SmartPatterns Inc.'s blog space - knitting patterns & designs

Buy before Dec 31 and SAVE 30%

2007-12-14T22:16:00.000-05:00

Smartpatterns Inc. has launched their long awaited revolutionary knitting software, partnering with Lion Brand Yarns to showcase the ease and utility of using SweaterDesigner v1.0

REGISTER NOW TO GET YOUR 30% DISCOUNT http://www.smartpatterns.com/SM_knitters.php
Shipments will start January 14, 2008.

Here’s a brief description of the application:
This exciting new software application allows you to choose colors and patterns to create and knit your own custom sweater designs and sizes, including bust sizes from 28” to 62”.

Each design is supported by full color graphics and instructions, and informs you of which Lion Brand Yarns are required to complete each project. The software is as simple as point and click; the aim is to inspire and enable anyone to create their own couture garment without any design experience or knitting knowledge required.

This is version 1.0 and includes:
Lion Brand yarn weights, 4(medium), 5(bulky), 6(super bulky)
Medium families: Vanna’s choice (23 colors), cotton ease (11colors), lion wool (14 colors), wool-ease (44 colors)
Bulky families: Jiffy (39 colors), homespun (43 colors)
Super bulky families: wool-ease thick and quick (25 colors)

30 motifs

Total number of sweater combinations – 179,100

Platform Requirements: Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

The CD retails for $49.95 but if you sign up to purchase (at www.smartpatterns.com) before December 31 2007 you’ll receive a special discount of 30% – $34.95. We will be sending out details on how to purchase in the next several days, so register now to not miss out http://www.smartpatterns.com/SM_knitters.php

Sample of Motifs in our Software

2007-12-09T20:11:00.001-05:00

New Sweater Designed Using Our Software

2007-12-06T12:31:00.000-05:00

Here is another sweater designed using our software.

Finally...we have sweaters!

2007-11-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

After many years we are finally nearing commercial release. Here is a photo taken this past weekend of a sweater designed using Smartpatterns' Sweater Designer. And guess what, you do not need to be a designer to be able to achieve designs like this! In fact, its so easy your husband or boy friend could even create a design. Keep coming back as we will continue to add new photos each Monday morning.

Register at www.smartpatterns.com to keep in the loop.

Limited release is slated for mid December, with a special offer for those that purchase before year end (you will not want to miss out). General release will be January/February.

The Team @ SmartPatterns

Real Men Knit

2007-02-24T21:16:00.001-05:00

Knitting v.s. Crochet

2007-02-24T21:11:00.001-05:00

Knitters Speak Out!

2007-02-17T20:27:00.000-05:00

We would like to enlist the help of the knitting community from around the world. We have entered a business plan competition for the second time this year and have made it past the screening stage to the second round. Last year we received a lack luster reception...knitting...haha was basically the reaction. The judges think knitters are all grandmothers and don't even have computers or know about the internet. We need to show them that knitters are of all ages and from the world over and are alive an well and represent a sizable community.

With over 22 million knitters in the United States alone, as a global community lets show these judges we exists. Can we get 10,000 emails to them...how about 1 million. We have until March 10, 2007, so lets see what we can do. Tell your friends, talk about it on your blog and lets show the world knitters are part of a global community that is vibrant and savvy.

If you would like to help please send an email as follows:

To: tiequest@gmail.com [the competition is hosted by TiE.org of Toronto]
cc: talktous@smartpatterns.com (optional)
Subject: Knitters Speak Out
Body: We are knitters and we use computers.

Please sign your name and state/province/country

Thank you for your support.

The SmartPatterns Team

Beta Version for public testing - Friday Jan 26th

2007-01-25T09:10:00.000-05:00

We will have our first consumer beta trial this Friday afternoon at our offices. We will follow this up with a world wide beta trial, so if you can’t make it to our offices stay tuned.

For those in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, please let your friends (all those in the guild and others) in our special viewing…It’s significantly changed from what you saw on our blog site and we think its even better. We are very excited and look forward to seeing you on Friday. It would be great if you could drop us an email to let us know if you plan on attending and do not hesitate in dropping by with a friend.

Please drop by between 1:30pm – 3:30pm at our office:

The Accelerator Centre
295 Hagey Blvd.
Waterloo, ON
N2L 6R5
Phone (519) 342-2402

Directions from Toronto

Ask for SmartPatterns at the front desk.

Take Highway 401 West from Toronto towards London.
Exit the 401 at interchange 278 taking Highway 8 West to Kitchener-Waterloo. Proceed approximately 7km
Exit Highway 8 taking 85 North (Conestoga Parkway) to Waterloo. Proceed approximately 7km
Exit Highway 85 taking University Avenue West (it is the 2nd University Ave. exit).
Proceed approximately 5 km along University Ave. to Phillip St. You will pass through a few key intersections (Weber, King, Albert).
Turn Right at Phillip St. Proceed approximately 1km
Turn left onto Columbia St.
Proceed approximately 0.5 km
Turn right at Hagey Blvd. into the University of Waterloo Research + Technology Park
The Accelerator Centre is at the first roundabout. Go around the roundabout onto Frank Tompa Drive and turn right into the Accelerator Centre parking lot.
The Accelerator Centre entrance is as you enter the lot off of Frank Tompa Drive (on the West side of the building). You cannot enter the Accelerator Centre via the main entrance, which is on the north side of the building.

Regards,
The Team at SmartPatterns

The Prayse of the Needle

2006-11-15T15:56:00.000-05:00

To all dipersed sorts of Arts and Trades,
I write the Needles praise (that never fades)
So long as children shall be got or borne,
So long as garments shall be made, or worne,
So long as Hemp or Flax, or Sheep shal bear
Their linnen wollen fleeces yeare by yeare;
So long as Silk-worms, with exhausted spoyle
Of their owne Entrailes, for mans gaine shall toyle;
Yea, till the world be quite dissolu'd and past;
So long at least, the Needles use shall last;

By John Taylor (1580-1653)

"The Last Knit" Video

2006-09-26T17:38:00.000-04:00

Hope you enjoy this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6ZjMWLqJvM&mode=related&search=

Sewing and Suing Aren't a Happy Mix

2006-09-19T20:00:00.000-04:00

The following article is from the Wall Street Journal.

Sewing and Suing Aren't a Happy Mix For Embroiderers --- High-Tech Stitching Brings With It Copyright Issues And Talk of Defamation

By Dionne Searcey
1,371 words
14 September 2006
The Wall Street Journal
A1
English
(Copyright (c) 2006, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
Janet Ebert, a longtime embroidery hobbyist, logged onto the Internet last year and found images of flowers and cuddly animals. Altering them with special software on her home computer, she created versions of the designs that she stitched on quilts for her five grandchildren. She used a computerized Singer embroidery machine, and sold some of the designs online for about $2 each.

A few weeks later, a courier appeared on Ms. Ebert's front porch in House Springs, Mo., with legal papers informing her that she was being sued. The complaint said she had violated copyright law and that some of the designs she had sold belonged to embroidery company Action Tapes Inc., in Dallas.

"Who in the you-know-what is this company?" Ms. Ebert, 61, recalls thinking. "I've never bought their designs, and I still don't buy their designs."

As this old-fashioned craft of decorative needlework goes high-tech with designs once sold by mail or in sewing shops, it has unleashed a 21st-century battle.

Sewing and design companies are engaging in piracy disputes similar to those waged by the music, movie and fashion businesses. Some buyers and sellers of designs are confused about the copyright issues buzzing around the honey bees and sunsets they stitch on quilts and clothing.

Embroiderers used to buy patterns of angels, flowers or other designs published by sewing companies at five-and-dime shops. They would iron the outlines of the designs onto fabric and stitch around them by hand, creating unique, colorful patches on clothing and blankets. Today, many buy digital forms of the designs from sewing company Web sites that offer downloads or disks. The designs are then executed by computerized sewing machines, costing as much as $7,000, that sew the images onto fabric.

The problem: Sewing companies license their designs for a few dollars each to consumers for their personal use. Designs commonly come with legal language explaining how they can be used. Still, some hobbyists then resell them on the Web as their own creations.

Fed up with such practices, the Embroidery Software Protection Coalition, a small group of sewing companies including Action Tapes, Great Notions Inc., Pfaff American Sales and others, aggressively began pursuing legal action against hundreds of embroidery buffs. Nearly 1,500 have been sent menacing letters on stationery stamped with the coalition's logo -- a stitched-looking letter "C" with a needle and thread attached -- that threaten them with steep fines and court judgments for buying counterfeit embroidery designs. Some of the letters tell the buyers the coalition will back off any legal action if they pay fees for their "past wrongful conduct."

Dozens of embroiderers took to online sewing forums to anonymously complain about the coalition's efforts, accusing the coalition of shaking down innocent sewers.

In turn, the coalition in June sent a subpoena to Yahoo Inc., which hosts one embroidery forum, to find the identities of sewers such as "suelikessewingtoo" and "nanaanniesews" so it can consider suing them for defamation, according to the coalition.

In its legal filings, it likened some of the stitchers' online screeds to "terrorist activities" and accuses them of posting slanderous statements "that marched across the Internet bulletin boards and chat groups similar to Hitler's march across Europe."

Gary Gardner, president of the coalition, says his group sometimes has no choice but to get tough, even with the little old ladies everyone agrees constitute the largest demographic of embroiderers. "Although they're a grandma, they're not a nice grandma," Mr. Gardner says. "Some of them are outright vicious, even when we point out to them what they're doing is illegal."

Some of the sewing companies say they have lost half their business to design pirates. Phil Newton, president of Oklahoma Embroidery Supply & Design, says that no more than three weeks after his company releases new designs, he sees them being resold online for a fraction of the price he charges. One of the largest producers of licensed designs in the U.S., his company offers 8,000 copyrighted designs for roughly $8 each. He recently found 250,000 designs, some of them belonging to his company, for sale online for just $49.

"We spend millions of dollars each year to make the products, advertise and pay royalties to artists," Mr. Newton says. "If we don't slow it down, there's not a lot of reason to be in this business."

According to the Craft and Hobby Association, a trade group, embroidery is among the most popular of the "needle arts" -- a $4.2 billion industry. And more hobbyists than ever are turning to digital sewing. Dozens of independent digitizers have sprouted up to peddle embroidery designs online, joining small design companies and sewing giants such as Viking Sewing Machines Inc. that sell designs to complement their sewing-machine sales.

The coalition has a team of investigators who troll online auctioneers such as eBay for obvious counterfeiters offering batches of thousands of designs for low prices.

One investigator bought CD-ROMs Ms. Ebert was selling on eBay last year that included copyrighted designs, coalition attorneys say. Ms. Ebert insists she sold only designs that were her own, which she created using free and legal clip art she found on the Internet. She calls the companies "the design police." The pending lawsuit in Missouri is seeking unspecified damages. An earlier lawsuit against her, filed in Texas, failed because of jurisdiction issues.

When the companies catch counterfeiters, some hand over names of their buyers as part of a legal settlement. In June, Sue Schultz, an embroiderer in Florida, received a letter from the coalition telling her some designs of trucks and cars her husband purchased for her in December 2005 were counterfeit. "We were shocked," Ms. Schultz says. "My stomach was completely upset."

When she phoned the coalition, she says, lawyers told her to send a $300 check to make amends. The coalition acknowledges that it sometimes resorts to such demands. Unsure of the legitimacy of the operation, Ms. Schultz did nothing, though she says she now buys designs exclusively from established sellers.

Ms. Schultz and others have complained on Internet forums about the letters that they say amount to a shakedown. Two of them have enlisted the help of an Internet privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation to quash the subpoena sent to Yahoo, aiming to protect anonymity online and citing First Amendment concerns.

The coalition has since withdrawn the subpoena, but attorney Carole Faulkner says she is working on a new, narrower subpoena and still has plans to sue some forum members for defamation. Corynne McSherry, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the coalition's "shotgun approach is aimed not at redressing defamation, but at intimidating those who have sought to raise public awareness of its ham-fisted tactics." She says she is pleased the subpoena was withdrawn. Yahoo declined to comment.

Faced with complaints from embroiderers as well as from some member companies, the coalition has revised its legal filings, toning some down a bit. The sewing companies acknowledge some sellers and buyers may not realize that the designs of common images such as angels and teddy bears are copyrighted. They say a campaign to raise awareness of copyrights has had little impact.

Ms. Ebert began her embroidery hobby when she was growing up on a farm in rural Missouri, stitching quilts by hand with her mother and grandmother to guide her. Digital embroidery is similarly satisfying but much easier, she says.

"When I have a lot on my mind or a lot going on in my life, I find that digitizing designs and sewing things puts my mind at ease and takes my mind off everyday problems," says Ms. Ebert, who threaded her first needle at age 10. "It's an enjoyment that gives me peace of mind."

It has been particularly soothing as Ms. Ebert has become tangled in a legal battle with the embroidery industry. She says she has embroidered three quilt tops in just two weeks.

MAC Users

2006-05-03T12:03:00.000-04:00

Apple has introduced a new product to assit Mac users in running Windows products.

We hope this helps Mac users out there. We realize that many of you out there are not on the new Apple machines, so we promise to evaluate the demand for a Mac application later in 2007.

Here is a clip from an article:

On April 5, 2006, Apple introduced to the world Boot Camp, a public beta software that enables Intel-based Mac computers to run Windows XP. Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on either the new iMac, MacBook Pro Laptop or Mac Mini, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either the Mac OS X operating system or Windows XP operating system.

Download Boot Camp for free at www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp as a preview software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. The final version of Boot Camp will be available as a feature in the upcoming Mac OS X version 10.5 “Leopard” that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August.

Gauge discussion group

2006-05-02T13:29:00.000-04:00

Thank you to beanmama and yes,I knit... for your comments on gauge.

We all want the gauge in the pattern to be set to our own knitting style, but is there a design reason this cannot be?

I would like to contribute two thoughts on the subject and solicit your feedback:

Q1) Gauge can be adjusted to a knitters style if only the pattern has no 'motif' (e.g. a snowflake pattern) since the style does not risk distortion. Do you Designers out there agree with this statement?

Q2) The majority of beginners and intermediate knitters knit using only 1 or 2 colors and only advanced intermediate knitters actually tackle a project with a motif. Do you agree with this statement?

Style Screen - do you like our software Interface?

2006-04-27T10:51:00.000-04:00

Copyright SmartPatterns Inc.

CLICK on the picture above to increase its size for a better view.

Here it is...first time ever show to the public! What do you think of:
1) the overall look
2) the buttons at the top
3) what does it say to you...how does it make you feel

We will be releasing the next screen shot shortly.

Welcome to SmartPatterns' blog community

2006-04-23T12:30:00.000-04:00

Welcome. The development team at SmartPatterns invites you to help us design the perefect knit design software application. Look to this site for a glimpse into the building of a business and a software product. We will be sharing our trials and tribulations and will be turning to you to help guide us - from selecting the right colours (Canadian english eh) and images that will appear in our first release (scheduled for this year) to deciding on which features you want.

We want to thank all of you that have visited our web site www.smartpatterns.com and registered and those that have contacted us offering to help us in our development. Because of your enthusiasm we thought it best to launch a blog and allow all those interested to participate directly. We hope you will share your thoughts as we will be listening.

a Smartpattern = your input + code + styles + patterns + yarn + knitting needles