#skilled work

The Topography of Man

Oil on Canvas, 1871

This didn't happen to me, but to my friend. They were working as an animator on a difficult show. They kept getting a handful of scenes sent back to them not because they weren't animated well, but because the director/clients kept changing their minds about what they wanted from these specific scenes. In 2 weeks of working full days + OT (including weekends) this person made 30 dollars. They told me if they weren't living with their parents at the time they wouldn't be able to afford this job.

I liked this take on the whole “designers must provide more sizes/yarns/instructions/options” discourse going on.

Personally, I likely just won’t publish patterns that would need sizing. My current patterns (socks, mitts, shawl, and a couple accessories) do have some sizing info in them and a couple of yarn options, but that’s because they were designed for classes where I knew there would be some variables to deal with, and one of the things I was teaching was how to make adjustments.

I think having a vast array of sizing options is good, but I don’t think a designer should be black listed because they don’t. I tend to need to make adjustments because of my height - shortening sleeves, body length, even the yoke of sweaters sometimes - but I don’t expect designers to take that into account when designing. I’ve been a size 16 and now I’m a size 6 (and of course, I spent time at pretty much every size in between) - I don’t think I could size up to a size 14 now and get it right, even though I spent more than a decade at that size, because there’s more to getting the right fit and the right look than just doing the math.