Happy Wednesday, again!

Last week the girls, my mom and I took a day trip to Rockport, MA. It’s less than an hour there from my mom’s house and we enjoyed lunch out and a walk around the harbor. There are so many cute shops and artsy little places to check out. This is the very famous Motif 1. It’s one of the most photographed places in the world. I was very pleased with this picture as it caught the reflection of the boats in the water!

I played with the panorama setting on my phone finally and took this of the harbor…

And this is looking back down the road that we had just walked up. The little restaurant on the corner looked adorable-maybe next year we will eat there…

Before we left Rockport for the day, I found this awesome hat! I’ve never been a hat person before but I saw this on the mannequin in one of the shop windows and I just loved it. My mom purchased it for me and it’s going to Hawaii with me in August! I had it on at the pool yesterday and it took about 67 tries to get a decent selfie but here it is…

This week I finished sewing the project for Quilter’s World. I still have to draft the pattern but I’m feeling relieved to know I’ll meet the deadline before vacation. Tonight I had a few minutes so I stitched together the first row of Love Notes which is for Amanda.

The new needles for the Singer 40k came on Friday. I put the new needle in and that machine is sewing like a dream! Here is a little back story on the needles. Evidently, the size 24×3 needles that you are supposed to use in the machine are not being produced any longer, however, a 24×1 needle can be used in the machine by simply inserting the needle backwards with the rounded side toward the needle clamp as opposed to the flat side. These 24×1 needles are much easier to find. I was able to get 10 of them for $10 on Ebay.

Yesterday, I came across this article via a tweet by Abby Glassenberg. The article refers to the practice of people copying free patterns and tutorials and giving them to other people. This blogger feels doing that is unfair because often designers will offer freebies as a way to increase blog views and income potential. I cut and pasted the following paragraph from the article…

“How is this my problem?” I hear you ask. Without your support and assistance, designers will be unable to continue to provide free patterns and tutorials. Many of us rely on our freebies for blog views or downloads, which subsequently turn into sponsorship, sales or other opportunities. Without those, the blog will survive for only so long. The blogger too, for that matter. It takes a lot of time and effort to create patterns and tutorials. Design, images/diagrams, writing, testing, advertising. This doesn’t even include monetary costs such as materials, computer software, blog costs etc. Without some form of compensation, be it financial or otherwise, freebies simply become ‘not worth it’.—-Sew Today, Clean Tomorrow

She goes on to ask that in the future, instead of copying or emailing the freebie, mail the person a link to the website. The person still gets the free pattern but must visit the original designer’s website.

Hmmmmmmm…as a designer who has had free patterns on my website, I can see her point but I guess I don’t agree with it completely. I believe that if you are offering something as “free”, it is just that FREE. So I feel you are free to do what you want with it in terms of passing it along. It seems a bit over the top that a designer would depend so heavily on traffic from a free offering. She also states that part of the problem is not knowing how many times the freebie has been downloaded…was it 10,000 times, 20,000 times or 100,000 times. To me, that doesn’t really matter. I’m not a numbers girls when it comes to blogging. I check my stats about once a month and if anyone is still reading, I think that’s grand! Not for nothing, but I have a whole lot of other things that are more concerning than how many hits and visits I have. Offering something free is a way of giving back and also a way to draw in a new customer. As long as your name is on the download somewhere (as it should be), people will find you. Believe me, Google knows where your website is! I say, be joyful someone liked your free offering enough to recommend it to the next person and let whatever comes of it happen naturally.

What are your thoughts?