Coincidence or not??

As I have already told you on several occasions I am not a prolific designer.
Each one of my designs takes ages to make and design, I put my heart and soul into my crochet, I do it because I love it.
So when I discover that someone might have copied me I get very upset and angry.
My designs are very personal to me and I feel betrayed and helpless.
My initial reaction is to shout about it and make a huge fuss, then calm down, forget about it and move on.
Yesterday I was made aware of the pattern below.
I decided to sleep on it and to see how I felt in the morning.

Lily is probably my most popular pattern, it was first published in 2011 and was a best seller almost instantly.
It has nearly 2300 hearts on Ravelry, plus loads of projects.
RAVERLY LILY
We have sold thousands and thousands of copies of the Lily pattern all over the world.
It always has pride of place on our stand at shows and always gets lots of attention and admirers.
Lily was designed in honour of my mother, so is very personal and special to me.

Our Mini Skein club grew out of the need for mini skeins to make Lily.

Last year not only was the Lily pattern in my blanket book, its also the cover photo.

So why am I so upset??
I'm upset because I found the links to this.....

The motif is almost identical, the foundation chain has more stitches, round 2 uses trebles instead of half trebles and round 5 is missing.

My Lily chart.

The other one

You can find it HERE on Ravelry.

You will notice the published date is January 2013.

There's a Facebook group HERE

and best and most upsetting of all it's been published in a book which is currently selling on Amazon.

Now you tell me...

Is it a coincidence?

Am I overreacting and being too sensitive??

Should I grow a thicker skin and be less of a drama queen??

I don't know, what do you think?

Star Scarf part 2

Here it is.

The orange trianges have begun to fade.
And you should be able to see the design emerging.

Quiet day's & books

The snow has gone and the temperature has gone back up, the birds are singing and the sun is shining and its very peaceful here on Sunday morning.

I thought I would share what I have been doing for the last few days.
We were snowed out of the studio for several days last week, so we have been working at home.
I decided it was about time I started on the next motif book, so I have been gathering motif patterns together and sorting through swatches and photographs.
It doesn't sound like a lot, but it takes ages, each photo needs editing and charts need to be re-checked.
Today is day 3 of photo editing, so I'm having a break for a while and writing this post.
My evenings are spent crocheting and I have a lot of swatches to make for the book, but I'm really struggling to make them, all I want to do is make orange triangles.

So not only am I working on a motif book, I'm also working on an orange triangle book.
I'm using the same motif for all the designs and each one will have at least 1 orange triangle lurking in the design.

So far I've made 2 blankets and 1 scarf and have just started work on a second scarf.
You have already seen the first blanket - Lecchi
And sneaky peaks of the second blanket which is still secret.
The first scarf is going to be published in a magazine, but I do have a photo to share.
Its a pile of ends, I like sewing in ends, if you do it at the end or beginning of every time you sit down to crochet it becomes easy and a lot less stressful.
But sometimes I don't want to stop crocheting so end up with a huge amount to sew in, thats why I have this pile of ends.

For the last couple of night I should of been swatching motifs, but did this instead - its the second scarf.
Can you see the orange triangles??
Its made with Dazzling lace and so this swatch is quite small, I'm hoping the orange triangles will disappear into the background as it grows.

This scarf won't be secret so I can post photo's as I make it, but you won't be able to buy the pattern until I publish the book :-))

Why I use natural dyes

When I first started dyeing 12 years ago I couldn't afford chemical dyes, so I used what was in my garden and the local hedgerows.
I became very skilled at dyeing yellow and beige, but there are only so many times you can use yellow and beige, so I saved up and bought a few chemical colours.
I hated them, they didn't have any character and I didn't know what to do with the exhausted dye baths, it seemed wrong to pour something down the drain that I was unsure of. 
Was it harmful? or was it safe?
I didn't know anyone to ask, so went back to my natural dyes.
I still don't know much about chemical dyes, but I do know a lot of chemical dyers who are ethical, responsible and skilled people and that their dyes are tried and tested to be as safe as possible.

In the early day's I used alum and cream of tartar as mordants, they were freely available, alum was used in hospitals to bath bed sores and cream of tartar was used in cooking, so I felt that I was safe to use them without harming the environment.
After a year or so of yellow and beige I discovered a supplier who sold historical plant dyes and mordants.
My world changed, suddenly my colour palette was a lot bigger and I had the option to use lots of different mordants which made the palette possibilities even bigger.

I quickly wrote off using the mordants as most of them are heavy metals and certainly couldn't be poured down the drain.
So I still only use alum and cream of tartar.

The dyes were all the raw materials, which meant lots of boiling and soaking to extract the colours.
It was like making mud pies for adults, I loved it.
I used the raw plants for many years and was very snotty about extracts as I believed it was cheating.
But then NDS grew too big, we needed to cut down on the time it took to prepare a dye bath, so now I use extracts.
Most of our extracts are made by a very ethical company who grow a lot of their own organic plants and are soil association certified.
They are only too happy to give us advice and answer all our dye related questions.
When I first started using extracts I was really happy to discover that they behaved in exactly the same way as the plants.

I find it impossible to obtain the same colour from the same dye using the same recipe each time.
The dyes are effected by the water quality, weather and the time of year.
For example the dyes play up in the winter and the colours lose their intensity, but by the spring we can get a lot deeper, more saturated colour.

For example the first photo below shows Angel lace dyed in the spring and the second shows Angel lace dyed in late autumn.

Last year we moved to Devon from Suffolk, our water type changed from alkaline to acid. 
The water type effects the colour, its been a huge learning curve and challenge not knowing what colour to expect.
The colours seem darker and more intense here, but we have to add chalk to several of the dyes, to get a similar colour.
It will take us several years to know what to expect each season.

You may notice I am using "we" instead of "I", thats because Daisy our number 2 daughter moved with us and has become my apprentice, we have learnt about the new colours and how the dyes react together.
Its been a huge amount of fun, every dye bath is exciting.
She has by-passed the years of stinging nettle dyeing and gone straight to extracts.
But she's already become a skilled dyer, some days she does all the dyeing and creates new colours on her own.

But this year we are faced with a new colour challenge, but I'll tell you more about that another day.