Life is Short. Buy the Pattern

If you're anything like me, you've got a huge list of things you want to make. You've got patterns by the boatload just waiting to be cast on-- more patterns than you have time for. But your favorite designer just dropped another amazing pattern! *sigh* You'll never have time to get to all of them.

Buy the pattern anyway.

It may sit waiting for the perfect moment to cast on for months, even years, but buy it anyway.

By buying the pattern, you're supporting your fellow makers and allowing them to keep designing more amazing things. You're giving back to the community and helping it grow and flourish and thrive. By supporting designers, you've given them the opportunity to create even more patterns, which only raises the bar within the community. The more patterns designers create, the more they push themselves to improve and grow, which in turn allows us to improve and grow our skills as makers. It's a win-win all around!

But what if you're a maker who sells finished product, and the pattern you've had your eye on says that it's for personal use only?

Buy the pattern anyway.

Even if you can't sell the finished product from that pattern, you're honing your skills with new techniques, new stitches, and more experience, which helps you create better product that you can sell later. Use it as an inspiration for other creating other products.

Recently I purchased a pattern for a crochet pillow from a designer I've been following for awhile. The pattern itself is for personal use only, but in creating it, I not only learned a new stitch that I can use in the future for other pieces, but I was suddenly flooded with inspiration for several new designs of my own. And after buying multiple different hat patterns from different designers, I've taken some of the elements I've learned and started to mix and match them to tinker with. Through their patterns, I've figured out the fundamentals of construction, size, and decreasing, so now I'm free to play around without worrying that it might not fit right-- just math it until my idea fits the formula. I've even taken some of those design elements and stitches and applied them to completely different products!

Buying the pattern not only supports the designer, but helps you support yourself as a maker. So next time your favorite designer drops a pattern you love, buy it. It doesn't matter if you won't get to it for months. Buy it anyway.