Blankie is Crankay!

Okay, Blankie is an inanimate wooly object, and therefore incapable of the crank. I, however, as its owner and progenitor, am totally full of the crank even after about ten hours to cool off, half a dozen fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, two glasses of wine and a bunch of kettle chips.

I know you're just dying to know what could possibly make me *this* cranky. Well. This afternoon I was trolling around Ravelry when I stumbled across a post that included the words "the maker of this creation is doing a class at Threadbear in jun or July can’t remeber now." And he was making it in reference to MY BLANKIE! I know this for sure because he posted it in the BlankieMania group, which was founded (not by me) to discuss the blankie and how much fun people are having making it. I just about choked up a furball.

So I called the store, and yes, they are hosting a workshop in June taught by a teacher that they are bringing in from out of town. They are calling it the "Blankie" (or they were till I begged them not to). Until I brought it up, they thought that this woman had designed "The Blankie". She is their friend, and they are defending her.

I was so angry after that conversation that I was literally shaking. So then I took it a step farther and called up the woman teaching the class. Not only is she traveling to teach the class at this one store, she's apparently planning to teach it at several other stores, including her own. And she's doing so without compunction. She doesn't seem to feel bad at all about stepping on my toes at all.

It is true that many, many people have done mitered squares before me. Many people have made mitered square blankets before me - both the sewn-together and the modularly knit-together kind. I think, however, it is fair to say that I am the person who popularized the idea of large mitered-square blankets knit in small squares out of sock yarn. And I'm pretty damned sure that I'm the person who coined the term "Blankie" in reference to blankets like mine.

This teacher's blanket-in-progress looks a heck of a lot like mine, and she has it on display at the store to promote the class. Oh, except she's chosen to make hers with straight edges on the sides - something that although I haven't discussed it on the blog I do teach in my own classes on the blanket. She is stealing my share of a tiny little niche market. And there is nothing at all that I can do about it.

Even though I was the first one to knit up a blankie like mine - the first one crazy enough to collect such a variety of sock yarns and knit a queen-sized blanket on tiny needles and weave in all those ends. And then I posted about it on my blog for almost two years, proving that it could be done and that the results were worth the effort. Even though I went to the trouble - I can't copyright the idea. As long as she's writing up her own instructions she's within her rights.

The only way I can think of to do anything about this is to send out letters to every yarn store in the country offering to come there and teach the class myself. And that wouldn't stop them from hiring her or any other teacher instead of me to teach their class if they wanted to. That's just not possible since I don't have the financial resources to execute such a mailing.

And it's not even about the money. It's about the recognition, the how much fun it would be to go somewhere for a weekend and meet a bunch of enthusiastic knitters and watch their faces as they learn new tricks and gain confidence in their abilities under my tutelage. It's about the principle of if you're going to use my idea that I put out there for free as a gift that you should at least let me know ahead of time and give me credit for it. Send people to my web site to read the story of the original blankie here. And yeah, the money such as it is would be nice too.

Yeah. So I'm sitting here ranting about the blankie instead of giving you the Sunrise Circle update I was planning on. Maybe tomorrow if I can calm down a bit by then.

Oh, and since we're talking about the blankie, I thought I would share a link with you that I found a couple weeks ago. It's a blanket that looks a lot like the one I did, only her copyright date is 2005, which means that she came up with hers before I did mine, and therefore really *my* blanket looks like *hers*.

I swear, I have no recollection of ever having seen this blanket before, but I think it is great and what is even more cool is that she has a printable template for a grid you can use to color in square patterns if you want to knit a non-random blanket.

By the way, my class on my Blankie at the Yarnery in St. Paul starts on May 6. I haven't checked if there's any space left in the current session still or not, but there's always a waiting list. And if you are interested in taking a class on the Blankie - and I cover smaller scarf and shawl versions of the project as well, with various finishing options - talk to your local yarn shop about bringing me in.