b natural. c sharp.

I’ve made it through week 1 of being a long term substitute as an elementary strings teacher. It’s the perfect sub job for me and it’s going to be (and already has been) incredible experience for my resume/teaching in the future. The schools that I’m at are wonderful and the kids are ridiculously talented so that’s a major plus.

Teaching wise it’s sort of like my internship experience but I don’t have a teacher watching my every move - it’s just me and the kids. Every now and then I hear the voice of my first mentor teacher asking nagging questions that I begrudgingly realize I should be asking myself. It was pretty humbling when I started a week early and realized I’m responsible for teaching about 50 third graders how to play with their bows for the very first time. It’s crazy but going really well so far!

The really wonderful thing is while I’m on my own and don’t have anyone judging my every move, I can still turn to their normal teacher (who just had a baby boy!) at any time and tell her about what’s going on or ask her her opinion on how to deal with certain things. Since she knows the kids so well it’s extremely helpful to be able to contact her and get practical advice for that situation. We’ve been emailing back and forth all week.

In my internship it was a lot of talking about how to deal with things that “might” happen and being super critical about what I did and didn’t do so it wasn’t the most comfortable situation. This it so much better - I’ve had the basic training so now I can learn on my own terms through experience, but still seek guidance when I really need it most.

I’ll be working with the kids until the end of January and I’m really looking forward to the days ahead with then. The only bummer is I have to get used to getting up early every day - I am NOT a morning person. =P

As per Donna’s suggestion in her comment, I think I’m going to avoid using patterns for items that I plan to sell from now on. I’ve learned a lot of the skills necessary in creating general items so I should be able to do most of it without instruction and create my own design.

The only negative is that first time projects will be much more time consuming depending on how intricate they are. I’ll just have to make sure to write it down… and if I post it or end up selling the patterns one day, I will encourage everyone to use it as they please. (:

I’ve recently been quite interested in an ongoing debate over copyright and knitting patterns. To sum it up, it’s technically illegal to sell something knit from a pattern without consent from the designer.

The even wackier thing is I think this applies to free patterns that have a copyright note on the bottom… it seems especially silly to be controlling over something you don’t even request money for. I’ll have to look further into this one.

Here’s my view as an avid knitter who likes to make some money on the side: I believe designers absolutely deserve to receive credit and compensation for a pattern. I will happily buy a pattern - somebody took the time and effort to write up instructions to create something beautiful. However, I think it’s equally fair for the knitter, who put their time and skill into making said pattern, to be able to sell the end product.

In my research I stumbled across author/knitter Donna Druchunas’ blog where she basically reiterates my perspective but from a designers point of view. She simply requests that credit is given on the price tag of the item if it’s created from one of her patterns. I’ve only recently started reading up on the debate so it’s nice to see there are people out there who agree with me.

In a lot of instances I will learn how to make a general item from a simple pattern once, then from that point on make it my own with the general instructions in mind. At what point does it become “my idea?” When it comes down to it a hat is a hat, a scarf is a scarf, and so on no matter if you make it from a pattern or not. Furthermore, if I get an idea from a picture and am able to replicate it without reading the pattern is it still copyright infringement?

To ease my conscience, from now on I plan to include a pattern credit on all of my tags. I honestly can’t see myself going out of the way to get special permission everytime I try a new pattern. At least it’s a step in the make-everyone-happy direction.