What do I do with Your Emails?

Providing a bit more information on what I do with your emails.

Thank you for sharing your personal information with me. I hope to explain why I’ve asked for it and what I plan to do with it. While some sites, like Ravelry and LoveKnitting enable knitters to provide their patterns for free and without any exchange of information, I have chosen to ask for your email address in exchange for a download.

Why? What do I do with your emails?

If you have never designed your own pattern, it can seem like an annoying thing to have to give something like your email address up. But if you’ve designed a pattern, you know that this is a small thing to ask for in exchange. Designing a knitting pattern takes a lot of time, energy and often emotions. Often you’re frogging and retrying. And sometimes there’s even tears.

In the past, I asked for people to purchase my patterns. I asked for a whopping $2.00 per pattern and offered them through Etsy, LoveKnitting, and Ravelry.

I did this because yarn costs money and I have money invested into this blog, and every pattern that I make. I’m very lucky to have a husband that supports my passion and doesn’t make a stink about another trip to the yarn store, or squishy mail showing up on our front porch.

But it does cost money.

Now, I realize there is another way that I can recoup on some of the value that I provide via my patterns. In building a community – connecting with you here on the site and via an email newsletter, I now have stats that I can use to approach companies.

In the near future I plan to use the email list, in conjunction with my website statistics to approach different yarn companies, knitting websites and others, for yarn support, to feature patterns or work in partnership.

What I won’t Do With Your Emails

I won’t put you at risk.

When I ask for your email address, I store in a safe place. And I mostly do nothing with it – except for when there is an error discovered in a pattern. Then I’ll update the PDF and send and update to my email list. In the past three months, this has happened two times.

I won’t spam you – with ads or otherwise.

Working in marketing has given me a lot of experience with email marketing. It’s also given me a clear understanding why it is annoying, invasive and often, irrelevant. I won’t spam you with ads. I won’t badger you to purchase anything.

Most often the emails will contain an update about some kind of value that I hope to provide you – to enhance your knitting experience. Most often that will be in the form of a new pattern. Other times, it might be a new skill that I learned and found useful.

In the future, I hope to be able to offer you preferences so that you can select what kind of information you’d like to hear from me – ie just pattern updates, or if you’d like to know when a new post has been published. I appreciate your patience with me and your desire to grow with me until that time.

I want to get to know you and connect with you.

Often something might seem totally clear to me, but when you read it with fresh eyes, you might have questions. If we have each other’s emails, we can get in touch with each other and talk through these questions. We can exchange photos of your work and I can feature your work here on the blog. We can design a pattern together, or just stay in touch.

Why the need to publish a post on what I do with your emails?

Recently one or two people have complained about the need to enter an email address, to receive a pattern. I hope I’ve addressed why in this post.

I want to express very clearly my intent and reasoning. As always, you are not obligated to ask for my pattern – just as you aren’t obligated to give me your personal information. You are welcome to pass by my patterns and continue searching for something else that someone else chooses to offer without ties.