It’s March and that means I’ve officially been doing my paid patreon for six months and it’s time to assess how it’s going and what needs to change. There has been a learning curve, with workload, with shipping costs, with the mechanics of how patreon works. So I’ll be making some changes starting right now, which involve some of the prices lowering!
The mail tiers will no longer guarantee “extra fun stuff” in the packages. Envelopes will be either just a zine and nothing else, or sometimes an extra sticker or something small and fun (except for a special birthday bonus zine for your bday month!). Basically, most of the time I’ll try to make the zine itself extra special in some way—riso-printed cover, fancy paper, full-bleed, some kind of stamp or block print, etc—and if the zine is more basic, then I’ll throw in a sticker or something.
The idea is: for $2 you can get the zine downloads and print them yourself at home (or at your local library), or for only a few bucks more you’ll get a nice one in your mailbox that’s a bit of an upgrade from what you’d print at home, and saves you the effort. (Mail-tier members also get the download files, so you can print extras if you want.)
So, the mail-tier for just zines (at least one new zine per month) is now only $5, and the tier with one (digital) knitting pattern and one mailed zine per month is only $9.
Which brings us to the knitting patterns! Well, this applies to the zines as well. If you follow my instagram stories you know I’ve been on a journey of figuring out how patreon works, now that I’m several months in. They don’t make things super clear on the creator side, in my opinion. So I’ve only just recently realized that all members have access to everything I’ve ever put up there, not just the things that were put up during the months they were members. (I guess I should have figured that out since I’ve subscribed to multiple podcast patreons and have access to all the old episodes, but I didn’t really think about pdf downloads being the same!)
SO, if you join now, you have access to ALL my zines and patterns, hah, not as I’d thought before. Cool for you! So if you were to sign up now, $6 gets you my newest pattern, Wowee Zowee, plus the Favorite Things hat collection, plus the Winterthur & Stimson & Either/Or mitts, plus the Palindrome headband and the Double Feature hood/scarf!! Oh plus my old scarf pattern Slanted & Enchanted which is included as a bonus with the Wowee Zowee hat.
My plan now that I know how it works is to retire the pdf attachments of patterns after four months on the patreon, so each time I release a new pattern I’ll remove the pdf of the oldest one, making it so there are always the most recent four patterns available at any time.
Members will get a code to add the pattern to their ravelry library within the first month if they want to, so you’ll always have access to it there. If you don’t do that, you’ll need to download the pdf within four months before it disappears. I’ll start with removing the Winterthur mitts when I release March’s pattern later this month.
I plan to keep up the Movie Knitting zine with the Double Feature pattern indefinitely, as well as the Either/Or mitts zine, and the Knitting Comrade tutorials zine, so those will all continue to be available to new members.
And that’s because for zines I plan to just keep them all up—joining the lowest tier at $2 gets you downloads of ALL the zine files I’ve released (except those two knitting pattern zines are knit-tier members only). I thought about it a lot and I decided that even though I put a lot of work and time into each zine and I want people to value them, I want them to get out to anyone who wants them (which is why the lowest tier is so low). So they’ll just stay there forever. That’s the plan for now anyway, I reserve the right to change my mind if I end up with a zine in the future that I want to take down for some reason.
There are now new (/newly organized) collections on the patreon: a Knitting Patterns collection that lists every post with an active pattern download, and I also made an “On Patreon Now” bundle on ravelry—these will be kept up-to-date so anytime you look at them they will show you all the patterns currently available to download if you’re a knit-tier member. And then, a Zines collection with all the posts with zine downloads, and a Downloads collection with all the posts that currently have downloadable files, which will also be kept up-to-date as older patterns get removed.
I think that’s all the news about changes/updates to patreon! I’ll sum it up:
$2 gets you one new zine download (both a print file and a screen-reading file) per month, plus access to all old zine files
$6 gets you the above plus (at least) one new knitting pattern pdf each month, plus access to the four most recent patterns plus any extra bonus patterns
$5 gets you the zine files plus one zine printed nicely and mailed to you each month
$9 gets you all the above (knitting patterns, zine files, and zine mailed to you)
And now, new stuff I released in February! Wowee Zowee is a hat version of the scrap-busting stitch pattern concept I used for my Slanted & Enchanted scarf pattern many years ago (they are both named after Pavement albums).
Links to it on patreon and on ravelry and on payhip.
The hat pattern includes two versions: one that is more similar to how the scarf pattern works, and is meant to use lots of very small leftover yarn pieces (around 30″ long), as pictured above, and another that uses longer leftover mini-balls and creates more color blending instead of all different colors throughout, below.
The pattern is quite flexible—there are two heights but they can be adjusted by getting the gauge needed for the height you want, and then the circumference is just fit to your head (or measured) as you knit.
The super scrap-busting version can have a braid on top to use all the top ends, or you could make them into a tassel or hide them inside. Both hats are closed with a 3-needle bind-off.
And then, February’s zine is another recipe zine! This one was a long time in the making.
I first started developing the concept maybe around two years ago—I wrote a formula for making one-pan dishes using a bag of Trader Joe’s farro that could be adapted to whatever kinds of ingredients/flavors you want.
I originally planned to just write the formula as a blog post, but then I kept playing with it until I started making zines and thought it would make a good zine!
I ended up fully writing nine different recipes (all tested), and then including that original formula as well.
Each uses a bag of the farro, which can be subbed with 250g of pearled farro if you don’t have a Trader Joe’s (just might need to cook a bit longer).
All nine recipes are VERY flexible, with lots of optional ingredients that you can pick and choose or personalize.
I styled it to kind of match my Saucy Noodles/Rice zine because they are similarly customizable, though this new one is much bigger with all the fully-written recipes.
I printed the copies for patreon members with blue covers to match the blue farro bags because it’s satisfying to my color nerdery.
The zine includes lots of notes and details, specific tips on using tofu and soy curls, other proteins, etc. I put a lot into it and I’m very happy with it!
If you’re a patreon mail-tier member and haven’t gotten your envelope yet, spoiler photos below!!
And I’ll take this moment to say, if you’ve joined the patreon during these first 6 months of messiness and figuring out how it works and not having much already existing as a sign-up bonus, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I appreciate every single sign-up so so much ❤
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I made a new stencil for the patreon packages to tie in with the zine: I EAT PLANTS! I cut them into photos bought at Scrap.
And then I made half-photo sized Melt Ice stencils too.
In the patreon packages, I also included old connect-the-dots fabric pieces (with stitching instructions on the backs of the letters), a few stickers, and a tiny zine I made to give away as business cards which has a teeny tiny crossword puzzle inside! Hopefully members enjoy these fun final packages of lotsa stuff before the March reduction.
I plan to have things like stencils and stickers around for tabling zine fairs in person, and if anyone out there REALLY wants a stencil let me know, maybe I’ll throw some up on my old etsy shop page or something. For now, honestly, I’m looking forward to just focusing on the zines and patterns and not needing to juggle the extra stuff too, it was just a bit too much. Thank you for understanding and hopefully the lower prices for the mail tiers are a happy change!
Lee Does Stuff 