The ORIGINAL Knitwit Bangles

What does it mean when you feel you may have to start calling your creation THE ORIGINAL such and such? Or in my case the ORIGINAL KNITWIT BANGLES!

Over the last few years I have attended a number of commercialisation classes at Craft Queensland/Tafe. The issue that was raised a number of times was the fear that if you sent your designs away to be manufactured that they would be copied - big companies would copy them - China would copy them. A number of speakers with years of experience in these areas allayed our fears with the regularly heard statement "it isn't manufacturers/China that you have to be worried about it, it is most likely to be people in Brisbane (your local area) that will be the ones to copy you." This was not a nice thought at all. I think we all preferred to think of someone doing the dirty on us as being a nameless/faceless foe living far,far away from us, and not as someone we could be sitting next to on the bus!

Anyway this is all a bit of a downer and pretty negative but I know this isn't just an issue for me, so I am discussing it here. It is something we all have to think about or at least be aware of. People copy, although I do believe that this is a very small minority and that there are many grey areas open to misinterpretation. Also seeing others being influenced by your designs can be a complimented - a huge one. Hey I want be influential but I just don't want you to make knitting needle bangles and sell them in my local area (or anywhere really). I think it is pretty UNORIGINAL and plain just NOT NICE.

The Original Knitwit Bangles (pictured above) manufactured by Liana Kabel in her Brisbane studio since 2004.