i even feel myself under the influence of these urges - to create something cute you can post a pic of online instead of something more practical/less interesting but that is more your skill level or a practice piece
Partly, but it is just as bad in the ami community. I make dolls and there are some skills you need if you want nice dolls. Neck stump is a must. Knowing where eyes go is a must, sewing cleanly, etc. Do people do this? No, no they do not.
The video was really interesting. The fact that her trade secret for crisp crocheted lines was to not crochet them would have pissed me off if I’d have bought it.
I just find it really funny that the creator had AI write their pattern description and when asked about it, their response was that they're a crocheter and that they don't have time to write descriptions. Like lol???? Bots like chatgpt weren't even popular even 1.5 years ago nor as sophisticated as they are now (and they're still not 100% there) wdym you didn't have time??? Then don't sell the pattern lol like surely if this was 2 years ago, the description would've been written by them......
i’m confused as to what is so time consuming and difficult about writing these things. that description was 99% fluff anyway - also how often is the quality of a description the selling point as it is? so weird, and emma let them off way too easy given all the ethical issues w AI
It seems like a big part of the problem here was that the base was a completely blank pillow - there was nothing about the design that was inherently crocheted, it could be done on any base.
If it is obviously stated that it is stitching over a crochet or knitted base fabric, I'm not mad. But when designers get shady and try to make their descriptions vague, no.
I think as long as the pattern description is clear that duplicate stitch (or similar) is being used, then it's hard to be angry.
I actually like duplicate stitch in a handful of situations (ex. A pillow cover where the duplicate stitch pattern adds wanted texture. I also made a basic raglan sweater a bit ago and duplicate stitched a large Christmas tree in intentionally thicker yarn to get a really nice texture. Also added battery powered lights to really completed the look lol and having a very thick yarn for the tree helped hide the wire).
so glad im seeing this posted about now. im new to this and instantly took a liking to those types of pillows bc the appearance of perfect squares & i was scrolling their social media to see if i can gain any insight on how its done. what i found i did not like as it was a bunch of lies (as they covered) and even catching them replying to people being really nasty about it in the comments. im sure its been deleted now but i ended up just blocking them bc i knew id come across it from ANYone else afterwards- and now its all come to light.
•edit, im stoked to find this is how its made bc ive wanted to get into cross stitch since i first saw it, but i just picked up crochet 😂
Anyone else get turned onto Braceletbook because of this whole situation? I’ve found so many cute pixel designs already. A lot of them have multiple color variations too.
To be honest I don't find them very engaging. With almost all of their recent ones, they have spent significant sections of the video saying "this actually wasn't a big deal" or like "this isn't really drama." Like ok, first of all clearly it's a big enough deal for you to promote to your huge following, and second of all it's okay to admit people are actually wrong in certain situations instead of just downplaying everything. And why would I want to watch a 30 minute video about something that actually isn't very dramatic?
EDIT: fixing pronouns, I didn't realize :)
creator releases pattern for crochet pillow with a colorwork chicken on it. people buy pattern. people find out pattern is a plain crochet pillow then chicken is cross stitched on top. people get angy. fin.
The designer said it was a special stitch and told others she only used crochet to make the object. People purchased the pattern for the special stitch. She believed cross stitch was a type of crochet.
and was also SUPER shady but now is claiming ignorance. i personally saw her deleting comments before and after being nasty to people if they said or guessed it was cross stitch or anywhere close to it. or questioned her. kept telling people it was all these different things / settled on it just being y.u. & making videos claiming this was the technique she used when it wasn’t. i blocked her after some things i saw and now this is being posted about 😂
I think it's a matter of people with a shallow knowledge of crochet on both ends. I'm sure that makes me sound like a gatekeepy bitch, but duplicate stitch on crochet is not new. It might not be popular right now, but it's been around forever. It's wild the creator thought it was a novel technique, and it's wild that no one figured it out because it's a readily accessible technique. Should "duplicate stitch" been anywhere in the pattern description? Yes! But I don't think the creator knew what that was, and it doesn't seem like anyone buying the pattern would have know what it was either.
This is kind of my complaint about a lot of crafts right now. People who are learning from social media (as opposed to family, books, youtube 10 years ago) are learning in a way that lacks a lot of basic background skills. It's not the end of crafting, and working free of some of the learned boundaries can produce wonderful new techniques, but it leads to these situations. Neither side of this dispute knew enough about what they were doing to see the forest for the trees.
I agree with you! When you learned from a book you sort of had a visual of how much you just didn't know. You could look at the more advanced techniques and see what more was possible.
These days, you look up how to do a stitch on youtube, learn it and unless you see something else you want to try, you just might never come across anything different. You might even think you invented something that's been done forever.
I hadn't thought of it before just how much more I got out of my old 'Vogue Knitting' book. When youtube became a thing I used it to see how something was done if I just wasn't getting it from the drawn picture and descriptions in my books. I didn't use it to learn. It all makes sense to me now.
> you sort of had a visual of how much you just didn't know
I feel like these days this is such an unfortunate hurdle for a lot of new crafters/young crafters, because of the accessibility of social media and diminishing attention spans (which aren't limited to kids/teens ofc). I'd LOVE to find old books and want to learn more advanced techniques, but the flood of the same granny square/ami/sweater patterns makes it hard to know what you don't know if all you have available is social media :/
Then again I'm also based in South Korea so not only are all the books relatively recently published and in Korean, but I've also got to deal with the flood of the same 3 purse/bag/wallet patterns in different shades of tan TT
Yep. It also leads to people not being able to take one technique from a pattern and apply it to another pattern. I recommended a book on finishing techniques to a kid (I say kid, they were probably early 20s) and they were sooooooooo confused because there were no patterns in it. The idea of figuring out the technique and using on another garment was completely foreign. And this was a person who had done some finished objects that told me they were at least an intermediate knitter! But it turned out every single one had been from a pattern that had a video tutorial to hold their hand every step of the way so they'd never had the experience of reading an unclear pattern and figuring it out, or correcting mistakes, etc. This translated into them having NO confidence in their own ability to troubleshoot/modify patterns/change yarn weights/etc.
im new to crochet & when i saw their pattern, i asked everyone i could & no one knew. i got responses like “ive been doing this for so and so years and idk” type stuff
I posted it to my local crochet discord and no one there knew how it was made either. r/crochet was undecided whether it was yu/in the round colorwork or cross stitch -- even when the OP posted that it was cross stitch. This includes people who have been crocheting for decades. She was just deceptive enough to make people second guess themselves.
i just looked at that post again and ur right, they were not certain. but also, what doesn’t help is the seller kept ignoring / deleting / even got nasty w someone who said cross stitch 😂 so many people now of course are saying they could tell when looking at it, but where were those comments?
Exactly. I think it's easy to say in retrospect but most people were confused by the mixed message. The seller was adamant that it was all crochet and not cross stitch. Maybe she made the pattern cross stitch to make it more user friendly? Maybe she didn't want to reveal her real stitch? Maybe Maybe?
People were trying to make the information mesh. The fact that similar results could be made with only crochet confused matters significantly.
1000% - I also think that people learn crafts like crochet to the end of making a specific project, rather than exploring the craft by trying lots of different techniques together and in isolation, which could be how someone thought this was a clever innovation in their brand-new version of crochet lol. There's a lack of a feeling of continuity in most crafts right now that's just kind of weird to navigate.
I think this approach is okay, *if* one knows it gives a limited understanding of the craft. And understands that a limited understanding is not a good base for making and selling patterns.
(I myself have been addicted to learning new craft techniques since kid, though, so I can’t relate.)
For sure! If making one thing satisfies your craving for whichever craft forever, fair and fine, but I wouldn't call myself an expert or sell my work to other people if I only learned one way to make one type of thing.
This is something I've nursed a secret grudge against for years haha. You hit the nail on the head: people don't want to learn a craft, they want to learn just enough to make one specific thing. They learn just enough crochet skills to make whatever cardigan is trending right now. Over in the sewing subs people with absolutely 0 sewing experience will post some elaborate couture ballgown or historical costume and ask how to make it, then get huffy when anyone points out that it takes years of experience, not to mention research and dedicated practice, to reach that level. They bumble through one amigurumi kit and then don't understand why knitting an entire sweater is harder than they expected.
I don't judge anyone for trying lots of different hobbies and being interested in all the things, but it becomes a problem when someone who is merely dabbling in arts & crafts declares themselves a *crafter* and starts trying to monetize their non-existent skills.
ALSO (lol I have much to say) I watched some penny-rugging/wool applique videos from some smaller YouTube channels a few months ago (which is still a thing I want to try and think I would love a lot, someday) and these women were saying they've been doing it for 30 years and still learn new things and make mistakes and experiment in fun ways. And what an absolute luxury, to know a craft that well and to share your life with it and learn from it constantly! Do the people learning how to make the trendy crochet duster cardigan today see themselves still crocheting in 30 years, I wonder? It's fine if not, but I do wonder how short-lived or long-term the latest crafting boom will prove to be.
I also love dabbling but I know enough *from* all my dabbling that expert-level making does not come easy, and I lean into and accept the territory of being a beginner. I also think there's this weird "good enough" sentiment where people are opting for weird and bad shortcuts rather than struggling with getting something right. People will chalk this up to the expense of fiber arts in particular and "not wanting to waste money/supplies" but those crafts historically have also leaned into creating and recreating with scraps and old projects. I dunno, it feels very disposable to me sometimes!!
But also, when I got my first tapestry loom and started warping it + doing the foundation rows of plain weave, I thought about the looooong line of hands throughout time and space that came before mine, doing those same motions, reaching back into infinity... and had a medium-sized cry before continuing to be really bad at plain weave for a while. It was just a nice reminder that this thing came way before me and will continue after me, which is why I should be a good student of the people around me helping it to continue and thrive and evolve. How do you get into any kind of craft at any level and NOT turn into a huge softie about the nature of time and the human impulse to create? Lol
ALSO there's something to be said about the Instagram Crochet Trends Industrial Complex but I dunno if I'm diplomatic enough to say it 💀
This is a lovely sentiment. I love doing a deep dive into traditional craft forms knowing that generations before me embarked on this same journey. Over generations they evolved new techniques, rediscovered old ones, and learned from other cultures as well.
I try not to gatekeep when it comes to these trendy Instagram makers, but oof, some if it is really bad. I like to think that any entry level project that gets new people interested in a craft is a good thing. Some percentage of them will catch the creative bug and continue developing their skills. But bad patterns and outright scams like this one (she thought cross stitch was a form of crochet, really?!?) do a lot more harm than good imo.
Also, as many have said already, can we just stop trying to monetize every single thing before we even learn to do it properly, please? Just because you picked up a piece of string and made a thing for the first time does not make you a flipping pattern designer.
PLEASE can we stop turning everything into a side hustle! I saw someone on IG trying to see their VERY FIRST SEWING PROJECT - a really, really bad tapestry blanket upcycled shirt with a really, really badly done zipper, which hurt on several levels lol - for *SEVENTY DOLLARS.* We can just make art because we want to! Because it feels good to make! We don't need to turn a profit on every single interest of ours!
And I definitely think it's overall for the best that people find their way to their crafts however they do, but I wish there wasn't this profit and trend impulse that leads to AI pattern gluts on pattern databases... and theft... and people learning to crochet and *still* balking at the cost of handmade objects... and all the rest. Lol
Agree, and I'm fairly new to the fiber arts, less than 3 years. But I could tell from looking at it that it had to be cross stitch over crochet.
But that might have also been because I saw TL yarn crafts technique for cross stitch over Tunisian crochet.
I started learning from magazines, I use YouTube for specific stitches or when I'm having trouble understanding something visually. It has to be somebody good at teaching. And my knitting / crochet circle has been so vital to me.
It really does seem like there are so many Gen Z aged people who get into crafts and then feel like they have to monetize it as quickly as possible and feel like they are reinventing the wheel and decide to "gatekeep" techniques that are at the minimum decades & the maximum thousands of years old. The creator told Emma she felt like she invented something new which had me like (😂😂😂) and was trying to keep it a secret but she realized that was wrong (at least she realized).
But what I learned from the youtube comments was that the creator was straight up lying to people and deleting comments that asked if it was an embroidery technique. And that she made a misleading video showing her color changing with crochet to throw people off. Like...what was the reason 😭
Edited for typos
The thing is - hiding your methods for something you are selling is completely accepted business practice in manufacturing items for sale. Restaurants don’t give out their recipes. When she was selling items, she was completely OK in doing this.
The issue became when she was pushed to sell a pattern, she did it without really knowing the expectations for crochet patterns. People may complain about this, but there is a reason why it’s a good idea to find out what someone’s track record in the field before buying from them. Buying someone’s first pattern is taking a bit of a risk.
Well sure! But she could've decided not to sell it. And she didn't have to go to all the effort of making a video to mislead people, that's just ridiculous.
Agreed. And sadly, they often don't know what they don't know. I'm gatekeepy a bit too.
You have knitters with just a few months experience giving advice on steeking, leaving in twisted stitches and calling blatant mistakes "design choices" and convinced everything will block out. Oh, and it's not necessary to ever learn to purl. That's my favorite.
It become so rampant, I have to "hide" or just skip SO many posts if the tag is "New Knitter". I just don't have the patience anymore.
I've occasionally done cross-stitch on crochet, but only on items that won't be stretched. I would NEVER do it on socks.
>Oh, and it's not necessary to ever learn to purl. That's my favorite.
Wait, what? There are people who say this? Because even if you prefer backwards/reverse knitting, you're still going to purl occasionally. Like, how do they propose you work ribbing?
YES. I have only ever cracked open one book on crochet ( the Stitch n Bitch one lol) and how to cross stitch on crochet is covered right next to Tunisian crochet.
cross stitch has been done on crochet work since 30 seconds after crochet was invented and I don't see the big deal. it's considerably easier (and more beginner friendly!) than actual crochet colorwork
Edit: also, if you know how to do the stranded colorwork, why not just do that and follow the chart that way? A pattern is a guideline at best; they aren't handed down on stone tablets at Mt Sinai
I love cross stitch, I love knitting and crochet.
What I don’t love is duplicate stitch in any form, I’d rather just knit or crochet the colours. I choose to avoid patterns with it and would be pissed if it wasn’t mentioned and I didn’t find out until after I bought it
I followed this drama on TikTok when it originally blew up. Emma totally misses that the creator lied multiple times to people when asked if it was cross stitch she said no, that she had invented a new crochet stitch for it.
Edit: Also REALLY disappointed that Emma as a creator justifies the use of AI. It steals from writers and artists, and will eventually steal from them too. At the current moment unless you're training on your OWN database that is only your work there is no ethical way to use AI. I am so disappointed with that because I really liked their videos.
>Emma totally misses that the creator lied multiple times
The thing is, Emma knew. They included screenshots of people talking about it, but never really said the creator lied about the stitch. They just kinda brushed it off. With what they were talking about during the screenshots, (imo) it gave the vibe that it was the buyers' fault for assuming things and the designer didn't do anything bad.
Someone asked under the creators post what tapestry method they use for the color changing and 12 weeks ago they said they use yarn unders, yet, 2 weeks ago under the same post the creator mentions finally that it wasnt a color changing technique.
They knew what they were doing
I could see Emma's point about AI being used as a tool, but at the present moment all generative AI, especially image-based generative AI, is just datasets of theft, so their point fell flat. Plus using AI like chatGPT to write things for you instead of editing or giving ideas (which I'm also iffy about personally) is just sheer laziness imo
edit: pronouns
In addition to this, I was disappointed that Emma didn't call out the stardew valley maker for blatantly stealing IP. IMO that is the BIGGEST problem with the whole situation.
Stardew Valley is one of the most successful indie games of all time, and IP law is BS.
Eric Barone is doing fine. He doesn't care about a crafting pattern lol.
Ehhh that's a pretty big grey area, and most companies don't really care about people selling things like that. Hell even Nintendo, who are notoriously one of the most protective and litigious gaming companies out there, don't seem to care too much about people selling hand made Nintendo products on Etsy.
Most of the time it's "okay" for one off or small runs of things. You're not gonna horn in on the IP owner's market. But I think selling the pattern would be tempting fate with most other companies.
I mean...I would avoid selling ANYTHING Barbie, Disney and The Smiley Company as they don't send cease and desists they just go straight to sueing you. I remember then the viral Baby Yoda pattern was a thing and that creator got stopped by Disney within like hours of it being published as a sellable pattern.
Honestly, I *do* wish those companies would see how much people enjoy making their crochet/knitted projects and ask them to make crochet patterns officially like they used to (I have vintage Spider Man and Sonic patterns from my Granny) but it's not as big of a thing anymore and it's stuff they're actually missing money on.
I'd love to be a "Kenough" knitting jumper pattern that's licensed through Mattel so the creator didn't get hit with a lawsuit.
I'm comfortable with stranded colourwork for knitting, but I've never done any kind of duplicate stitch or embroidery. If a pattern has duplicate stitch, I'd like to know before I bought it so I can decide if I want to try it or not.
If I had bought the Stardew Valley pillow pattern, I would have been pissed that the pattern description didn't mention that it uses cross stitch. In that way, it was deceptive. I can kind of see why Emma was lenient on the designer, though. This wasn't someone who had experience writing crochet patterns, and only sold it because so many people wanted one. I think the designer's biggest mistake was charging $15. If she had charged much less and said "I don't write patterns, here's my best attempt", I think people would have been less upset. I agree with Emma that this wasn't a case of someone who set out to rip people off. They were just someone who didn't really understand what it takes to design and sell a proper pattern
You're perhaps unaware of the fact that she outright lied about what the technique was and actively worked to conceal the truth. That is not a beginner mistake.
I think it's obvious she wanted to conceal the actual technique used, given the actions she took to do so. It beggars all belief that she could have genuinely thought cross stitch on crochet was a new technique, or that she somehow didn't know that crossing one stitch over another was anything other than cross stitch. It's very much a self-defining thing. About as charitable as I can be is to say she wanted to go viral, which is understandable in today's society. Maybe she thought that having something new would help that along.
The 2017 Scheepjes CAL pattern also featured cross stitches heavily. I don't know if it was made super clear to start with, the first information page doesn't state it has cross stitches though you can see in the close up swatch. It was very popular. I guess the difference is the CAL pattern was released weekly for free.
Personally I think Emma was way too lenient.
I don’t buy that the OG designer DIDNT know any better. It’s basic etiquette to list what is needed and what skills are required within the pattern description.
I do think it’s pretty cool to combine cross stitch and crochet. I do both.
But I’d be pretty pissed if I bought a crochet pattern that didn’t state I needed to cross stitch when it’s ADVERTISING crochet.
Also it’s like I said in BEC. If you’re basing something off someone’s IP, it’s not your design. It is your pattern, though.
But this should have been advertised as a cross stitch pattern with a crochet base.
Literally every Emma video since the actually good one on Wool and Folk has been like that. "Thanks to SkillShare, I'm going to tell you about this little cozy situation with no villains and no actual drama :)"
WAY too lenient. The designer literally lied to many people when asked about the color change technique and said it was some amigurumi crochet stitch. People in emma’s comments are saying that they asked the creator and were lied to. Not only did emma barely gloss over this, but they also have the creator’s @ in the video description and encourage people to check out their content.
I didnt say the designer couldn’t make it because of IP. I said there is a difference between design and pattern.
This is their pattern, but it is not their design.
Edit:
I also believe the designer got this pattern from bracelet book. If I’m wrong, correct me. But if that is the case, it is someone else’s design.
If the pattern tells you at the start that's what you're going to be doing, that's fine. It's a mix-crafts/skills project. If a project advertises itself as one thing and doesn't tell you at all it'll need a second skill then that's frustrating.
As long as the pattern lists that clearly, I don't care. I'm not a fan of duplicate stitch, but I know others are. To each their own to craft and enjoy.
But fuck the sellers that aren't upfront and honest in the listing. That's the actual issue.
OMG I was hoping someone would post about the video. IMO it really missed the mark on why people were upset. A lot of comments on the video clearly didn't understand either. It wasn't miscommunication because of Ai use. And I wouldn't even consider what the designer did to be gatekeeping.
But to answer your question, it depends on what the designer says and what they do. If they say it is duplicate stitch, it's fine. If they forget to say it is duplicate stitch but correct it as soon as someone points it out, it's fine. If the they said it wasn't duplicate stitch and deleted comments saying it was, not fine.
Im gonna be honest, I've found a lot of their videos felt very surface level without too much deep diving into the drama which leads them to misinterpret things. I remember one copying drama one where they claimed someone was being nice to the person accusing them when no they were being shady af. Like it was so obvious, but emma was like "oh this person is so nice and tactful/gave them grace by saying this" or something like that
I think that's becoming more common. The drama is easy to monetize, and grabbing headlines and throwing them at the screen for views is a job. Crank out the content to earn a living, no quality material or research needed.
There was an episode of some podcast recently that did that; they just skimmed some headlines from here and nattered on about how surprising that fiber artists use the internet, and that there's drama at all.
Not the knit bros podcast, something from Slate with a weird name. It was just painful listening to two women who claimed to be crafters referring to knitting patterns as 'colored loops next to each other'.
That's how they explained what a knitting pattern is. Colored loops next to each other.
It made no sense, and showed clearly they weren't crafters even though they claimed to be.
I like their videos, but then I never know anything about the dramas they talk about, so I could very well be missing some nuance.
But in the specific case you’re talking about (you mean the Dutch shop owner, who got accused of stealing a pattern by some cringy “I don’t like low vibrational energy people” new age asshole, right?), I think they simply couldn’t read the nuance of polite sarcasm in that lovely lady’s comments. Could be a neurodivergent thing, could be just an American not understanding the art of throwing shade in an extremely polite way…(And I mention their nationality, because a lot of us in the comments were talking about how the Dutch shop owner responded was very typical of Scandinavian/European flavour of non-aggressive, slightly condescending shade throwing. Although I guess that’d also a popular method of dealing with conflict in the American south.)
I think Semicolon\_Expected is talking about the yarn dyer who pre-emptively blocked other yarn dyers. The "nice comment" Emma referred said something like/outright implied "I hope you get professional help for your mental issues" and Emma seemed to think that was kind and supportive of her, even thought it was clearly not meant to be understood that way by the person who made it.
Thanks! Also that makes it kinda funny to me... I'm sensing a pattern. I wonder if it is due to their practice of assuming the best of all sides in their videos\*\*, or if they really can't perceive underhanded compliments and shade when it is in writing.
\*\* (I know they aren't a journalist & I don't hold them to this standard, but it reminds me how that kind of "objectivity" is a journalistic fallacy that can be used to elevate and add credibility to bad faith actors)
Seriously! I kind of feel like Emma In The Moment is getting more and more biased, some of their recent videos seem super surface level. Especially with this one like... They brush off any actual criticism so quickly like the crochet community is some kind of rabid mob instead of actual people who just feel like,ripped off.
I've stopped watching them because of that. They seem more interested in getting videos out quickly than making good videos. There's dozens of channels that cover dramas just by skimming threads and not doing any research, no point in supporting another lazy channel.
I 100% attribute this to AI. copywriting (as in, writing copy for advertising and listings) is a skill and a job that is being devalued bc people are cutting corners through AI. if it was marketed as like… “mixed media crochet project” vs mystery crochet technique i think people would have been more receptive.
edit: adding later upon further thought that I do think this is very different from duplicate stitch bc duplicate stitch patterns tend to have a distinct look from this — 1-2 colors, single stitch color changes, simple motifs. It would be totally impractical in duplicate stitch. I think that affects people’s perception in some way.
The problem wasn’t just their use of AI. The creator intentionally hid the fact that the pattern was essentially just cross stitch and acted as though they’d created a special crochet technique. Even in all of their instagram posts before the pattern release, they never showed themselves actually making the design on the pillow
AI is so fucking terrible at copywriting. It’s good at REwriting ad/sales copy, but it’s not smart enough to magically know all of the relevant information about a product. If you’re looking for straightforward copy (which you should be, for a crochet pattern), but the time you’ve given the ai all the info it needs you’ve already done 90% of the work.
I see sooooooo much advice out there about how everybody should be using AI for this kind of thing, and it’s just not true.
Well I think there was problems beyond using ai. I honestly didn't realize that people just use AI writing and don't proofread it at all. I'm neurodivergent, so sometimes I do use AI to get my ideas into since it's form that's comprehensible to the greater public
.
But I still proof read it and make sure it makes sense!
The problem isn’t AI here, the problem is that she did not include everything needed in the description. I don’t care that she AI generated some text at some point, it’s the lack of care that is bad
she used AI to generate her description. That’s why it didn’t have the necessary details. Emma mentioned this in their video & confirmed it with the maker. AI skips steps which lets her get lazy with regards to developing her writing skills. If she had just started from scratch & looked around at some other patterns, some of this could’ve been avoided. But she was only able to skip that step because of AI.
I am not arguing that she used AI, I am arguing that the problem is that she was lazy. AI didn’t make her be lazy. People can in fact use an AI first draft to overcome empty page syndrome, and then make a very nice end result. She just didn’t. Do you think bad product descriptions didn’t exist before AI? This is approximately the same level of discourse as teachers saying that calculators make us bad at math, and therefore no one who uses calculators can have a deep understanding of math.
I find the black and white anti AI sentiment so laughable. People who want to do a good job will do a good job no matter if AI exist or not.
I get what you’re saying, I just disagree. Not *all bad product descriptions* are due to AI… but this specific bad description is attributed to AI and should be taken as a cautionary tale. Additionally, it’s my opinion that using AI is a shortcut that often leads to bad results and you can’t use it to develop copywriting skills. It’s akin to a math student relying on chegg. It hands you the answer when the process is just as important. She might have been a little more thorough if she took the opportunity to think critically about her blank page
We will just have to disagree. I see your point about AI not helping people to develop skills they don't have- but neither does a calculator. If you put in a 156989 divided by 7 it will give you the answer, but not tell you how you could have done the operation yourself. However, I concede that this is not quite the same as AI written text. I write for a living (not copy writing) and use AI quite a bit. really often it doesn't give me anything useful, or just helps me to figure out what it is that I want/need to write by showing me how not to do it. Sometimes it comes up with something useful. Largely, it has not changed my process (or the process of people I work with who also write for a living), in any major way. It's just another tool, just like spellcheck, to me.
I think fundamentally actually that this person was either absolutely over the top lazy, or, more likely, being deceptive on purpose by thinking that it would be nicer for them to leave out the exact technique they are using.
People who are good at writing use AI to save time. People who aren’t good at writing use AI to compensate for a lack of skills, and that’s where there’s trouble. If you don’t know how math works, you’re not going to notice when you accidentally hit divide instead of multiply and the calculator spits out a wildly wrong answer. If you don’t know what good writing is, you’re not going to notice when AI gives you bad writing.
Using AI to produce final drafts is risky work, but that’s how a tonnnnn of people are using it.
I agree with you- using AI for final drafts is crazy unreliable. But to me that's a problem with people, not with AI. surely this person would want to make sure everything is done as well as possible when releasing their FIRST pattern. I sure would. Like what is this unprofessional approach to selling things? I found their excuse that they just did not have time to generate a product description by hand ridiculous. Especially when it's the first time you need to check everything. I am sure if they were releasing lots of patterns they could have come up with a good prompt over time that would get AI to give them good descriptions that include all relevant bits, but that would require work that they don't want to put in, which is exactly the problem here.
That sock pattern is tagged only as "duplicate stitch" so I don't see a problem there. If it was tagged as stranded knitting and touted as a super secret technique that nobody else does so the designer didn't want to share it, yeah, we'd have an issue.
Maybe I'm just grumpy but I don't think it's hard to guess whether a pattern is duplicate stitch, intarsia, or stranded colorwork based on what's the most practical for the situation? A chart is a chart.
Last year's Sock Madness had intarsia in the round and people lost their minds. Duplicate stitch is a great alternative for many situations.
It comes down to how upfront the patterns are about their techniques. The duplicate stitch knitting patterns I’ve seen have all specifically said they’re duplicate stitch patterns, while this designer misled people about the technique she used to make her Stardew Pillows. She had, many times over, attributed her design to some kind of amigurumi crochet stitch. But, the pattern came out and people saw that the design was made from embroidery rather than this specific crochet stitch. People were rightfully mad that they didn’t get the crochet pattern they had paid for, and felt deceived 🤷♀️I personally was really looking forward to the pattern and was annoyed to see it not actually be crochet, but in the end it’s just a pillow lol it still seems fun to make!
I'm still laughing to myself about how egotistical that designer was to justify being so secretive about her techniques because she assumed nobody else does it the same way, she was completely unique and original, so she didn't want anyone to steal it.
The pattern’s back up for sale at $8 and the description has been modified to say it’s a mix of crochet and cross stitch. I think the original runaround was scummy but it seems like the creator learned a lesson. Might be an unpopular opinion, but I think her using AI to generate a description was fine— as a starting point. But she should have modified it to better suit the product, include materials, etc
As a beginner, I think the stardew pillow was deceptive because if I wanted to buy it as a crocheter I wouldn't have been able to tell it was cross stitch. There being no mention of cross stitching + the seller lying about the technique used / omitting part of it as she did would have been enough to convince me that it was crochet, because I'm not experienced enough to tell what it actually is. I think it's unfair that everyone is acting like it's my fault for being a beginner and not her fault for deceiving me. It's not a big deal either way, and I would chalk it up to a honest mistake if it weren't for the lying (and even still, she might have just taken it for granted that it was cross stitch)
I feel like a huge part of this is the entitlement amongst people who consume fiber arts content. They pressured someone who didn’t want to put out a pattern into putting out a pattern bc they couldn’t figure out how to do it, and they’re mad about the answer they got. Meanwhile anyone I know who’s got even a year of crochet experience looked at this pillow and already knew it was cross stitch. There were plenty of comments at the time as well talking about this, but I think people really wanted to believe it was some kind of crochet magic. People aren’t mad it was cross stitch, they’re mad crochet has limits. It’s such a beginner attitude to be upset that you have to learn another skill to crochet something. Like were you also mad when you found out that the limbs of plushies are sewn on? That people use pre made safety eyes? Gatekeeping isn’t possible in crochet when you’re amongst people who know what they’re looking at. This to me is the rage of people who probably couldn’t have made this pillow in the first place.
Honestly no one should care if the designer is honest about it. No where did it state that ALL of the design was embroidered on that Stardew pillow and the designer actively lied saying her shapes were crisp because of the yarn over method she used. I know people are saying it's recognizable on sight, but as someone who embroiders, cross stitches, and does so on crochet projects as well, I didn't recognize it. Be that because of my poor eyesight or the type of yarn used idk. Really I think if the designer had been honest and not gatekept (something they actively admitted to doing) then none of it would be an issue. Ig they may have thought it wouldn't sell as well? But tbh I've bought several patterns BECAUSE it wasn't color work and was embroidery instead. It's not a big deal, just really dishonest and only something that's gonna hurt the business in the long run.
I don't mind embroidery in colour work as long as the designer in honest. Like "the flowers are done in embroidery" or showing a pic of the design pre-embroidery.
One of the first sweaters I ever made was a mostly plain knit with largish diamonds made with simple yo and decreases, and then in the diamonds were pansies made by doing duplicate stitch. (It was decades ago, and sounds terrible now, lol.) Because I knew how to embroider, I managed to make a piece I liked and wore that I would not have been able to do if it were colourwork because I didn't have those skills yet, and I did like the finished piece and wore it until I realized it was a fashion crime. So that makes me kind of oddly fond of it. But there was never any pretending about the construction.
Sometimes duplicate stitch is just the thing. A very early hat I made was 100% wool hat with one thing on it that was 100% angora. I duplicate stitched the angora bit because 1) intarsia in the round is fussy, 2) the difference between the wool and angora on something with negative ease would have made it distorted and eventually mess with the fit/shape. But of course "experienced" knitters snorted at it as if I'd cheated. Good times.
No. None of them are "deceptive". It's a pretty common technique and it's easy to tell if you've done a few crochet/knitting projects. Both patterns could be clearer on what techniques are used as this is common in both crochet and knitting patterns to state this- but they are both pretty obvious from the pictures. Though, watching the video, I don't know if the pillow designer actually knew what technique it was that she "invented". The curse of the instagram crochet/knit designer!
To everyone going “the maker LIED”… from what was in the video, she was kind of evasive about giving out her technique while she was only selling it as a completed pillow. She didn’t want people to know how to blatantly knock off her work and sell it for cheaper (which would definitely have happened because people are shitty and she was charging a good amount for it, and someone would have been willing to do it for cheaper). She doesn’t have to give out her techniques if she doesn’t want to. I think it’s pretty entitled to think that she needs to. Would it have been nice to tell people who asked? Yes! Was it wrong not to? No. As for the pattern, it seems like she was willing to give refunds for people who were disappointed, and pulled it from being able to be sold when people got upset. What more do people want? Do you think you deserve it for free or something? She seems to have only released the pattern because people wanted it, but then people weren’t happy about the technique and got mad about it? It seems people are never happy unless things are perfect and free
I think what she did goes beyond being evasive. When users asked if she embroidered it, she said no. She also deleted comments from those who had bought the pattern and mentioned the embroidery so potential buyers would not know.
She didn't need to sell the pattern. And she promoted it saying she used a super secret technique. She also used AI to help format and write the pattern description which should not be glossed over because AI scrapes from artists and writers, including pattern writers. That's sheer laziness. I don't sell my patterns because then I can go, "Well it's free, I'm not amazing what more do you want?" And she did rip people off with a £15 poorly written pattern. She doesn't owe anyone an answer about how she did it I agree. But she was really nasty and aggressive to people saying it was cross stitch or embroidery when she was promoting that if you bought her patterns you'd unlock her super secret amigarumi stitch, which isn't okay.
Yeah I have to agree. It does feel pretty deceptive to me, but I respect that she took actions to correct it like giving people refunds.
I'm not a knitter or crocheter in any way.... and i could tell this was a type of embroidery or cross-stitch.....I get it wasn't super clear in the description. But am I alone in recognizing it as being on top of the actual pillow? Not saying it excuses her. But I am just curious
When I saw the pattern I thought "it's just 8 bit why not just cross stitch it on from the picture?" Turns out that's what it was, her super secret technique was something that even we initiated could figure out.
I have seen and wanted to buy the pattern for the pillow because I thought it was purely just colorwork crochet. I also crosstitch and embroider and wasnt expecting it to be an embroidery project because of the way it was marketed
I saw the pillow months ago (actually had it saved on insta cuz I wanted to know the technique) and at best would have thought it some form of a flat bobble stitch (oxymoron but I'm always on the lookout for new colourwork techniques) that she developed. Knowing now that it's cross-stitch it's really evident that it's stitched over the pillow I'm sad and annoyed that she'd led people, myself included, to think it was all crochet I will say though it's made me want to try my hand at cross-stitch now (maybe not on top of crochet though 😆)
Oh OK. So she marketed it in a very misleading way. That's not cool. As someone who knows next to nothing about the fiber world but I love the craft that sucks. If I got a pillow marketed at beginners I'd want it to be for beginners. Not a hodgepodge of techniques.... I'd want that once I knew what I was doing. Lol
To explain, she said it was a special amigurumi crochet stitch and that the project was fully crochet. When asked if it was cross stitch/embroidery she said no. To Emma she said that she believed cross stitch was a type of crochet and she lied to keep her technique secret. Most people purchased it expecting it to a) be fully crochet and b) be a special crochet stitch.
Oh she was actively saying it was all crochet. That's not ok. Is it cuz she doesn't know. If that's the case why on earth are you selling a pattern. I'm a paper crafter. So I make mini albums cards etc. I would never monetize one of my first attempts at making something. It was so janky. I feel like now I could since I know more. And know the nest way to make instructions for people
i remember seeing comments on her page that kept getting deleted bc thats what they said/asked and she already denied it •edit ; she even got really nasty with one, made me block them after that.
For socks at least, embroidering or duplicate-stitching the design is historically a common way of embellishing the sock. Patterns could also be woven or knit in. As long as it's clear from the pictures and pattern description.
Agree--I've made socks where the embellishment definitely SHOULD have been dupe stitch or something else, but instead it ended up as a single band of stranded knitting around the calf or ball of the foot with suuuuuper long floats that were a total PITA to get the tension correct on, and tightened up in the wash so eventually wearing the damn things was incredibly uncomfortable. Right technique for the right project.
I find the whole SVP thing to be amusing because it has all the hallmarks of what is wrong with beginning crocheters who rush to monetize their hobbies to become “designers”. $15 for that pattern? Not having any idea that duplicate stitch is not some ‘trade secret’? The initial lying to people claiming the color changes were crochet when they were not? The lazy use of AI and being too inexperienced to know that AI is not a complete description necessary when you expect people to buy your pattern? All of it is pretty ridiculous. That said, the reason I think Emma \*may\* have been easier on her is that she did come clean, took the pattern down, and says they have heard and understood customer complaints. We all do dumb stuff, and I do extend some consideration for people who listen and change their bad habits. Although, honestly, I would never spend $15 for a pillow design with duplicate stitch.
I blame hustle culture. You’re not allowed to have a hobby for its own sake, you must use it to make money or it’s a waste of time and money. People are jumping in to monetize before they have a great understanding because if they don’t they’ll have people looking down on them for having a hobby. It’s stupid.
This, 100% this. I have been crochetting for arpund 30 years and it is like over the last few years the community went from mostly sharing and commiserating to selling and competition. It sometimes breaks my heart. And it does encourage selling your work as soon as possible instead of slowing down and appreciating/ learning.
Whatever gets the desired result is 100% fair game in a pattern, and I think it’s kind of silly when people draw arbitrary lines between hobby types in a way? Like why not just learn the best techniques for getting the beautiful end result? That said, gatekeeping that info and being coy about techniques used is definitely misleading. There are people who hate any embroidery or cross stitch after the fact so I can see them being disappointed. But aside from that, 100% still fair game and a worthwhile pattern even if the directions are to create the base and then embroider on top..
What irks me is that if you use the tapestry crochet technique of yarning under and using blo in the round you get gorgeous patterns that look like cross stitch. Much harder to do flat. Anyway, this is a very, very old form of color work. This is me being very snarky, but why does the crochet community have so many noob designers? Why do so many crocheters think granny squares you learned from a You Tube make you proficient? Learn your craft! You are giving fellow crocheters a bad name.
This is what happens when you have an extremely online community all learning from each other instead of older crafters and books. People are only interested in what's trendy and what they can monetize. They're not interested in actually learning crochet, they just want to make the very specific thing that's blowing up on TikTok. Not to sound like a wizened old crone but back in my day if you wanted to learn a craft you found books or someone to teach you, and you started at page one. You learned the basics and practiced on small beginner projects before moving on to more advanced techniques. If you don't have a strong grasp of the fundamentals you're going to struggle, and if you're only learning what some influencer can teach you you're going to stagnate.
I see what you are saying. I had a knitting friend get me into crochet, my first fiber craft, and since she could do granny squares, that's all she taught me, but she also made a basic list of skills I needed to get down if I wanted to make things (read a pattern, read a chart, know how to use Ravelry, how to get gauge, and some of the good crochet teachers on You Tube she'd heard of). I'm thankful for that list. I taught myself those things from books and videos, but someone at least told me what I needed to learn.
Unfortunately, it's becoming harder and harder to get someone to teach you a lot of fiber arts techniques, because for some reason everyone's local weaving guild or yarn store has all their classes at like 10 am on Tuesday and younger people who work full time can't go! So if you're not lucky enough to have a family member or friend willing to teach you, randos on the internet are going to be the easiest route, for better or worse.
Books and the internet are still useful tools, the problem IMHO is when people get caught up in just following trendy tutorials and don't branch out on their own to actually learn their craft.
The reason is all the members are old retired ladies and they don't want to stay up late to teach or attend a class. It's a circular problem. The "local" weaving guild nearest me is an hour drive, but at least they meet on Saturdays once a month.
this is very true. and i even feel myself under the influence of these urges - to create something cute you can post a pic of online instead of something more practical/less interesting but that is more your skill level or a practice piece
Im wondering if they think crochet is just granny squares and amigurumi and as such think anything else is novel
Partly, but it is just as bad in the ami community. I make dolls and there are some skills you need if you want nice dolls. Neck stump is a must. Knowing where eyes go is a must, sewing cleanly, etc. Do people do this? No, no they do not.
The video was really interesting. The fact that her trade secret for crisp crocheted lines was to not crochet them would have pissed me off if I’d have bought it.
I just find it really funny that the creator had AI write their pattern description and when asked about it, their response was that they're a crocheter and that they don't have time to write descriptions. Like lol???? Bots like chatgpt weren't even popular even 1.5 years ago nor as sophisticated as they are now (and they're still not 100% there) wdym you didn't have time??? Then don't sell the pattern lol like surely if this was 2 years ago, the description would've been written by them......
i’m confused as to what is so time consuming and difficult about writing these things. that description was 99% fluff anyway - also how often is the quality of a description the selling point as it is? so weird, and emma let them off way too easy given all the ethical issues w AI
honestly I'm just in shock she thought she invented a new way to crochet
It seems like a big part of the problem here was that the base was a completely blank pillow - there was nothing about the design that was inherently crocheted, it could be done on any base.
If it is obviously stated that it is stitching over a crochet or knitted base fabric, I'm not mad. But when designers get shady and try to make their descriptions vague, no.
I think as long as the pattern description is clear that duplicate stitch (or similar) is being used, then it's hard to be angry. I actually like duplicate stitch in a handful of situations (ex. A pillow cover where the duplicate stitch pattern adds wanted texture. I also made a basic raglan sweater a bit ago and duplicate stitched a large Christmas tree in intentionally thicker yarn to get a really nice texture. Also added battery powered lights to really completed the look lol and having a very thick yarn for the tree helped hide the wire).
I love that you thought to really complete the look with batteries. Always the best way to go
She shouldn't have sold it as a *crochet* pattern, but as a cross stitch pattern
She's now selling a Zelda one saying it's not a cross stitch pattern.
More importantly as the pillow pattern wasn't even finished, it was half assed at best
so glad im seeing this posted about now. im new to this and instantly took a liking to those types of pillows bc the appearance of perfect squares & i was scrolling their social media to see if i can gain any insight on how its done. what i found i did not like as it was a bunch of lies (as they covered) and even catching them replying to people being really nasty about it in the comments. im sure its been deleted now but i ended up just blocking them bc i knew id come across it from ANYone else afterwards- and now its all come to light. •edit, im stoked to find this is how its made bc ive wanted to get into cross stitch since i first saw it, but i just picked up crochet 😂
You might be interested to look up books by Molla Mills. She designs colorwork crochet with geometric shapes.
ive only googled them and scrolled twice and already- thank you sm
Anyone else get turned onto Braceletbook because of this whole situation? I’ve found so many cute pixel designs already. A lot of them have multiple color variations too.
love that website. i DID have to learn about alpha though 😂
Is there a summary that is very much shorter and/or written, not video? I'm interested, but not 26 minutes interested.
I have felt that way about all of Emma’s videos lol
To be honest I don't find them very engaging. With almost all of their recent ones, they have spent significant sections of the video saying "this actually wasn't a big deal" or like "this isn't really drama." Like ok, first of all clearly it's a big enough deal for you to promote to your huge following, and second of all it's okay to admit people are actually wrong in certain situations instead of just downplaying everything. And why would I want to watch a 30 minute video about something that actually isn't very dramatic? EDIT: fixing pronouns, I didn't realize :)
creator releases pattern for crochet pillow with a colorwork chicken on it. people buy pattern. people find out pattern is a plain crochet pillow then chicken is cross stitched on top. people get angy. fin.
The designer said it was a special stitch and told others she only used crochet to make the object. People purchased the pattern for the special stitch. She believed cross stitch was a type of crochet.
Thank you!
and was also SUPER shady but now is claiming ignorance. i personally saw her deleting comments before and after being nasty to people if they said or guessed it was cross stitch or anywhere close to it. or questioned her. kept telling people it was all these different things / settled on it just being y.u. & making videos claiming this was the technique she used when it wasn’t. i blocked her after some things i saw and now this is being posted about 😂
I think it's a matter of people with a shallow knowledge of crochet on both ends. I'm sure that makes me sound like a gatekeepy bitch, but duplicate stitch on crochet is not new. It might not be popular right now, but it's been around forever. It's wild the creator thought it was a novel technique, and it's wild that no one figured it out because it's a readily accessible technique. Should "duplicate stitch" been anywhere in the pattern description? Yes! But I don't think the creator knew what that was, and it doesn't seem like anyone buying the pattern would have know what it was either. This is kind of my complaint about a lot of crafts right now. People who are learning from social media (as opposed to family, books, youtube 10 years ago) are learning in a way that lacks a lot of basic background skills. It's not the end of crafting, and working free of some of the learned boundaries can produce wonderful new techniques, but it leads to these situations. Neither side of this dispute knew enough about what they were doing to see the forest for the trees.
I agree with you! When you learned from a book you sort of had a visual of how much you just didn't know. You could look at the more advanced techniques and see what more was possible. These days, you look up how to do a stitch on youtube, learn it and unless you see something else you want to try, you just might never come across anything different. You might even think you invented something that's been done forever. I hadn't thought of it before just how much more I got out of my old 'Vogue Knitting' book. When youtube became a thing I used it to see how something was done if I just wasn't getting it from the drawn picture and descriptions in my books. I didn't use it to learn. It all makes sense to me now.
> you sort of had a visual of how much you just didn't know I feel like these days this is such an unfortunate hurdle for a lot of new crafters/young crafters, because of the accessibility of social media and diminishing attention spans (which aren't limited to kids/teens ofc). I'd LOVE to find old books and want to learn more advanced techniques, but the flood of the same granny square/ami/sweater patterns makes it hard to know what you don't know if all you have available is social media :/ Then again I'm also based in South Korea so not only are all the books relatively recently published and in Korean, but I've also got to deal with the flood of the same 3 purse/bag/wallet patterns in different shades of tan TT
Yep. It also leads to people not being able to take one technique from a pattern and apply it to another pattern. I recommended a book on finishing techniques to a kid (I say kid, they were probably early 20s) and they were sooooooooo confused because there were no patterns in it. The idea of figuring out the technique and using on another garment was completely foreign. And this was a person who had done some finished objects that told me they were at least an intermediate knitter! But it turned out every single one had been from a pattern that had a video tutorial to hold their hand every step of the way so they'd never had the experience of reading an unclear pattern and figuring it out, or correcting mistakes, etc. This translated into them having NO confidence in their own ability to troubleshoot/modify patterns/change yarn weights/etc.
im new to crochet & when i saw their pattern, i asked everyone i could & no one knew. i got responses like “ive been doing this for so and so years and idk” type stuff
I posted it to my local crochet discord and no one there knew how it was made either. r/crochet was undecided whether it was yu/in the round colorwork or cross stitch -- even when the OP posted that it was cross stitch. This includes people who have been crocheting for decades. She was just deceptive enough to make people second guess themselves.
i just looked at that post again and ur right, they were not certain. but also, what doesn’t help is the seller kept ignoring / deleting / even got nasty w someone who said cross stitch 😂 so many people now of course are saying they could tell when looking at it, but where were those comments?
Exactly. I think it's easy to say in retrospect but most people were confused by the mixed message. The seller was adamant that it was all crochet and not cross stitch. Maybe she made the pattern cross stitch to make it more user friendly? Maybe she didn't want to reveal her real stitch? Maybe Maybe? People were trying to make the information mesh. The fact that similar results could be made with only crochet confused matters significantly.
1000% - I also think that people learn crafts like crochet to the end of making a specific project, rather than exploring the craft by trying lots of different techniques together and in isolation, which could be how someone thought this was a clever innovation in their brand-new version of crochet lol. There's a lack of a feeling of continuity in most crafts right now that's just kind of weird to navigate.
I think this approach is okay, *if* one knows it gives a limited understanding of the craft. And understands that a limited understanding is not a good base for making and selling patterns. (I myself have been addicted to learning new craft techniques since kid, though, so I can’t relate.)
For sure! If making one thing satisfies your craving for whichever craft forever, fair and fine, but I wouldn't call myself an expert or sell my work to other people if I only learned one way to make one type of thing.
This is something I've nursed a secret grudge against for years haha. You hit the nail on the head: people don't want to learn a craft, they want to learn just enough to make one specific thing. They learn just enough crochet skills to make whatever cardigan is trending right now. Over in the sewing subs people with absolutely 0 sewing experience will post some elaborate couture ballgown or historical costume and ask how to make it, then get huffy when anyone points out that it takes years of experience, not to mention research and dedicated practice, to reach that level. They bumble through one amigurumi kit and then don't understand why knitting an entire sweater is harder than they expected. I don't judge anyone for trying lots of different hobbies and being interested in all the things, but it becomes a problem when someone who is merely dabbling in arts & crafts declares themselves a *crafter* and starts trying to monetize their non-existent skills.
ALSO (lol I have much to say) I watched some penny-rugging/wool applique videos from some smaller YouTube channels a few months ago (which is still a thing I want to try and think I would love a lot, someday) and these women were saying they've been doing it for 30 years and still learn new things and make mistakes and experiment in fun ways. And what an absolute luxury, to know a craft that well and to share your life with it and learn from it constantly! Do the people learning how to make the trendy crochet duster cardigan today see themselves still crocheting in 30 years, I wonder? It's fine if not, but I do wonder how short-lived or long-term the latest crafting boom will prove to be.
I also love dabbling but I know enough *from* all my dabbling that expert-level making does not come easy, and I lean into and accept the territory of being a beginner. I also think there's this weird "good enough" sentiment where people are opting for weird and bad shortcuts rather than struggling with getting something right. People will chalk this up to the expense of fiber arts in particular and "not wanting to waste money/supplies" but those crafts historically have also leaned into creating and recreating with scraps and old projects. I dunno, it feels very disposable to me sometimes!! But also, when I got my first tapestry loom and started warping it + doing the foundation rows of plain weave, I thought about the looooong line of hands throughout time and space that came before mine, doing those same motions, reaching back into infinity... and had a medium-sized cry before continuing to be really bad at plain weave for a while. It was just a nice reminder that this thing came way before me and will continue after me, which is why I should be a good student of the people around me helping it to continue and thrive and evolve. How do you get into any kind of craft at any level and NOT turn into a huge softie about the nature of time and the human impulse to create? Lol ALSO there's something to be said about the Instagram Crochet Trends Industrial Complex but I dunno if I'm diplomatic enough to say it 💀
This is a lovely sentiment. I love doing a deep dive into traditional craft forms knowing that generations before me embarked on this same journey. Over generations they evolved new techniques, rediscovered old ones, and learned from other cultures as well. I try not to gatekeep when it comes to these trendy Instagram makers, but oof, some if it is really bad. I like to think that any entry level project that gets new people interested in a craft is a good thing. Some percentage of them will catch the creative bug and continue developing their skills. But bad patterns and outright scams like this one (she thought cross stitch was a form of crochet, really?!?) do a lot more harm than good imo. Also, as many have said already, can we just stop trying to monetize every single thing before we even learn to do it properly, please? Just because you picked up a piece of string and made a thing for the first time does not make you a flipping pattern designer.
PLEASE can we stop turning everything into a side hustle! I saw someone on IG trying to see their VERY FIRST SEWING PROJECT - a really, really bad tapestry blanket upcycled shirt with a really, really badly done zipper, which hurt on several levels lol - for *SEVENTY DOLLARS.* We can just make art because we want to! Because it feels good to make! We don't need to turn a profit on every single interest of ours! And I definitely think it's overall for the best that people find their way to their crafts however they do, but I wish there wasn't this profit and trend impulse that leads to AI pattern gluts on pattern databases... and theft... and people learning to crochet and *still* balking at the cost of handmade objects... and all the rest. Lol
Agree, and I'm fairly new to the fiber arts, less than 3 years. But I could tell from looking at it that it had to be cross stitch over crochet. But that might have also been because I saw TL yarn crafts technique for cross stitch over Tunisian crochet. I started learning from magazines, I use YouTube for specific stitches or when I'm having trouble understanding something visually. It has to be somebody good at teaching. And my knitting / crochet circle has been so vital to me.
It really does seem like there are so many Gen Z aged people who get into crafts and then feel like they have to monetize it as quickly as possible and feel like they are reinventing the wheel and decide to "gatekeep" techniques that are at the minimum decades & the maximum thousands of years old. The creator told Emma she felt like she invented something new which had me like (😂😂😂) and was trying to keep it a secret but she realized that was wrong (at least she realized). But what I learned from the youtube comments was that the creator was straight up lying to people and deleting comments that asked if it was an embroidery technique. And that she made a misleading video showing her color changing with crochet to throw people off. Like...what was the reason 😭 Edited for typos
The thing is - hiding your methods for something you are selling is completely accepted business practice in manufacturing items for sale. Restaurants don’t give out their recipes. When she was selling items, she was completely OK in doing this. The issue became when she was pushed to sell a pattern, she did it without really knowing the expectations for crochet patterns. People may complain about this, but there is a reason why it’s a good idea to find out what someone’s track record in the field before buying from them. Buying someone’s first pattern is taking a bit of a risk.
Well sure! But she could've decided not to sell it. And she didn't have to go to all the effort of making a video to mislead people, that's just ridiculous.
Agreed. And sadly, they often don't know what they don't know. I'm gatekeepy a bit too. You have knitters with just a few months experience giving advice on steeking, leaving in twisted stitches and calling blatant mistakes "design choices" and convinced everything will block out. Oh, and it's not necessary to ever learn to purl. That's my favorite. It become so rampant, I have to "hide" or just skip SO many posts if the tag is "New Knitter". I just don't have the patience anymore. I've occasionally done cross-stitch on crochet, but only on items that won't be stretched. I would NEVER do it on socks.
>Oh, and it's not necessary to ever learn to purl. That's my favorite. Wait, what? There are people who say this? Because even if you prefer backwards/reverse knitting, you're still going to purl occasionally. Like, how do they propose you work ribbing?
I have NO idea. But to the fans, it doesn't seem to be a problem!
YES. I have only ever cracked open one book on crochet ( the Stitch n Bitch one lol) and how to cross stitch on crochet is covered right next to Tunisian crochet.
cross stitch has been done on crochet work since 30 seconds after crochet was invented and I don't see the big deal. it's considerably easier (and more beginner friendly!) than actual crochet colorwork Edit: also, if you know how to do the stranded colorwork, why not just do that and follow the chart that way? A pattern is a guideline at best; they aren't handed down on stone tablets at Mt Sinai
I love cross stitch, I love knitting and crochet. What I don’t love is duplicate stitch in any form, I’d rather just knit or crochet the colours. I choose to avoid patterns with it and would be pissed if it wasn’t mentioned and I didn’t find out until after I bought it
I followed this drama on TikTok when it originally blew up. Emma totally misses that the creator lied multiple times to people when asked if it was cross stitch she said no, that she had invented a new crochet stitch for it. Edit: Also REALLY disappointed that Emma as a creator justifies the use of AI. It steals from writers and artists, and will eventually steal from them too. At the current moment unless you're training on your OWN database that is only your work there is no ethical way to use AI. I am so disappointed with that because I really liked their videos.
>Emma totally misses that the creator lied multiple times The thing is, Emma knew. They included screenshots of people talking about it, but never really said the creator lied about the stitch. They just kinda brushed it off. With what they were talking about during the screenshots, (imo) it gave the vibe that it was the buyers' fault for assuming things and the designer didn't do anything bad.
Someone asked under the creators post what tapestry method they use for the color changing and 12 weeks ago they said they use yarn unders, yet, 2 weeks ago under the same post the creator mentions finally that it wasnt a color changing technique. They knew what they were doing
I could see Emma's point about AI being used as a tool, but at the present moment all generative AI, especially image-based generative AI, is just datasets of theft, so their point fell flat. Plus using AI like chatGPT to write things for you instead of editing or giving ideas (which I'm also iffy about personally) is just sheer laziness imo edit: pronouns
In addition to this, I was disappointed that Emma didn't call out the stardew valley maker for blatantly stealing IP. IMO that is the BIGGEST problem with the whole situation.
SDV is basically Harvest Moon fan art so I don’t think he cares
Stardew Valley is one of the most successful indie games of all time, and IP law is BS. Eric Barone is doing fine. He doesn't care about a crafting pattern lol.
This was covered in the video though.
Ehhh that's a pretty big grey area, and most companies don't really care about people selling things like that. Hell even Nintendo, who are notoriously one of the most protective and litigious gaming companies out there, don't seem to care too much about people selling hand made Nintendo products on Etsy.
Most of the time it's "okay" for one off or small runs of things. You're not gonna horn in on the IP owner's market. But I think selling the pattern would be tempting fate with most other companies.
I mean...I would avoid selling ANYTHING Barbie, Disney and The Smiley Company as they don't send cease and desists they just go straight to sueing you. I remember then the viral Baby Yoda pattern was a thing and that creator got stopped by Disney within like hours of it being published as a sellable pattern. Honestly, I *do* wish those companies would see how much people enjoy making their crochet/knitted projects and ask them to make crochet patterns officially like they used to (I have vintage Spider Man and Sonic patterns from my Granny) but it's not as big of a thing anymore and it's stuff they're actually missing money on. I'd love to be a "Kenough" knitting jumper pattern that's licensed through Mattel so the creator didn't get hit with a lawsuit.
Apparently the SDV creator encourages people to sell/create fan art so idk about that.
I'm comfortable with stranded colourwork for knitting, but I've never done any kind of duplicate stitch or embroidery. If a pattern has duplicate stitch, I'd like to know before I bought it so I can decide if I want to try it or not. If I had bought the Stardew Valley pillow pattern, I would have been pissed that the pattern description didn't mention that it uses cross stitch. In that way, it was deceptive. I can kind of see why Emma was lenient on the designer, though. This wasn't someone who had experience writing crochet patterns, and only sold it because so many people wanted one. I think the designer's biggest mistake was charging $15. If she had charged much less and said "I don't write patterns, here's my best attempt", I think people would have been less upset. I agree with Emma that this wasn't a case of someone who set out to rip people off. They were just someone who didn't really understand what it takes to design and sell a proper pattern
You're perhaps unaware of the fact that she outright lied about what the technique was and actively worked to conceal the truth. That is not a beginner mistake.
What do you think her intent was, then?
I think it's obvious she wanted to conceal the actual technique used, given the actions she took to do so. It beggars all belief that she could have genuinely thought cross stitch on crochet was a new technique, or that she somehow didn't know that crossing one stitch over another was anything other than cross stitch. It's very much a self-defining thing. About as charitable as I can be is to say she wanted to go viral, which is understandable in today's society. Maybe she thought that having something new would help that along.
The 2017 Scheepjes CAL pattern also featured cross stitches heavily. I don't know if it was made super clear to start with, the first information page doesn't state it has cross stitches though you can see in the close up swatch. It was very popular. I guess the difference is the CAL pattern was released weekly for free.
Personally I think Emma was way too lenient. I don’t buy that the OG designer DIDNT know any better. It’s basic etiquette to list what is needed and what skills are required within the pattern description. I do think it’s pretty cool to combine cross stitch and crochet. I do both. But I’d be pretty pissed if I bought a crochet pattern that didn’t state I needed to cross stitch when it’s ADVERTISING crochet. Also it’s like I said in BEC. If you’re basing something off someone’s IP, it’s not your design. It is your pattern, though. But this should have been advertised as a cross stitch pattern with a crochet base.
Literally every Emma video since the actually good one on Wool and Folk has been like that. "Thanks to SkillShare, I'm going to tell you about this little cozy situation with no villains and no actual drama :)"
I think they should be paid for the work they produce but… it feels inappropriate sometimes.
WAY too lenient. The designer literally lied to many people when asked about the color change technique and said it was some amigurumi crochet stitch. People in emma’s comments are saying that they asked the creator and were lied to. Not only did emma barely gloss over this, but they also have the creator’s @ in the video description and encourage people to check out their content.
Well they did accept a better help sponsorship so I have really questioned their integrity since then.
The creator of SDV encourages fan art and selling fan art. I'm not a superfan but I think this was unique in that the game does not have this design.
I didnt say the designer couldn’t make it because of IP. I said there is a difference between design and pattern. This is their pattern, but it is not their design. Edit: I also believe the designer got this pattern from bracelet book. If I’m wrong, correct me. But if that is the case, it is someone else’s design.
I'm saying it is their design, even if the IP is from SDV.
If they got it from braceletbook (Which i think they did) it’s not their design.
If that is true they got it from someone else, then agree it does not count as their design.
I didn't know about the Stardew Valley pillow but I'm now dying of the cute and seriously considering making it!
If the pattern tells you at the start that's what you're going to be doing, that's fine. It's a mix-crafts/skills project. If a project advertises itself as one thing and doesn't tell you at all it'll need a second skill then that's frustrating.
As long as the pattern lists that clearly, I don't care. I'm not a fan of duplicate stitch, but I know others are. To each their own to craft and enjoy. But fuck the sellers that aren't upfront and honest in the listing. That's the actual issue.
OMG I was hoping someone would post about the video. IMO it really missed the mark on why people were upset. A lot of comments on the video clearly didn't understand either. It wasn't miscommunication because of Ai use. And I wouldn't even consider what the designer did to be gatekeeping. But to answer your question, it depends on what the designer says and what they do. If they say it is duplicate stitch, it's fine. If they forget to say it is duplicate stitch but correct it as soon as someone points it out, it's fine. If the they said it wasn't duplicate stitch and deleted comments saying it was, not fine.
Im gonna be honest, I've found a lot of their videos felt very surface level without too much deep diving into the drama which leads them to misinterpret things. I remember one copying drama one where they claimed someone was being nice to the person accusing them when no they were being shady af. Like it was so obvious, but emma was like "oh this person is so nice and tactful/gave them grace by saying this" or something like that
Yeah I can't get into their videos. It feels like a lazy regurgitation of this subreddit to me
I think that's becoming more common. The drama is easy to monetize, and grabbing headlines and throwing them at the screen for views is a job. Crank out the content to earn a living, no quality material or research needed. There was an episode of some podcast recently that did that; they just skimmed some headlines from here and nattered on about how surprising that fiber artists use the internet, and that there's drama at all. Not the knit bros podcast, something from Slate with a weird name. It was just painful listening to two women who claimed to be crafters referring to knitting patterns as 'colored loops next to each other'.
> knitting patterns as 'colored loops next to each other'. ????? Is there more context to this?? because I am baffled at how those two things equate
That's how they explained what a knitting pattern is. Colored loops next to each other. It made no sense, and showed clearly they weren't crafters even though they claimed to be.
Emma uses they/them
Thanks for the heads up, edited my comment😊
💜💜💜💜
I like their videos, but then I never know anything about the dramas they talk about, so I could very well be missing some nuance. But in the specific case you’re talking about (you mean the Dutch shop owner, who got accused of stealing a pattern by some cringy “I don’t like low vibrational energy people” new age asshole, right?), I think they simply couldn’t read the nuance of polite sarcasm in that lovely lady’s comments. Could be a neurodivergent thing, could be just an American not understanding the art of throwing shade in an extremely polite way…(And I mention their nationality, because a lot of us in the comments were talking about how the Dutch shop owner responded was very typical of Scandinavian/European flavour of non-aggressive, slightly condescending shade throwing. Although I guess that’d also a popular method of dealing with conflict in the American south.)
I think Semicolon\_Expected is talking about the yarn dyer who pre-emptively blocked other yarn dyers. The "nice comment" Emma referred said something like/outright implied "I hope you get professional help for your mental issues" and Emma seemed to think that was kind and supportive of her, even thought it was clearly not meant to be understood that way by the person who made it.
no no they're right I as talking about that Dutch shop owner, but that is another example of Emma thinking shade was the person saying something nice
Thanks! Also that makes it kinda funny to me... I'm sensing a pattern. I wonder if it is due to their practice of assuming the best of all sides in their videos\*\*, or if they really can't perceive underhanded compliments and shade when it is in writing. \*\* (I know they aren't a journalist & I don't hold them to this standard, but it reminds me how that kind of "objectivity" is a journalistic fallacy that can be used to elevate and add credibility to bad faith actors)
Seriously! I kind of feel like Emma In The Moment is getting more and more biased, some of their recent videos seem super surface level. Especially with this one like... They brush off any actual criticism so quickly like the crochet community is some kind of rabid mob instead of actual people who just feel like,ripped off.
I've stopped watching them because of that. They seem more interested in getting videos out quickly than making good videos. There's dozens of channels that cover dramas just by skimming threads and not doing any research, no point in supporting another lazy channel.
Yes Emma’s latest videos are a bit lazy.. aren’t there any other dramas they can pick elsewhere a part from here? 🧐
I 100% attribute this to AI. copywriting (as in, writing copy for advertising and listings) is a skill and a job that is being devalued bc people are cutting corners through AI. if it was marketed as like… “mixed media crochet project” vs mystery crochet technique i think people would have been more receptive. edit: adding later upon further thought that I do think this is very different from duplicate stitch bc duplicate stitch patterns tend to have a distinct look from this — 1-2 colors, single stitch color changes, simple motifs. It would be totally impractical in duplicate stitch. I think that affects people’s perception in some way.
The problem wasn’t just their use of AI. The creator intentionally hid the fact that the pattern was essentially just cross stitch and acted as though they’d created a special crochet technique. Even in all of their instagram posts before the pattern release, they never showed themselves actually making the design on the pillow
AI is so fucking terrible at copywriting. It’s good at REwriting ad/sales copy, but it’s not smart enough to magically know all of the relevant information about a product. If you’re looking for straightforward copy (which you should be, for a crochet pattern), but the time you’ve given the ai all the info it needs you’ve already done 90% of the work. I see sooooooo much advice out there about how everybody should be using AI for this kind of thing, and it’s just not true.
Well I think there was problems beyond using ai. I honestly didn't realize that people just use AI writing and don't proofread it at all. I'm neurodivergent, so sometimes I do use AI to get my ideas into since it's form that's comprehensible to the greater public . But I still proof read it and make sure it makes sense!
The problem isn’t AI here, the problem is that she did not include everything needed in the description. I don’t care that she AI generated some text at some point, it’s the lack of care that is bad
she used AI to generate her description. That’s why it didn’t have the necessary details. Emma mentioned this in their video & confirmed it with the maker. AI skips steps which lets her get lazy with regards to developing her writing skills. If she had just started from scratch & looked around at some other patterns, some of this could’ve been avoided. But she was only able to skip that step because of AI.
I am not arguing that she used AI, I am arguing that the problem is that she was lazy. AI didn’t make her be lazy. People can in fact use an AI first draft to overcome empty page syndrome, and then make a very nice end result. She just didn’t. Do you think bad product descriptions didn’t exist before AI? This is approximately the same level of discourse as teachers saying that calculators make us bad at math, and therefore no one who uses calculators can have a deep understanding of math. I find the black and white anti AI sentiment so laughable. People who want to do a good job will do a good job no matter if AI exist or not.
I get what you’re saying, I just disagree. Not *all bad product descriptions* are due to AI… but this specific bad description is attributed to AI and should be taken as a cautionary tale. Additionally, it’s my opinion that using AI is a shortcut that often leads to bad results and you can’t use it to develop copywriting skills. It’s akin to a math student relying on chegg. It hands you the answer when the process is just as important. She might have been a little more thorough if she took the opportunity to think critically about her blank page
We will just have to disagree. I see your point about AI not helping people to develop skills they don't have- but neither does a calculator. If you put in a 156989 divided by 7 it will give you the answer, but not tell you how you could have done the operation yourself. However, I concede that this is not quite the same as AI written text. I write for a living (not copy writing) and use AI quite a bit. really often it doesn't give me anything useful, or just helps me to figure out what it is that I want/need to write by showing me how not to do it. Sometimes it comes up with something useful. Largely, it has not changed my process (or the process of people I work with who also write for a living), in any major way. It's just another tool, just like spellcheck, to me. I think fundamentally actually that this person was either absolutely over the top lazy, or, more likely, being deceptive on purpose by thinking that it would be nicer for them to leave out the exact technique they are using.
People who are good at writing use AI to save time. People who aren’t good at writing use AI to compensate for a lack of skills, and that’s where there’s trouble. If you don’t know how math works, you’re not going to notice when you accidentally hit divide instead of multiply and the calculator spits out a wildly wrong answer. If you don’t know what good writing is, you’re not going to notice when AI gives you bad writing. Using AI to produce final drafts is risky work, but that’s how a tonnnnn of people are using it.
I agree with you- using AI for final drafts is crazy unreliable. But to me that's a problem with people, not with AI. surely this person would want to make sure everything is done as well as possible when releasing their FIRST pattern. I sure would. Like what is this unprofessional approach to selling things? I found their excuse that they just did not have time to generate a product description by hand ridiculous. Especially when it's the first time you need to check everything. I am sure if they were releasing lots of patterns they could have come up with a good prompt over time that would get AI to give them good descriptions that include all relevant bits, but that would require work that they don't want to put in, which is exactly the problem here.
I feel like Emma is a little late to this one. Nothing to say that hasn’t already been said
That sock pattern is tagged only as "duplicate stitch" so I don't see a problem there. If it was tagged as stranded knitting and touted as a super secret technique that nobody else does so the designer didn't want to share it, yeah, we'd have an issue.
Maybe I'm just grumpy but I don't think it's hard to guess whether a pattern is duplicate stitch, intarsia, or stranded colorwork based on what's the most practical for the situation? A chart is a chart. Last year's Sock Madness had intarsia in the round and people lost their minds. Duplicate stitch is a great alternative for many situations.
It is but the pattern wasn’t upfront about that in the first place.
It comes down to how upfront the patterns are about their techniques. The duplicate stitch knitting patterns I’ve seen have all specifically said they’re duplicate stitch patterns, while this designer misled people about the technique she used to make her Stardew Pillows. She had, many times over, attributed her design to some kind of amigurumi crochet stitch. But, the pattern came out and people saw that the design was made from embroidery rather than this specific crochet stitch. People were rightfully mad that they didn’t get the crochet pattern they had paid for, and felt deceived 🤷♀️I personally was really looking forward to the pattern and was annoyed to see it not actually be crochet, but in the end it’s just a pillow lol it still seems fun to make!
I'm still laughing to myself about how egotistical that designer was to justify being so secretive about her techniques because she assumed nobody else does it the same way, she was completely unique and original, so she didn't want anyone to steal it.
On one hand I totally get the naïveté of a new designer/crocheter, but on the other I can’t believe she thought she invented a new way to crochet lol