July 2003

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I trust my own judgment. If something doesn't feel right, I won't do it. I don't have an infallibililty complex or anything, but if I'm getting a sense that to agree to something would lead me down a path I don't want to take, I just don't agree.

One day this past week I received a message through the e-mail link on the crochet page at Rebeccaworks, inquiring as to whether I'd be interested in making a "skullcap with a flap." The questioner said that if I were willing to look at it, she would send me a picture of what she wanted. I replied, telling her to attach the picture to e-mail. This was normal procedure, on both her part and mine.

Ordinarily, such requests are for things that are made from available patterns, or are requests to recreate something someone had that somehow is ruined beyond repair. I'm almost always willing to look at a picture, and if I can get the pattern or am sure I'm not violating copyright in recreating, I'm happy to do the work. In those instances, the people are paying for my labor rather than my design.

Her reply to that was what made me start thinking this was not something with which I wanted to be involved. Without stating why it was necessary, she asked for a snail mail address so she could send the picture. She also was not replying to my message, but had gone back to the site and used another e-mail link---this one on my business services page. My reply to her was that I did not provide a snail mail address unless someone was sending money or an item to be repaired.

Truth is, had she provided a reason, I probably would have given her either my own work address (making sure to note that it was a law firm), or the address of a friend's store, since he has graciously offered more than once. But something in the way she worded her request made me leery.

I figured that would be the end of it. But her next message (which was a reply to mine, rather than using yet another link from the site) included not a photograph but a website URL. She wanted me to look at a picture of what she was still calling a skullcap with a flap, and tell her how much it would cost to make it. She went on to say that I should ignore the embroidery on it, and should plan to make the flap just a little wider. It didn't matter, she went on, how much I wanted to charge. And her final point was that we could start out with one, and then make more of them.

Okay, I had to look. I was already going to say no, because I have no interest in going into the skullcap-with-flap-making business, and other aspects of the note made me think there was something wrong. But all the same, I wanted to see what it was she was asking me to make. So I went looking at the page on the site.

My judgment was right. Oh dear was it right. It turned out the site was the business site of some woman in Georgia (USA) who imports fine art pieces and fine textiles from many of the countries in what had been the USSR. The particular piece to which I was directed was a lavishly-made hat (forget skullcap, this was a hat several inches high) with not a flap but a tailpiece on it that reached about halfway down the back of the adult modeling it. Oh, and it wasn't crocheted; it was a fabric hat with quite a bit of embroidery. And the selling price? $325.00.

I said no. I also pointed out that from the wording of her comments it seemed that she wanted to get into manufacturing them for resale, and that she should definitely mention that upfront when she contacted people about making things. I didn't bother to go into the copyright issues; I figured they'd go over her head...or that she had already decided they didn't matter.

The woman asking the question had wanted the thing to be made from hemp, by the way. I wondered, but didn't ask, if she had perhaps been smoking some when she came up with this idea.

Text � copyright 2000-2003 Becky