THIS Is A Surprise … And A Great One, Too!
As many stitchers are undoubtedly aware, The Goode Huswife stopped designing needlework patterns (at least for a while) some time ago, and nearly all of them are out of print.
To see which ones currently remain in print, check the radio button for The Goode Huswife using Hoffmandis’ Designer Search. The patterns which still show up here should still be available to order through your favorite needlework shop. Patterns which do not show up are officially out of print. 
The big news is that The Goode Huswife has announced on her website the release of a new book in the fall, which will be a compilation of “ten old, favorite designs.”
In other words, people who want to sell The Goode Huswife patterns on eBay or other auction sites*** for ridiculous amounts of money might want to try to do their selling soon, as the old favorites they have for sale may be shortly available again at a much lower cost.
Simultaneously, people who want to have old favorite patterns by The Goode Huswife may just want to hold off from paying any ridiculous amounts of money on those same auction sites until you find out exactly which ten patterns are contained in this new book to be released!
I don’t know why The Goode Huswife is releasing this book of old favorites. Perhaps the designer is tired of seeing those ridiculous auction prices on eBay herself and would like to help stitchers who want to stitch or collect her designs out while simultaneously making a bit more money herself from her own designs. I mean, it must be frustrating to see those kinds of prices on eBay when the designer herself didn’t charge that much for her designs and probably didn’t have any idea her patterns would become so popular AFTER they went out of print. After all, most of the time, when a pattern goes out of print, it’s really because the designer feels the pattern is no longer in demand. She must wonder where all these fans of her designs were when her designs were actually in print, and she was trying to manage a successful designing business. Anyway, since she owns the copyright to her own designs, she can easily reissue them in a new format.
This seems a good time to go over another very important copyright issue: No, it is NOT okay to make a copy of an out of print pattern (so that you have a working copy of the pattern and can return a library book, or so that you can keep your own book and give your friend who really wants to stitch the design a working copy, etc.) simply because it is out of print. You MUST request permission from the designer to make a copy — and some designers WILL allow it, so it does not hurt to ask. One of my good friends recently received permission from the author of a quilting book which has been out of print for several years to make twelve copies specifically to be distributed to students in a quilting class she was planning. The terms of the agreement between my friend and the book’s author were very specific, right down to the number of copies and the reason for making the copies. That is the author’s prerogative because the author owns the copyright to the book he wrote. But if you request permission and the designer says, “No. You may not make a copy of my design from that out of print book,” then you cannot legally make a copy. To do so without asking at all, or to do so after having been told you may not, is copyright infringement — and it is NOT worth the legal costs and fines you could incur by taking that chance. Just don’t do it. Stitch nothing else but the design from the library book until you’ve finished it, then return the library book, and perhaps pay a few dollar in fines to the library; it will be money well spent. Loan your friend your book — or if it’s a book you’re unwilling to allow out of your sight, then allow your friend to stitch the pattern but tell her she has to come over to your house one night a week to work on it. Find another way — a legal way — to solve the problem. Or go look through your stash — there’s plenty there you’ve forgotten about anyway! 
Back to the subject of The Goode Huswife releasing a collection of her old patterns … Clearly, for the needlework designer, eBay and other auction sites provide fertile ground to study which of their out of print designs are favorites and would do the best in a new release. There isn’t a much better opportunity for market research than that, actually.
So, we stitchers can hope The Goode Huswife has used eBay as a research tool to choose the ten favorites as indicated by ridiculous very complimentary prices to release in this upcoming book … and fall is just around the corner, too!
***WHAT other auction sites? They all seem to be going away and leaving the one big eMonopoly in their wake … Yahoo Auctions closed its doors in June.
Amazon Auctions are still in business, though a search for “cross stitch” produces a sad, sorry four auctions that are barely limping along. Boohoohoo! A lack of competition is bad for business all the way around; the proof is in the ridiculous eBay seller fees, which we all know only have to get added into the prices on the consumer’s end!
Sorry, my politics are showing. (Good thing this site is all mine, and I’m the boss! 
) Walmart just opened a store in my little town of about 13,000 yesterday, and so now I’m just counting down the days until all the other businesses in town close their doors, and watching more of the people — single women with children, especially — in town to go to work for Walmart thinking they’ll work full time and have health coverage only to find themselves suddenly requiring public assistance they didn’t even need before.
Sorry again; I really didn’t realize when I started writing that eMonopoly and then Walmonster were going to hijack your regularly scheduled post. (But look at that … not even a warning from the boss! THIS is the life for me!)
Technorati Tags: Goode Huswife, eBay, cross stitch, auction, out of print, OOP, Hoffman Distributing, Yahoo auctions, Amazon auctions, auctions, eMonopoly, lack of competition, bad for business, Walmart, copyright, quilt, quilting, copyright infringement, library, market research
August 10th, 2007 at 1:45 am
I live a very dense area, so Walmart showing up tends to not affect me. The thing I don’t get - if these folks already have a job, why are they moving to work at Walmart? Are they paying more? I don’t think I’d quit my existing job until I knew what the deal with the new one is. Either way, I’m not sure I get why changing jobs suddenly puts people on public assistance. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t shop at Walmart, for several reasons (crappy stuff, simply not convient, dirty stores), but I don’t quite understand what the deal with people going from what was presumably a good job to Walmart is all about. The fact is that as long as people prefer to shop based on price instead of quality, Walmart will stay in business. They don’t do as well wear I live…then again, I can barely afford to live where I do.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Great to see you back Allura!
Thanks for continuing this particular part of the discussion, too, because it really is an important discussion — it’s also on topic when so many Walmarts have cut back their craft sections so much. (I have not been there to see what this one’s craft section looks like at the moment; I don’t intend to buy much there unless I absolutely have to … unfortunately, my health is deteriorating quickly, to a point where I may have no choice but to go to the closest store-that-offers-it-all as far as the customer is concerned. But I’m going to hold out as long as I can and keep stressing the importance of doing so to my husband, who does the bulk of our shopping already, and very kindly helps me out at Hobby Lobby (and never complains about that).
One of the things Walmart does, and I’ve seen it done to several of my friends who’ve gone there to work, is promise people full time hours with insurance, blah blah blah. Then when they go there to work, they say, “Oh, it’s not busy … we’ll send you home a little early today.” By the time they are done, you are 15 minutes shy of the requirement for full time hours and earning your health insurance … So, suddenly, you’re not insured. Lots of people have changed jobs from stores they were working in a town 20 to 30 minutes further away from here from places like Target or Meijer in order to be closer to home and save on gas, and they think they’re going to come out ahead now; they’re actually going to be further behind because they’re going to lose that health insurance, and also because most of them left jobs where they left unions, and Walmart won’t allow unions. We’re also going to have our largest (previous to Walmart, anyway) employer in town closing it’s doors for good at the end of August; they’re all being laid off. There was never any pension, and the 401K plan had gone from $20 a share to $.20 a share when they declared bankruptcy two years ago, and is now down to $.03 a share. (Even the people who are of retirement age have no way to consider that. Being a greeter at Walmart is about the only option they’ll have, too, at their ages, because no one else will want to hire them.) So a lot of them will try to get on at Walmart, going from a car manufacturing plant which actually paid their employees fairly well and treated them not half bad but went bankrupt thanks to the economy and gas prices and the fact that people aren’t buying cars as easily and quickly as they used to, to Walmart, where in most cases their starting pay will be comparable to whatever they had started at (most of them years ago) at the car manufacturing plant — a DEEP pay cut, but it’s a job, and these are desperate times and they’re desperate. And it’s a job they think comes with health insurance, which they need. Except it doesn’t. But it’s still a job.
That’s what sucks. That’s how Walmart gets away with it.