Toxic masculinity and how it damages us all

Masculinity and privilege are thorny topics, as writer Matt Haig found out recently. Here’s my response to his blog post

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This was going to be an email to Matt Haig in response to his blog post about mental health and masculinity, but it got too unwieldy for an email so I thought I’d post it as a blog. Really it’s too long and unwieldy for a blog post, too, so read as much or as little as you like.

I pretty much agree with everything Matt has written. I’m rather disappointed that he’s been discouraged from writing a book on this subject by Twitterers who essentially think he’s wrong to care that men are killing themselves in increasing numbers.

Concepts of masculinity that repress emotion and encourage violence are equally bad for men and women. We need address this if we are to improve life for all genders.

Boys don’t cry
We start them young, telling schoolchildren that ‘boys don’t cry’. I believe this amounts to psychological abuse. Crying is an important – if not necessary – emotional outlet, and to deny that to a child must be hugely damaging. How else is that child going to express emotion? Well usually through the only route left to him: violence and anger.

We encourage boys to fight, telling them to stand up for themselves, to not be weak or cissies or, worst of all, girlie. Because this is what happens when you admit of two, polar genders. What one is – masculine = strong, admirable, desirable and so on – the other becomes the opposite, making the feminine weak and undesirable. Being a girl is bad; for a boy, being associated with girls and girliness is hugely insulting.

There are massive problem with this, for both boys and girls. Being strong brings benefits: adventurousness, confidence, self-belief, among others. Girls who show these characteristics are called tomboys, because girls aren’t meant to be like that, are they? They should be demure, quiet and retiring. Adventurous, outgoing girls are a bit abnormal, a bit boyish.

Our girls are growing up with no self-confidence (read The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman for more on this). In world already stacked against them (think unequal pay, women underrepresented in all walks of life, lack of power and so on and so on), we aren’t adequately preparing our girls to succeed.

And what about the boys? There are the ones that don’t fit the mould. The ones that don’t want to raise their fists to defend themselves, who cry when they’re hurt, whether physically or emotionally. These children are bullied, made fun of, laughed at, and not just by other kids but by adults too, who should know better. And then there are the ones who do resort to fighting.

In either case these children are not being given the tools they need to deal with the complex emotions that human life brings. Instead they’re being taught that emotions are not for them, not if they want to be real men. Feelings should be hidden away, repressed, their only emotional outlets are anger and violence.

Photo: Regret by Neil Moralee 

Boys who can only express feelings through anger and violence will grow up to be men who can only express feelings through anger and violence. This won’t always come out as actual violence. In fact mostly it won’t. One of the more confusing things we do to our boys is punish them – with violence, either physical or verbal – when they do ‘stand up for themselves’. So they learn to express their anger in other ways.

In the adult world this could be aggressiveness in the sports field or in business; it could be a need to control a man’s own life and those of people around him; it could be that he completely shuts down when faced with emotions he can’t deal with.

Silent isn’t strong
How can you talk about something that you’ve hidden so deep inside yourself that even you can’t recognise it anymore? You can’t. How do you admit you have an emotional problem when your entire life you’ve been told that men, real men, don’t have emotions? You don’t.

A friend of mine once described depression as anger directed inwards. There are many ways in which I don’t agree with this. I think of anger as being quite a galvanising emotion – it prompts you to get up and do something, even if that something is negative, whereas depression is all about the apathy.

But in other ways it seems totally right. Anger is an incredibly destructive emotion that causes all kinds of damage, and depression is so very damaging. It separates you from yourself and then turns that self into an object of hate. The final, though certainly not inevitable, outcome of that hate is suicide.

The most recent figures for suicides relate (from the Samaritans) to 2013. In that year, 78% of all suicides were men and the rate of suicide among men was at its highest since 2001. Suicide is the leading cause of death for men aged between 20 and 34 in England and Wales. The proportion of male to female deaths by suicide has increased steadily since 1981.

These figures don’t show the whole picture, of course. Men tend to choose more violent methods of suicide which are more likely to succeed. When you take into account attempted suicides, men and women are more evenly matched. But still, more than three quarters of suicides were men. That’s shocking. And one of the reasons given is that men are reluctant to seek help. Think about what this means: in modern society people are being driven to take their own lives rather than admit they have a problem. There is something deeply wrong with this.

If your reaction to this is a sarcastic “Boohoo!” or “Didums!”, as some people’s was on Twitter, then that’s part of the problem. Ridiculing men who don’t fit into a fixed and dangerous concept of masculinity contributes towards male anger and violence, it strengthens those forms of masculinity that we should be breaking down. If someone is in pain, we should react with sympathy, regardless of gender.

Anger turned outwards
Arguably much more frightening is that anger that isn’t turned inwards. The anger that leads to violence towards women. Last year 150 women were murdered by men. This is significantly higher than the average of 104 women killed in this way per year. Male violence towards women increases in times of economic hardship (this government is creating a situation in which women die).

As a woman, this is both shocking and terrifying. What’s worse is that it doesn’t even begin to cover the amount of violence and abuse that women experience on a daily basis. One thing that I’ve experienced is a man standing in front of my gate so I couldn’t get into my flat until I gave him my telephone number. He then phoned the number to ensure it really was mine. Only then did he leave me alone. I have plenty of similar stories.

Boys who can only express feelings through anger and violence will grow up to be men who can only express feelings through anger and violence

There are women who have been threatened, spat at, even punched just for turning a man down. It’s incredibly common for a woman to be called a bitch or a slut because she didn’t react with rapturous joy after a man has yelled at her in the street. I count myself lucky because these things haven’t happened to me. Lucky because I’ve not experienced violence and abuse. That isn’t right.

There’s a growing movement on social media that says that we need to teach men not to rape instead of telling women not to get raped. This should be the ultimate no-brainer. I shouldn’t have to avoid going out at night, avoid certain areas of town, avoid wearing certain clothes, to ensure my own safety. I should be able to take it for granted that I’m not going to be attacked.

The vast majority of rapes and sexual assaults are not about sub-human monsters hiding in bushes and jumping out on unsuspecting women. No, most rapes are committed by ‘normal’ men – men we’re friends with, who we work with, who we sit next to on the bus, who pour our drinks in bars. Ordinary men who think they’re entitled to access to our bodies, who think that sex is a right rather than a privilege.

And why do they think that? Because that’s what society has taught them. And when they’re thwarted in their desires, they can’t go home and shed a few tears because they feel humiliated at being turned down (because let’s be honest, being turned down isn’t nice, it’s upsetting), they can’t turn to a friend and say “She said no and actually that hurt my feelings”. No, they have to ‘stand up for themselves’ and take what’s rightfully theirs.

Feminism is surely about equality. About lifting us all up so that we all have the opportunity to succeed. Mostly this will be about giving women more power, more opportunities, because, obviously, historically we have been denied this. It’s also about creating safe spaces for women by removing male aggression. The quickest way to do this is to remove men – give us women-only spaces, which is happening and is a good thing.

But even better is to have spaces where men and women can be together and be safe. Equality can’t be about dividing genders. It has to ultimately bring us all together. We don’t just want safe spaces, we want all of society to be safe. Doing this must involve giving men the emotional outlets they need so that they don’t have to resort to anger and violence.

How to: substitute yarn

Yarns can be costly, but with a little practice it’s easy to find cheaper alternatives

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Patterns generally tell you which yarn to use. This is especially true of free patterns from companies such as Rowan, Red Heart or Designer Yarns, which are giving away the pattern in the hope that you'll buy the yarn. The latter is often much more costly than the former so it makes good business sense.

Yarn, some yarn at least, can be extremely expensive. Debbie Bliss, Louisa Harding and Noro yarns, for example, are gorgeous – but you pay for that gorgeousness. Rowan is one of my particular bugbears. The company's yarns are expensive, but I've never seen anything particularly special about them. This is just my opinion, of course, and I'm sure there are plenty of knitters out there who love Rowan's yarns. I'm just not one of them.

The big secret here, known by all experienced knitters, is that you don't have to use the suggested yarn. It's one of those things that tends to make me a bit cross, because the less experienced knitter is the least likely to experiment with different yarns, not understanding that many of them will perform just as well as the one given in a pattern.

If I'd insisted on using this silk despite the pattern advising me otherwise then this would have been my own fault; but no, this was the yarn suggested

I made my first-ever big project in mulberry silk. This gorgeous, soft, iridescent yarn set me back a good 50 quid in total. The project was a disaster. The pattern was badly written and I didn't have the knowledge to recognise that, so I slavishly followed it to the bitter end. I wore the resulting T-shirt a handful of times and then donated it to a local charity shop. I don't know what happened to it after that, although I never saw it in the shop. Really it was nothing more than an expensive lesson: make your first few projects in acrylic, or at least cheap wool.

If I'd insisted on using this silk despite the pattern advising me otherwise then this would have been my own fault. But no, this was the yarn suggested. In a magazine aimed at beginners and a pattern slated as being an ideal starter pattern. As someone who would like to be able to describe themselves as a designer I would never suggest silk in a beginner pattern. It's just too expensive. I'd also never suggest Rowan's Kidsilk Haze, for example. It's a beautiful yarn, but so hard to work with. Alpaca is also completely inappropriate – it costs too much.

But this doesn't mean that new knitters – or indeed those on a budget – should give up. Substituting yarn is actually very easy, if you know what you're doing.

Quality control
The first thing to understand is that different yarns behave in different ways. From the point of view of knitting, wool and acrylic are pretty much interchangeable. But in use, wool is very warm, breathable and moisture wicking in ways that acrylic can't mimic; this is especially true of merino. So consider how your finished project is going to be used. A lot of winter cycling jerseys are made from merino (or at least a merino blend) because of this material's qualities. An acrylic cycling jersey would be itchy, sweaty and uncomfortable. But a winter sweater will be fine in acrylic.

A good compromise is a wool/acrylic mix. These will be much cheaper than a pure wool; they're also very easy to knit with so ideal for a beginner.

Cotton is a very difficult yarn to switch. It's tough and hardwearing, it's warm in winter and cooling in summer. It also gives exceptional stitch definition. Neither wool nor acrylic can really match it, so your best bet is to find a cheaper manufacturer. This is eminently possible.

I recently found a free pattern for a stunning picnic blanket. It was a Rowan pattern and if I'd used the yarn suggested it would have cost more than £200. Given that I could buy a picnic blanket from Primark for about a fiver, that's rather expensive. So instead I went to my favourite substitute manufacturer: Rico. This German yarnmaker creates lovely yarns at a fraction of the cost of many other companies. Wherever possible I use Rico yarns instead of Rowan or Debbie Bliss. Using Rico Essentials Cotton I saved more than £100.

Again, using a mix would have saved me even more. An acrylic/cotton mix would have had all the properties of cotton but cost much less. It's also a good way to illustrate my frustration with Rowan. The manufacturer does a very nice mix called All Seasons Cotton, but then so does James C Brett, Cotton On. The latter is less than half the cost (around £2 per ball) of the former (around £5).

Can you tell the difference? The one on the left is James C Brett's
On Cotton. It costs £2 per ball and is a cotton/acrylic mix.
On the right is Rowan's All Seasons Cotton.
Another cotton/acrylic mix, it costs about £5.

Some yarns you simply can't match. Silk and linen would examples of these. This doesn't mean you can't substitute them. It just means you have to accept that you're going to lose the qualities of these yarns. Silk, for example, is wonderfully light and iridescent. It's a beautiful yarn to work with and I've never found a man-made substitute that comes close, though several acrylics try. A shawl made in this material will have certain properties that the same shawl made in wool won't have. But this doesn't mean that the wool shawl – or even an acrylic one – won't be as lovely as the silk one.

Tension headache
Pretty much the most important thing to remember when substituting yarn is tension. All patterns should give a gauge. This will be the number of stitches/rows per 10cm using the yarn and needle size suggested. You'll then be advised to use a smaller or larger needle – depending on the tightness of your tension – to achieve that gauge.

Gauge is a very personal thing and will depend on what type of knitter you are. If you knit tightly then your gauge will will smaller than average; if you knit loosely it will be larger. Changing needle size is one way of adjusting this. So if you tend to knit loosely, changing down a needle size from that suggested (for example from 4.5mm to 4mm) could result in the right tension. Conversely, if you knit tightly go up a needle size – or even two if need be.

The other option is to change the thickness (known as weight) of the yarn. Maybe try a 4-ply instead of double knit if you knit particularly loosely. This choice actually isn't the best. Changing the weight of the yarn will change the look of the final project much more than changing the size of the needle. This option works better for items like blankets in which the final size isn't that crucial.

When substituting a yarn you should always read the ball band. This will give you the suggested needle size and gauge. Keep in mind that this might not be the same as that given in the pattern as a designer might be trying to achieve a certain look that requires a tighter or looser tension. However, matching the information given on the ball band as closely as possible will help you achieve the gauge in the pattern, even if you do need to adjust your needle size.

You should always make a tension square, but this is
especially true when substituting yarns.
Remember to block your square, too.

With things like blankets and shawls gauge isn't that important, and I recently bought a chunky yarn to make a blanket that called for an aran. I'll just use the needle size given on the ball band and won't bother with a tension square – in this case I know what I've got will be much bigger than the size given. But it's a blanket so it really doesn't matter. Think about it: who's going to argue with getting a bigger blanket?

This isn't true of items of clothing, which we want to fit properly. In this case, you need to make sure that your alternative yarn has the same gauge.

Let's assume that you're making an item of clothing for which the sizing is important: a jumper that you want to fit. The sweater is made in a 4-ply alpaca yarn. This is really quite expensive and making it would set you back more than £50 – much more than buying something similar in Marks and Sparks. So you want to make the project in acrylic or lamb's wool. Neither of these materials will exactly mimic the properties of alpaca, which is famously lightweight, moisture wicking, warm in cool temperatures and cool in warm.

These properties aren't significant, though, and you just want to make a nice sweater. The first thing to do is look at all the 4-ply yarns available to you. A little practice will make you better at this. For example, if the pattern calls for alpaca, it only takes a few attempts to realise that cotton won't make a good substitute. So once you've discounted anything that won't work you can look at those that might. For this project you should be looking for a pure wool that comes up with a similar gauge on a similar needle size. The rest can be adjusted using different needle sizes.

My best friend’s wedding

My best friend is getting hitched, and I want to make her something. A stunning Shetland wedding ring shawl would be just the thing

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The wedding ring shawl is an incredibly
intricate piece that is likely to take a long
time to complete.

My best friend is getting married in July. This is pretty special news. We’ve known each other for more than 13 years, helped each other through some pretty tough times and laughed and partied through some really good times. On a more political note, she’s gay, so this is the first time in history in this country that she’s been able to legally marry the person she loves. This is something we straight people have taken for granted for centuries and I actually well up thinking about how long it’s taken for equality to win out.

But this post isn’t about inequality and homophobia; instead it’s going to be about something much nicer: wedding presents. The Chap and I already bought the happy couple their ‘proper’ present – a trip to a dolphin research centre in the United States. But, as a crafter, I want to make something too.

I’m absolutely fascinated by the Shetland wedding ring shawls. These gorgeous, intricate lacework pieces are said to be so fine they can pass through a wedding ring. They are absolutely stunning, and one of the best examples I’ve been able to find is available from Heirloom Knitting.

These shawls are not for the faint hearted. This project is described as being for “the ultra-skilled knitter[, it] requires time, concentration and patience”. The wedding is in July, so, based on that description, I’m pretty sure I won’t have the shawl finished in time – especially as I haven’t even bought the pattern yet, and at the moment I can’t. Due to illness, the guys at Heirloom Knitting are taking a break and the site is closed to orders. I’ve emailed to ask when it might be open, but that’s something of an impossible question to answer.

The pattern is by Sharon Miller, who has got several other stunning patterns on Ravelry. However there’s no way of contacting her direct so I can’t get the pattern that way.

These shawls are not for the faint hearted; the project is described as being for “the ultra-skilled knitter[, it] requires time, concentration and patience”

I’ve spent some serious time searching Ravelry and Google for patterns, but I’ve not found any I like as much as this one. Sharon has taken traditional Shetland stitches and incorporated them into a truly beautiful design. If I’m going to spend more than £20 on a pattern and invest a whole chunk of my time and effort, then I want a pattern that I love, and I do love this one. So I guess I’m going to have to wait till HK is back up and running. Fingers crossed that it isn’t too long.

Musings: why fantasy got ‘gritty’

Inspired by reading Aeon’s Gate, some thoughts on traditional fantasy being stuck in a rut and why it had to change

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The book that started it all.

This isn’t a review. I don’t like to review books that are part of a series until I’ve read the whole set. I don’t think it’s fair to put my thoughts down before I’ve got the whole picture, as it were. So this more some initial thoughts on Sam Sykes’s book Tome of the Undergates, first in the Aeon’s Gate trilogy, and more general musings on the genre.

I’ve loved fantasy ever since first reading Raymond E Feist’s Magician when I was about 10. But it seems to me that traditionally fantasy has been rather, well, traditional. I don’t know if it’s something to do with the genre itself or if fantasy authors and readers are just resistant to change, but since Tolkien it seems that the genre has stuck with certain ways of doing things.

There tend to be three main races: humans, elves and dwarves. Of these only humans have any kind of diversity. Elves are always good, beautiful, sophisticated and forest dwelling. Dwarves live in caves, are bearded, industrious and axe wielding. Their evil counterparts are orcs (sometimes replaced by dark elves) and goblins, respectively. And these races are always evil. Only humans can be either, and even then it’s pretty uncomplicated. You’re either good through and through (think Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings) or thoroughly bad (Grima Wormtongue).

Fantasy was a boy stuck in his teenage years, where everything is black and white, girls are some terrifying ‘Other’ and any kind of diversity or ambiguity is scary

Magicians tend to be one of two types. Either old men (Gandalf) or youngsters whose bookish ways have left them weak. They would have been bullied by the bigger boys, all except one who befriended and championed him and grows up to be the hero warrior (Pug and Thomas in the aforementioned Magician, Raistlin and his brother Caramon in Dragonlance).

You’ll notice that I’ve only used the male pronoun. This is because women don’t feature much in traditional fantasy. They’re mothers, sisters or daughters. They might facilitate the hero, but they are never themselves the protagonist. In more than 1,000 pages, The Lord of the Rings has three female characters. Galadriel and Arwen pretty much do nothing. Eowyn is more interesting, but even she has to pretend to be a man in order to achieve anything.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Fantasy was a boy stuck in his teenage years, where everything is black and white, girls are some terrifying ‘Other’ and any kind of diversity or ambiguity is scary. Things had to change – it was time fantasy grew up.

With his New Crobuzon books, the wonderful China Mieville just invented a whole new genre – a kind of steampunk urban fantasy. But there has also emerged a more realistic type of fantasy – something that turns the genre on its head. I credit George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series as the initiator of this.

Shades of grey
Suddenly things weren’t quite so cut and dried. Good people did bad things or had bad things happen to them (who could forget Eddard Stark’s fate?), bad people didn’t necessarily get their comeuppance, women actually had a part to play. Characters could be morally ambiguous - they didn’t all choose a side and stick to it. And you really shouldn’t get too attached to any of the characters because you simply don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

As well as GRRM, writers of this brand of fantasy include Britain’s Joe Abercrombie and Americans Peter V Brett, Mark Lawrence and Brent Weeks.

This new, grittier fantasy turned the old tropes upside down and inside out. It’s also often really rather violent, leading to the use of the term ‘grimdark’. I think this was originally meant to be disparaging but proponents of the sub-genre have embraced it.

If I had to identify one thing I don't
like about these books it would be the
cover art. But I'm reading them
on a Kindle so that's not really important.

So back to the book that started all this musing: Sam Sykes’s Tome of the Undergates. I’m not sure if this is grimdark, but it has all the characteristics. Moral ambiguity; characters with complex reasons for behaving the way they do; violence, lots of violence in fact; it’s dark and gritty and full of things like murder, betrayal and bad things happening. It’s also great fun, has some wonderfully crude humour and some stunningly beautiful descriptions.

I downloaded the book because I follow Sam Sykes on Twitter. I think that if you follow an author and find them entertaining then the least you can do is buy one of their books. This does have its drawbacks. What if you like the author on Twitter but end up not liking the book? This happened to me with Mary Robinette Kowal. She’s lovely on Twitter but I just didn’t get on with her book, Shades of Milk and Honey. Luckily that didn’t happen here, and I really like this book. In fact since I started writing this rather long blog post I’ve finished both Tome of the Undergates and the second book and made a good start on the third and final installation, The Skybound Sea. I also bought the first book for my dad.

The problem is that I’ve started Twitter stalking Mr Sykes, sending him @replies like we’re friends, when clearly we’re not. He hasn’t blocked me or anything, so I guess it’s not that bad. But I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise, anyway. Also, if you’re on Twitter follow him, he’s @SamSykesSwears.

Organisation - how am I doing?

Back in February I wrote a post about organising my time better. I wanted more time to do the things I enjoy, while getting on with things like cleaning; I had four areas I wanted to improve on: organisation, blogging, Spanish and designing. We're about halfway through the year (yes really), so how am I doing?

Errands is a great way to get organised.

1 An organised flat
Using an app called Errands, I've been planning my evenings so that I do a small amount of cleaning and tidying every day. This worked so well. My flat has been a joy to live in. My mum has come over a couple of times this year. Normally this would involve two or three days prior to her visit spent in frantic cleaning mode. Not this year. The flat was already clean and tidy.

2 Blogging
I've managed to stick to my schedule of three posts a week, with the only breaks being when I've been away and when I was ill. I'm happy with that. I know I could schedule blogs for when I'm away, but I really don't feel the need to.

3 Spanish
Yeah, totally failed on this one. I started off well – doing Mi Vida Loca on the BBC website once a week and with plans to sign up for the next language course offered by HALS (Haringey Adult Learning Services). But then I missed the enrollment date for the course and the rest just slipped. I will pick it up again, but probably not until at least September now.

4 Design
Another success! I've been designing for knitting and crochet and I've even managed to get a pattern published.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with myself. I've managed to hit three of my four goals, I'm a whole lot less stressed and I feel like my evenings are my own.

Making money from your knitting

Last week I concluded that it’s probably best to not try to make money by selling your knitted products. But of course that isn’t the full story. So how might you go about making your knitting pay?

1 Sell your patterns
The best way to make money is to design and sell your own patterns. There are lots of knitting and crochet magazines in the UK and more across Europe and in the US. There are also online magazines, but beware of these as a lot of websites don’t pay.

You’ll need to be able to write your patterns in a clear and concise way, so you’ll need to be very familiar with the standard abbreviations and knitting ‘language’. Different magazines will probably have different conventions so it’s worth getting style guides from them all. Email commissioning or technical editors and find out what each magazine looks for in a pattern and then try to match your skills to that.

The growth of self-publishing means that you can even publish your own pattern books for a fraction of the cost of a traditional book. eBooks are great – a whole pattern book that is conveniently stored on your phone or tablet. But keep quality in mind. If you can’t provide decent, colour photos and well-written copy then this might be one to avoid.

2 Knit small things
The big problem with selling knitted items is the time it takes to make anything. This isn’t the case with, for example, baby booties and hats. Make a matching set, put them all in a tissue-paper-filled box and, hey presto, you’ve got a saleable item! If you then manage to build a reputation for high-quality knitted babywear, you’ll soon be able to charge more for bigger or more complicated items like blankets or clothing.

This cute hat and bootie set hardly took
any time at all to make.

3 Knit for other people
Designers need pattern testers. You’ll need to be fast and highly skilled, but if you think you fit the bill then try contacting some designers to see how much they pay and how much knitting is expected of you.

4 Write about knitting
If you can write, you can make money by providing copy for knitting or crochet magazines. I work on a birding magazine and we get unsolicited feature ideas all the time. Good ones make it into the magazine. You’ve got nothing to lose, so why not jot down some ideas and email all the relevant publications.

How to get free patterns

If you’re anything like me, your pattern book/magazine stash takes up at least as much room as your yarn stash. The cost of all those books and magazines soon adds up. I’ve stopped buying magazines and I generally only get books as presents these days. But there are some ways to source great free patterns.

1 Ravelry
Ravelry is a fantastic site for free patterns. The search facility is excellent, really easy to use and with lots of search terms so you can find exactly what you want. You can also request that only free patterns are displayed, so you don’t have to wade through lots of paid-for ones. This is the search function that every pattern site’s search facility should be judged by. Ravelry should be your go-to place for freebies.

2 Yarn suppliers
These will often provide free patterns to support their yarns. Red Heart is particularly good, with 2,005 free knitting and crochet pattens at the time of writing. Red Heart yarns aren’t available in the UK, but you can usually substitute with something suitable. Designer Yarns (stockists of Debbie Bliss, Noro, Louisa Harding and more) also offers lots of free patterns.

Red Heart's Octagons & Squares Crochet Throw
is a gorgeous free pattern.

3 Craft blogs
Bloggers can be a great resource for free patterns. Established designers will often publicise a new range by offering a free pattern, and you can get hold of patterns by such well-known names as Debbie Bliss. It’s worth following budding designers too, as these will offer free patterns to help get their name out there.

4 Vintage
In the UK, copyright expires after 70 years, so any patterns from before 1943 are copyright free. It’s worth searching for old patterns to see what you can find. This doesn’t mean that all vintage patterns you find on the internet will be free. People can charge what they want for vintage patterns they’re offering on their websites. It does mean, however, that you should always check whether you can download a pattern for free before you part with any cash.

Keep an eye out for pattern books in charity shops too. These won’t be free, obviously, but you can pick up some great bargains.

5 Design your own
This is by far the most fun way of getting free patterns, in my opinion. You also learn lots of new techniques, improve your knitting and end up with a garment that’s totally unique, totally your style and fits perfectly.

This Union Jack iPhone cover is one of several covers I've designed.

How to charge for hand-knitted items

This is something I’ve been thinking about ever since agreeing to knit a baby cardie for a friend to give to a colleague of hers. At the time we agreed she would pay for the materials and buy me dinner, and we’re both happy with that. But I'm not sure if I'll knit any more requests. This doesn’t mean no presents, of course, I love knitting presents.

The bad news is that there is no tried and tested way of setting a fair price for your knitted items. It depends on the materials used, the time taken and how much value you put on your skills, and all of these things can vary by knitter and project. In fact an internet search revealed that discussions on this can get rather heated, with some knitters accusing others of devaluing all knitters by not charging enough.

What are others charging?
So how to arrive at a fair price for your knitted goods? First, a trip to Folksy. A search for ‘hand knitted blanket’ results in two pages of blankets. One of the cheapest I could find was a crib blanket at £11.50. Even in acrylic and quite small – it measures 64x70cm – that can barely have covered the cost of the yarn. This knitter, it would seem, places no value on her or his time and skills. That’s their choice, but it does make difficult for anyone trying to make money from their knits.

At the other end of the scale is the Glen Nevis blanket. Measuring 132x137cm and made from 70% acrylic, 20% alpaca and 10% wool, it costs £160. This blanket is around twice the size of the former, but it costs nearly 14 times as much. This is a knitter who values her time! But do people really pay that much for a blanket?

The method
One easy formula is add up the cost of materials, labour (ie your time), overheads and any profit you want to make. This is the wholesale cost. Multiply by two to get your retail price.

Let’s pretend I was going to sell the baby cardie. Please note that you’re not actually allowed to make a profit using someone else’s pattern; you can only charge for your time and the materials. I’m just using this as an example.

It's a nice cardie, but how much is it really worth?

The materials came to £20, there were no overheads, but this could include things like postage stamps and envelopes, rent, machinery and so on. Time was 25 hours. The only advice I could find on what to charge for your time was to ensure you don’t go below minimum wage, which is £6.19 in the UK. That works out at £154.75. So even without adding in any profit, the retail price (ie the materials and labour multiplied by two) is nearly £350. That’s somewhat overpriced for a cardie, especially when you can get one from Next for £8.

Another method is to ask for three or four times the cost of the materials, but even so this would be £60 or £80. Is that a fair price for something so small that will probably only be used for three months? Probably not. On the other hand, if we take a price of £80, subtracting £20 for the materials, this gives an hourly rate of £2.40. Is that a fair price for someone’s time and effort? Again, probably not.

It would seem that the best advice I could give to someone who wants to start knitting for a living would be: don’t do it!

How to read more and pay less

The coming of the Kindle and other eReaders prompted predictions of the imminent death of publishing. Predictably, this didn’t happen, and in fact most people I know who have Kindles are reading more than ever – I certainly am.

There are also many more books out there to choose from. eReaders have led to a veritable explosion in self-publishing. Of course this does mean there’s a lot more dross to wade through, but it also means there are lots and lots more diamonds to find.

I’m a huge fan of my Kindle. I love that I can finish a book in a series and in seconds be reading the next one. I love that there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of out-of-copyright books that can be downloaded for free. I love that self-publishing is opening up new avenues for both writers and readers. And I love that reading all those books doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

Twitter
Are you on Twitter? Then get following @FreebooksUK. This feed tracks and lists free ebooks on Amazon. Follow the link, read the synopsis and if you’re interested download it for free.

A lot of these books are by indie authors or the first in a series. So if you enjoy the book, repay the author by buying the next one or by rating the book on Goodreads or Amazon. Writing a short review is even better.

Another good source of cheap books is @eBookDailyUK. This account tracks reduced price and occasionally free titles on Amazon. Unlike FreebooksUK, it often includes bestsellers.

Project Gutenberg
This project is really quite amazing – tens of thousands of free books that have been digitised by an army of volunteers and uploaded so that you can download and read them. All the book here are out of copyright, so it’s a great source for classics.

If you use the resource often you might want to consider donating or volunteering some of your time.

Amazon
Of course Amazon itself is a great resource, with books for £2.99 or less, as well as seasonal sales.

So there's my tips for some ways to get hold of cheap and free books. What resources do you use?

Inspiring things

Do you ever look at those designers who just keep on turning out stunning, make-me-now designs and wonder where they get their ideas? Or think you'd love to design your own knits but can't find the inspiration?

Well the truth is that inspiration is all around you. There are the obvious ones, like the fashion industry and nature, but there are plenty of others that you might not have thought of. Here are some ways I find inspiration.

1 Other crafts
Pinterest is a great source for this. Obviously you already follow all the knitting boards you can you find, but what about, say, quilters? I've Pinned a whole load of beautiful quilts that I'm going to try to recreate using crochet.

This is one of the quilts I've Pinned. I think a mix of plain and
varigated yarn would work well to recreate the different colours.

2 The patterns all around us
The human mind is programmed to see patterns, to make sense of all the huge amounts of data that we experience every day. Take note of the things you see, the patterns your mind provides for you. It can be anything – the embossing on kitchen roll to create a lace pattern or using coloured tiles as the inspiration for an afghan.

3 Your favourite clothes
This is a great one if you're new to designing. You already know your favourite clothes fit, so all you have to do is measure them, and then try to recreate them.

4 Your favourite knitting patterns
Another one that's good for beginners. Try adapting a project you've already made and love – swap that V neck on a favourite sweater pattern for round neckline, remove a ribbed hem or cuffs and have that rolled-up effect that stocking stitch gives you, or anything else you can think of. This kind of adaptation can be as bold or as small as you like. Keep copyright in mind, though. Be inspired by other designers, don't steal from them.

This was my first-ever design, based on a pattern from Simply Knitting.

5 TV
The Killing's Sarah Lund must have inspired hundreds of knitting patterns. And she's not the only one – there are loads of TV series that showcase great knitwear. Shetland had some really cosy jumpers, hats and gloves, which period dramas are a great source of vintage inspiration.

The BBC's Shetland, which has been green lit for another
series, was a fabulous source for ideas.

Well that's my top five for ideas. Where do you get inspiration?

Thrifty finds

I do love a bargain, and recently I’ve managed to pick up a few I’m quite proud of. I was ultra-excited last week when we had our first warm(ish) days of the year. Not just because it was the first time in months that going outside didn’t reduce me to tears – although that did play a big part – but also because it was the first time it was warm enough to wear my new coat. It’s a gorgeous fake fur and corduroy 70s-style extravaganza that I adore and can’t wait to wear more of. I picked it up in a local Cancer Research shop for under a tenner. I’ll be getting some outsized sunglasses and flowers for my hair to complete the look, obviously.

Still waiting for that warm day to wear this again.
Hopefully this weekend?

I also found a lovely knitted lace top/dress, originally from Oasis, but again discovered in a charity shop. It’s gold with a sparkly gold thread running through it and should look great over jeans with a T-shirt underneath or worn as a dress with a slip underneath.

It's a friend's birthday party soon.
The ideal time to break this one out, I think!

My final thrifty find is for the kitchen. I’ve been struggling with a very old and mostly blunt knife set for a while now – I had to give up buying squashes because I couldn’t actually cut them. So when a multi-coloured set complete with perspex block from Jean Patrique came up for sale I didn’t hesitate. It’s currently advertised on the company’s site for just over £200, but I got it for under £20. I’m not entirely sure how they can offer such huge savings, maybe it’s a loss leader for enticing customers to the website and then getting them to buy other items at full cost.

Arty shot of my new pretty knives!

Five fave blogs

Now that I’m organising my time better, I’ve found I’ve more time for reading blogs. I tend to read a mix of ‘official’ ones from magazines authors and the like and personal ones by individuals just like me. Well, probably not just like me. Anyway, here I’m going to list just five of my favourite personal ones.

1 A Thrifty Mrs
This is the blog that got me organised. I think I found it via Twitter – I followed someone who followed Mrs Thrifty, and a well-timed retweet got me following Mrs T and from there I found the blog. The posts are well written and interesting, and I’ve had great fun adapting her advice to my life.

2 Jenny and the Magic Feather
This was another Twitter discovery (isn’t Twitter great?). Jenny’s blog is very personal and very eclectic, from a round-up of her favourite things in the month to baking to crafts, and more. She also designs uber-pretty blogs which make me want to learn things like CSS.

3 Plot Driven
In the interests of full disclosure, the author of this blog is a friend of mine, so when I say she’s erudite, witty, interesting and awfully pretty I might be biased. Seriously, though, this is a very readable blog about books. Ashlea’s love of books in general, and Jane Austen in particular, is evident in every post. I hate book snobbery and you’ll find none here at all – every book is taken on its own merit.

4 Knithacker
This is a photo-based blog of awesome knits. All knitters should follow it.

5 Bald Monkey Seen a Bird
This is a blog I found through my day job. It’s easiest the funniest birding blog you will ever read. The birding top trumps post is pure genius. You don’t have to be a birder to read it, in fact it’s probably best if you’re not.

So there it is – a round-up of five blogs I love. What blogs do you read and recommend?

Why knitting groups are so important

World Wide Knit in Public Day is a great way of getting
knitters together. Photo from commons.wikimedia.org.

Every knitter should have a knitting group. They’re an essential part of knitting life, offering support, friendship and even a link back to knitters of old.

In fact, knitting groups have played quite a big role in my life in the last few years. About three and a half years ago I broke up with my then boyfriend and moved out of the flat we’d been living in. I moved into a a new place in Harringay. I didn’t know anyone in the area and I was living alone. There were times when I got incredibly lonely. Until I had the great idea of finding a knitting group. Using Ravelry I managed to track down a group in Stroud Green, a short tube ride away.

We met once a week on a Thursday night in a pub, first at The Noble and later The Stapleton. The group started off rather sedately, as you might imagine a knitting group to be. We knitted, we chatted, we drank a couple of glasses of wine. It escalated, and we were soon ending up a local late-night bar and struggling into work the next day with serious hangovers. We also started seeing each other at weekends. The ‘core’ members of that group are now some of my closest friends and they helped me get through some incredibly tough times.

These days I spend as much time in Walthamstow as I do Harringay so I wanted to find another group. Back to Ravelry I went. There was a Walthmstow Knitters group, but no meet up. A couple of forum posts later and a meet was organised. The group has met twice now, the people are all lovely and we’ve got lots more interest from Ravelry. The next meeting is at The Bell on 18 March, for anyone who’s around.

I honestly believe that these groups are an important part of knitting. They provide friendship, but more than that, they mean that we’re not knitting in isolation. We can offer each other support and advice, talk about our projects, get ideas for the next project, share tips on the best yarn stores, both brick and online, learn how to be better knitters and so on and so on.

I like to think that by meeting up in this way we’re carrying on a tradition of fisher wives knitting together while their husbands were out on their boats. Fishing back then was an incredibly risky business, and these early knitting groups provided a support network for worried wives. They’re also how many traditional knitting styles, such as guernsey, came about, with family patterns passed down from mother to daughter.

Toronto ladies gather to knit for World War I soldiers in 1914.
Photo from commons.wikimedia.org.

To do list for 2013

I don’t believe in making resolutions. It seems to me that they’re generally nebulous things made on the spur of the moment without much thought as to why they’re being made or how to achieve them, and that’s just setting yourself up for failure. You resolve to ‘lose weight’, but do you think about why? Is your weight actually unhealthy? Or would you be better off toning up a bit or trying to eat more fruit and veg? How much do you want to lose? How are you going to do it? What are your actual goals?

I do, however, believe in making lists. Lists keep me organised. They’re concrete and goal orientated. They concentrate my thinking so that if I put something on a list then I can be sure I’ll do it. So here is a list of things I want to achieve this year.

1 Use my time more productively
There are four things I want to achieve with this: a clean and tidy flat; more time for blogging/writing in general; consolidate my Spanish learning from last year; and more time for designing.

The Errands app is going to help
me get organised.

I was inspired to this by reading a series of organisational posts on the A Thrifty Mrs blog. I’ve already taken much of her advice and put it to good use. By thinking about what I want to do every evening I get more done. Last Thursday, for example, I’d had a workout, cleaned the shower, dusted my bookshelves and vacuumed, all before sitting down for dinner at 7. This meant I felt totally justified to watch Utopia and My Mad Fat Diary back to back, while knitting of course.

By planning out my evenings I seem to have loads more time and my flat is already looking much more spic and span than it ever has done. So far I've been planning on a day-by-day basis – every morning I write a list of any shopping I might need, the cleaning I want to do that evening, even the TV shows I want to watch. But I'm starting to plan further in advance – scheduling weekly, fortnightly and even monthly tasks. To help with this I downloaded an app called Errands, which allows you to create different folders for every aspect of your life and add tasks, along with due dates and times and a little box you can check when the task is complete. So far it's been pretty awesome.

2 Blog/write more regularly
Last year I tried to blog once a week. I did this for a while and then fell behind, so much so that there was a five-month gap between posts. This is not the way to get a healthy blog readership. This year I want to post three times a week.

This might seem ambitious given that I couldn’t even stay on top of once a week, but with goal 1 already working well, I have found I’ve got more time in the evenings and if I do just 15 minutes of writing every weekday lunch time that’s one hour 15 minutes’ writing time. That’s a lot of blogging. I could assign one of those 15-minute slots to other writing – fiction, patterns, and so on – and get plenty done without even breaking into evening time.

3 Improve my Spanish
I took a beginners’ course in Spanish last year and loved it. I want to carry on. However, I missed the enrolment date for the next course. There’s another later in the year, and the new organised me will not miss it.

Mi Vida Loca is a Spanish-language course from the BBC.
It's actually quite fun to do and gives lots of vocab.

In the meantime, I’m going to type up my notes from last year’s classes to help anchor them in my mind and do the BBC’s Mi Vida Loca.

4 More time for design
In a way, of course, I’m designing all the time – I’m getting ideas and inspiration from anything and everything I encounter, saving stitch patterns, making sketches, or just tucking things away in my mind for future reference. But I need to be more focused.

At the moment I just design things on an adhoc basis, just because that’s how I feel, with no recourse to season or fashion. Not that I want to be totally led by these things, part of the point of designing my own stuff is that I get to do what I want, but it can only help to keep in mind what people and magazines might actually want at particular times of the year. Designing a knitted dress in the run up to spring/summer probably isn’t the best idea, for example, but something in russets and browns for autumn could be great.

More time for more of this please!

How will I achieve all these things? By staying organised, by properly allocating my time to the various tasks I want to get done and by sticking to this schedule. I will of course update you on my progress – or lack thereof.

The high street unchained

HMV's flagship store in Oxford Street. Photo by
Edward (commons.wikimedia.org).

The loss of high street stores HMV, Blockbusters and Jessops is sad news, especially for the thousands of employees who find themselves out of work. General belief seems to be that these - along with Woolworths - may be the first to go, but they certainly won't be the last. The internet and supermarkets simply have too much power - economies of scale mean they can offer products at ever-cheaper prices and stock pretty much everything you could ever want, and in the case of internet shopping at any time day or night.

One of the big questions is what this might mean for our high streets. As more chains fail, will our towns be overtaken by endless charity shops, bookmakers, mobile phone shops and pound shops? A few years ago there was something of an outcry about ghost towns and clone towns - town centres abandoned as shoppers move to out-of-town malls and retail parks or high streets that look exactly the same wherever you might be. The authors of that study can hardly have known just how accurate their predictions might be.

A different way
But does it really have to be like that? Back in the deep and distant past, the first video-rental shop my parents were a member of was a small, independent store. It was killed off by the likes of Blockbuster, and, no doubt, the advent of cheap videos in chains like HMV. Could it be that the loss of national chain stores will open the way for small independent shops to rise again? If, as predicted, more chains will go, it will leave behind a vacuum that will be filled one way or another.

It won't be easy. If the internet can see off national, (once) successful household names like HMV, then it can certainly beat off competition from an indie. But difficult doesn't have to mean impossible, and a savvy indie can survive, and even - dare I say it? - be successful. Running an independent store these days is very different from back when I used to visit that video-rental place. For one thing to make a success of things now requires a pretty high-profile web presence. And that doesn't just mean having a nice-looking website. No, today customer engagement is also about Twitter, Facebook, blogging, eNewsletters and more. It's about using all these (often free) platforms to keep your customers' attention.

In my little corner of north London there are knitting shops Nest (Crouch End) and Knit With Attitude (Stoke Newington) as well as bookshops the Big Green Bookshop (Wood Green) and the Stoke Newington Bookshop (unsurprisingly Stoke Newington again). Further afield is Cambridge's The Sheep Shop, another knitting shop. All of these outlets have several things in common. Firstly they're all active online - blogging, tweeting, Facebooking or keeping customers aware of their goings-on via newsletters.

Knit With Attitude in Stoke Newington, London.
Photo by Knit With Attitude.

Customer service
Any shop, online or on the high street, can sell you a ball of wool, some needles and a pattern book, and you can bet that Amazon, eBay or Tesco can do it more cheaply than most. But can Amazon, eBay or Tesco tell a beginner knitter what makes a good starter project? Or advise on which yarn to substitute for the lovely but pricey Debbie Bliss Cashmerino? Or extol the virtues of circular needles over straights? I can, and I'm sure the ladies at Nest, Knit With Attitude and The Sheep Shop can too.

Similarly, a while a go I happened to mention to one of the owners of The Big Green Bookshop that I was waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the next book in George RR Martin's opus A Song of Fire and Ice. He suggested I read Joe Abercrombie. Some few years later I've read every book Abercrombie's published and he's one of my favourite authors. Think you'd get that kind of service from Tesco? Yes, Amazon has recommendations, but sometimes they seem so random that the criteria is nothing more than Hey! You bought a book, here are some more books! It also can't distinguish between items bought for oneself and those bought for friends or family. So my Amazon account is currently trying to offer me CDs similar to Michael Buble (bought for my mum), Frank Sinatra (my dad) and Twisted Sister (my brother).

Don't get me wrong. I use Amazon. I bought the majority of last year's Christmas presents there. The choice is phenomenal and the prices right. I can't get the CDs my brother wants for the same price anywhere else. I can even get everything delivered straight to my parents' house so I don't have to lug is all from London to Cambridge. But I suspect - although I don't have any evidence - that brand loyalty to these 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' emporia is pretty non-existent. If eBay or Tesco can provide the same products cheaper or quicker then we'll go there. The only thing that keeps us from swapping more regularly is inertia.

Amazon can offer choice and cheap, what it can't offer is personal service. And it's that that breeds brand loyalty. Find a local store staffed by real people who know their product and loyalty will follow. If you know you'll get great service, wouldn't you be willing to stump up a bit more cash or go a bit out of your way?

Stoke Newington Bookshop, London. Photo by
Tony Corsini (commons.wikimedia.org).

Belonging
There's another 'C' that Amazon, Tesco and the like can't offer: community. This is especially significant in London, but I think it’s important everywhere, even the sleepiest of villages. I’ve lived in London for nearly 13 years, and in that time I’ve lived in five different boroughs. The only time I’ve ever felt like I belonged to a community has been in the last three years and part of that is because I joined two knitting groups and one book group. One of the knitting groups was at a pub, the other two meetings were organised by and took place in shops.

All of the stores I’ve mentioned above run various meetings, classes and activities, making themselves important parts of their local community while also helping to create that community, that sense of belonging to something that is missing from so much of modern life. Another example would be Theatre of Wine in Greenwich, with its wine club and monthly tastings and knowledgeable staff.

What I’m advocating is a return to a time when retail was career that imparted knowledge and skills, when staff and managers understood what they were selling and could offer well-thought-out advice, when customer service was important and staff were invested and interested in what they did. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? But it could work.

• Many thanks to Charlie Moores (Talking Naturally), Annie Martin (Annie Sparkles) and others on Twitter and Facebook for comments and thoughts.

In which I’m impressed by customer service

The voucher in question.

About four years ago, my then boyfriend’s parents bought me a very generous present of a £30 voucher to spend at Stash Fine Yarns. I wanted to save it for something I really wanted, and because I’m rather forgetful this meant I ended up not buying anything. For years.

Then a few weeks ago I decided I wanted some really nice laceweight yarns. I’ve been thinking about designing lace shawls and wanted a yarn that would be really special for the new designs. An internet search revealed that Stash stocks some gorgeous silk and merino wool blend lace by Fyberspates, in absolutely beautiful colours. I wanted it. In at least two colourways.

It was time to use the voucher. It was at least four years old, but there was no date on it. The voucher was one of those ones with a code on to input when you get to the checkout. So I placed my order, entered my code and clicked ‘go’. It didn’t work. I tried again. It didn’t work. I was about to give up - the voucher was out of date, it was my own fault for not using it sooner.

But then I decided I really had nothing to lose by emailing Stash. So I did. And I quickly got a reply: could I scan the voucher and email images of it? I could and I did. Proof received that I really did have the voucher and the code was set up to work again. I ordered two hanks of Fyberspates Scrumptious and I will very shortly be designing a new lace shawl. I’ve already charted out the stitch pattern.

So thank you, people at Stash. I love the yarn I’ve bought with that voucher and I’ll definitely be using you again.

The yarn. Gorgeous Scrumptious Lace
from Fyberspates.

What if meat were no longer murder?

Will cows soon be safe from the meat industry?

I’ve not eaten meat for 26 years, so it was with some interest that a few weeks ago I read an article in the Guardian Weekend magazine about ‘fake’ meat and how scientists are looking into ways to make it more ‘meaty’. The feature is now on the Guardian’s website.

Two means of making fake meat were discussed. The first was pretty uncontroversial: using plant material to synthesise meat, much the same as Quorn today but actually tasting and - crucially - feeling like meat. I can’t actually remember the taste and texture of meat, but I understand that any replacement meat products currently on the market don’t come close.

Well, I say uncontroversial, but that’s not so to the many companies making millions from producing and selling the real thing. To them this research is highly problematic. But not from a moral standpoint. The second method, however, is more complicated.

In the future we could all be eating meat grown in test tubes.

This involves in-vitro meat - flesh grown in test tubes. Take a pig, or a cow, or any animal for that matter, kill it and, using stem cells, grow some meat. It’s obviously a lot more complex than that, involving all sorts of science magic. It also requires killing an animal. But, the article says, one animal “could provide the seed material for hundreds of tonnes of meat”. This is obviously much better than is currently the case - about 1,600 mammals and birds are slaughtered PER SECOND for human consumption, according the Guardian.

According to this Time article, the average person in the industrialised world eats around 176lbs of meat a year. There are 2,204 pounds in a tonne. So just one tonne of in-vitro meat would feed 12 people for a year. Hundreds of tonnes would feed thousands. One animal for thousands of people doesn’t sound like too bad odds (unless you happen to be that animal).

The in-vitro process seems to somehow remove the act of killing from the production of the meat - that cow can’t possibly have anything to do with those lab-grown steaks can it? And it certainly answers the environmental questions. But is it enough? For me, no. I want to see a process in which no animal is harmed.

What if that were possible? What if, instead of killing the cow, scientists could just administer a local anaesthetic and chop out the bit they need? Patch the cow up and send it on its merry way. They could ‘borrow’ animals used for other industries - dairy cattle, sheep or goats raised for their wool and so on. The environmental arguments against the meat industry are again safely rebutted, so what about the moral issues? The animals are no longer harmed and there’s no need for factory or intensive farming; in fact the few animals that were bred for meat production could live in the lap of luxury.

Guilt-free steak?

It seems I would no longer have a reason to be vegetarian. I’m still not sure I’d want to eat the meat though. Why? I’m not entirely sure. Its provenance doesn’t bother me, although I’m sure it would worry many people. I think that, after 26 years of not eating the stuff, the idea of ingesting flesh just doesn’t appeal. That said, I’d happily eat the plant-derived stuff, even if the taste and texture were exactly the same as the in-vitro version.

Social media and self-promotion

I’m absolutely fascinated by social media. I have my own Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest accounts, as well as running the Birdwatch ones for work. In all I must spend several hours a day on such sites.

I think they’re a fantastic resource - for news, contacts, promotion, sharing, information, pretty much everything, in fact. The power of Twitter was demonstrated to me in a quite personal way recently. When I got into work a few weeks ago (23 May) I checked the Birdwatch Twitter feed as I always do. I discovered a link to a blog post about Defra planning on awarding a shooting estate (or estates) nearly £400,000 in taxpayers’ money to use in ‘controlling’ Common Buzzard nests. This ‘control’ could include nest destruction and almost certainly would have led to birds being killed - Common Buzzard has only recently recovered in this country, previously being almost lost (mostly due to persecution from shooting estates).

The Idoru Knits Twitter page. Come follow me!

After a bit of research, we published the story on the Birdwatch website. We were the first ‘official’ news source to do so, beating both the BBC and RSPB. This was a moment of some pride for me. But what was even better was the groundswell of support on Twitter and beyond. The public was outraged and they weren’t afraid to show it. Major newspapers and the BBC picked up the story. Birdwatch had its busiest day ever on its website, with traffic coming from Twitter, Facebook and searches for ‘Common Buzzard’ or ‘buzzard’. As well as the news story, we also produced a downloadable letter that users could then adapt and send to their MPs. The outcome was that only days later Defra changed its mind.

It’s probably vanity to think Birdwatch - and by extension I - really influenced any this, but it does feel good to have had some part in it. What isn’t in doubt, though, is Twitter’s part in it. This kind of grassroots support has always been there, but without Twitter it was unorganised, fragmented. Another, less admirable example might be the use of BBM by rioters in London last year. Twitter and the like provides free, instant communication with a huge audience, a potential audience of millions, in fact - according to Wikipedia, Twitter had more than 500 million active users by April 2012, Facebook had more than 900 million.

The government and its associated departments and organisations (and not just in the UK) still underestimate the power of social media. They don’t understand it and they certainly don’t know how to control it, and this scares them. Defra’s u-turn won’t, I suspect, be the last of its kind. And I love that. I love the fact that the internet, and for the same reason social media, is so very unlegislateable.

Idoru Knits on Facebook.

It’s this grassroots power that makes social media so very important to someone like me. With my various social media activities I can reach many millions of people, and all for free. I enjoy knitting and crochet and I want to make some money out of selling both what I make and the patterns. I haven’t got the money to open a shop or run marketing campaigns in craft magazines. Instead I have to rely on self-promotion.

Think about it: as of today (18 July 2012) I have 130 followers on Twitter. If I tweet a link to my latest blog post and five of my followers retweet it and then five followers of each of them retweet and then five of each of them and so on, just 10 steps would mean that 61,035,155 people had retweeted me. And if each of those people had at least 100 followers, many, many times more will have seen the tweet. This does assume I’ve done the maths right (I’m pretty sure I have) and that there are no overlaps among all the retweeters (I’m pretty sure there would be). But, still, it’s a gobsmacking amount.

If I’m honest, I don’t really know how harness the power of social media - how is that some Twitter accounts get thousands of followers while others only get tens? Fame helps, obviously, and one way of getting my name known among knitters is to get my designs into the various knitting magazines. So one of my next projects is to contact all the relevant UK titles.

Pinterest is the latest addtion to my social media collection.
So far I'm loving it.

But fame isn’t a prerequisite - there are plenty of non-famous people out there with hundreds and even thousands of followers. A reason to be tweeting must help - in my case this is knitting and crochet design. Being witty or interesting - or ideally both - is also important, and I do try.

I do know that people get very tired very quickly of endless self-promotion. Constant links to ones own blog or Folksy page are just boring - you need to engage and interact. Say something funny, something interesting, something controversial, something important, just say something. Retweet and reply. I’m currently following anyone crafty, and hoping they’ll follow me back.

Other than that, I suspect it’s a combination of just keeping at it: being active, trying to keep it interesting (and mostly on topic) and plain old hanging in there. So I’ll be carrying on with my Tweeting, blogging, Facebooking and Pinning. I hope you’ll all join me for the ride.