I think it's interesting that the conversation in the fibre community around designers and yarn substitution is happening concurrently with the issues around #RavelryAccessibility

As a disabled person who is not currently harmed by using #Ravelry, I have decided to stay on the platform, despite the ableism of the site owners, for two reasons. 1) the community of friends I have made with makers whose compassion and wisdom I value deeply.

And 2) the project database. I almost never knit a pattern exactly as written, with the yarn called for.

The project database is invaluable to me as a maker, as I consider yarn choice, budget, the specificities of my body and taste, and my skills.

There, I can see the choices made by other makers, the ways in which a project works on varied bodies, and the problems that others have encountered.

I value skill-building, competency and self-sufficiency, so having a resource that allows me to learn and choose has been so important to my development as a maker and creative person.

I think it is symptomatic of our cultural ills that the onus to meet every possible desire of customers is placed most firmly on the smallest of businesses, often helmed by women, disabled persons, BIPOC and so on.

I don't see Vogue Knitting being called out for not publishing each pattern in multiple yarns...

I also think that as a "community", fibre makers have developed or displayed a tendency to commodification and fetishization, whether it is of a knitted object or a particular "indie" yarn/dyer.

Some elements of our "community" have developed around envy, desire, and snobbery, instead of around creative values, processes and commonalities. We have replaced the value of making with the "value" of having or owning.

This, of course, also relates to the ongoing conversation around inclusivity and diversity in the fibre community.

I worry that some of us don't understand the difference between envy/capitalist-inflamed desire/trends and the experience of oppression.

We are missing the liberatory opportunities rooted in making by building our identities around ownership/fashion/commodification. We are missing the point of hand/homemaking.