Pattern delayed on account of ‘it feels weird to Do A Capitalism while World War III breaks out.’ So let’s talk about that.

Here’s the deal. I am Really Damn Lucky that I can afford to say ‘I don’t feel great shouting about a hat today, let’s wait a bit.’

A whole bunch of people in this industry depend on new patterns (or yarns, or books, or other projects) to pay the rent & buy groceries & keep the heat on. I do too! But I’m lucky to have enough of a buffer that I can delay in response to what’s going on in the world without too many consequences.

That’s not the case for everyone.

So I’m going to really encourage you to NOT BE SHITTY to the tiny micro businesses that are trying to figure out how to keep afloat against a background of the never-ending pandemic, a string of intensifying climate catastrophes, the constant erosion of reproductive rights, the gleeful cruelty of anti lgbt legislation, the unconscionable toll of institutionalized racism and police violence, the drumbeat of encroaching fascism, and now the atrocities in Ukraine.

If you look at the world we’re trying to navigate right now and decide the worst bad guy is the dyer who needs to bring out the yarn line they’ve been talking up for weeks or the author who needs to bring out the book they’ve been working on for months on schedule? That’s not a great look.

Pretty much everyone I know in this industry is struggling with things like “I don’t feel safe going to a crowded event, but I need to vend at this show to keep my business running” or “I don’t want to promote my pattern while The Latest Crisis is going on, but I need to pay my rent, and if I wait till there’s no crisis, I’ll be evicted.”

The worry that people will be snarky about it makes all that worse. So let’s be really kind to folks who are making tough choices in situations utterly out of their control.

In the meantime, if you’ve got a little extra in your pattern budget, here are a few links.

This will take you to a page of patterns for sale on ravelry from Ukrainian designers.*

This will take you to a page of patterns for sale on Etsy from Ukranian designers.*

Because giving someone ten buck feels like the most direct way to do some teeny tiny thing in the face of all this awfulness.

And I don’t know what else to do.

*As you can probably guess, those searches are only as good as the tagging on whatever site is selling those things! I am for sure not cool enough to have vetted the quality of all the patterns or the veracity of everyone’s location claims. But it’s a good place to start, and I bet with a few minutes reading, you can find something that you can feel confident will help someone out directly.