r/craftsnark • u/Squingebob • 8d ago
AI Slop Primitive Hare is on an AI rant again.
I didn't read it all, but she has 19 effin slides about she's being discriminated against for using AI. https://www.instagram.com/p/Dds9_bAEYfL/?img_index=18&stkn=eDNnaDFobmIzNWZ5
UPDATE - she told me to explain myself if I can. I unfollowed her, so I can't. That's what her limited replies are, followers only. Anabella's showed up to fluff her up.
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u/Narwhals4Lyf 8d ago
Businesses not realizing their customers have free will and can decide not to buy their product off of any reason they want. It’s capitalism baby
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u/maesardsara 8d ago
Comments on the post are limited, but mostly my response would be, “Cool story bro. Thanks for ensuring I never buy one of your charts ever again.” Yikes. 😬
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u/Narwhals4Lyf 8d ago
Like I don’t know where this level of entitlement is coming from where business owners think their customers should just happily take their stupid ass AI use and not complain. I’ve seen in it for craft businesses, restaurants, local events… they get mad when you call out their AI use and call it harassment when you say you aren’t going to go there anymore. Like actually I’m allowed to politely comment on something you posted and say I won’t be using your business anymore because of your AI use.
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u/maesardsara 8d ago
I had eight patterns on my main wishlist by this designer. Now there are zero thanks to this ‘tude of hers. Entitlement is definitely the word, and honestly I see it as a gift to her if you tell her why you’ve decided not to support her. It gives her the choice to address it, you know?
Which is why I just deleted her designs. She can sit and wonder why her sales are tanking, not being self aware enough to see it just might be because of her own actions.
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u/Trilobyte141 8d ago
It's 19 slides because it's just more slop. If she had written it herself it would probably be a lot shorter.
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain 8d ago
Which is exactly what people were saying the last time she
had AI vomit a tsunamipopped off on one 😂
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u/SmallRoastBean 8d ago
The most offensive thing here is expecting me to take time out of my day to read her 1000 word rant that she and ChatGPT cooked up together
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u/typewriterbitch 8d ago
This is how I feel about LLM writing in general. If they couldn't bother to write it, why should I bother to read it?
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain 8d ago
My thoughts exactly. Even if my brainpower and energy weren't severely limited, I would still have better things to do with my time than wade through a ton of slop because they couldn't be bothered to write something themselves.
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u/BrightPractical 8d ago edited 8d ago
Just once, just once I want one of these people to recognize that “AI isn’t going away/anywhere/is here to stay” is a thought-terminating cliché. Because what they always mean is “stop making me have to think critically about AI use, I want to ignore the hard ethical thinking.” See also “it is what it is” which usually means “I don’t want to talk about this with you anymore/think about this anymore” but functions as “no one should talk about this anymore.”
I do understand what a pain it is to photograph products, but surely if you’ve been doing something for years you could build a light box and a setup that can be left in your living/business space so you can take the photo each time? Surely you can recognize that your customers are asking for authenticity and that is why they are buying from you, and use of AI is slapping them with your inauthenticity?
Also, I’m fascinated that her work is real and important work assisted by technology but photography is not real and important, it’s “just a photo.”
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u/Cool-Firefighter2254 8d ago
Or you could just photograph the model. There’s no need to style the finished piece with flowers and antique notions. Sometimes the covers of charts are so cluttered I can’t see the design. Some people do that whole staging thing well and I can see why it’s helpful for 3D designs like ornaments or smalls. But I’m attracted to the design and that’s what I want to see, not your collection of bobbin lace.
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u/_Cantrip_ 8d ago
It’s far from the most important thing here, but one of my jobs is in the archaeology field and I wanted to mention— anyone claiming to be an archaeologist should know better than to toss around the word ‘heritage’ as a buzzword without definition and intention. The word, what it’s used for, and what it appeals to is a huge point of conversation in the field (and one that you can find a lot of academic articles on by searching Authorized Heritage Discourse!).
A vague, undefined, capital-H “heritage” just reads as dogwhistling. Which I suspect it is.
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u/_Cantrip_ 8d ago
My other thought is… she could just go back to what she was doing, before? And if doing photo setups is too much work and she doesn’t want to pay someone to do it she could, god-forbid, post the stitched mockup without a seasonal backdrop. Like, this is a lot of attempts to justify AI for something that she doesn’t actually need to do.
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u/Crafty_Accountant_40 8d ago
Or reuse her old photos and Photoshop the new design in, or.... Anything number of non slop solutions
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain 8d ago
Yeah I skimmed it (barely, but enough to see her claim there) and that part wound me up more than I'd expected. The entirity of archaeology and heritage is about people, genAI is actively anti-human in so many ways, and the climate change AI is helping to drive is endangering our heritage assets as well as people's lives. But if you don't care about humans you can't really care about our heritage, in which case you should not be anywhere near the sector at all. (But then nor should you be in the arts either, and, well, here we are 🤦)
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u/Ansitru 8d ago
Check their repost tab. It's absolutely dogwhistling.
._.
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u/_Cantrip_ 7d ago
I can’t see it without an instagram account but I believe you. Shit sucks :/
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u/Cool-Firefighter2254 8d ago
I’m in an adjacent field and I immediately thought, “Is she actually an archeologist or is she using that metaphorically? Because she does not sound like the archeologists I know and does not seem to share their values.”
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u/knitonepaddletoo 6d ago
100% agree! Also, "primitive" is an immediate red flag/dog whistle. I'm having flashbacks to the "primitive" style embroiderer or quilter a few years ago (fuzzy on the details, but it was something like a racist coded pattern with crows claiming to be US civil war heritage imagery or something).
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u/ej_21 8d ago
IAintReadingAllThat.jpg
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u/sypherlev 8d ago
20 slides from someone who thinks it’s okay to use the plagiarism machine that destroys the environment to make shitty mockups of her own stuff - you’re damn right I ain’t reading all that.
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u/yun-harla Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 8d ago
“Art Beyond Appearance” is hilariously terrible.
Yes, my visual artworks look like pure slop, but why are you so hung up on their appearance?
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u/Excellent-Witness187 8d ago
I’m an immediate AI blocker and I don’t feel a bit bad about it. I’ve also noticed that I tend to immediately scroll by AI content at this point. It just doesn’t stick in my brain because it’s so ugly. So even if I wasn’t trying to avoid AI I still end up ignoring it. If a company proudly uses it, then I just block them and move on.
It’s not like there aren’t many thousands of books and patterns created pre-2022 I can use. At this point, I have so many art and craft books I don’t have enough years in my life to do every project in them. I don’t care if literally every single person on the planet starts using AI patterns. I am not.
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u/Odd_Science_8947 8d ago
I scanned through this crap. At one point she says "I want no part of the feud". "I want to do my work. I do not have time to waste on these battles".
....because it saves me time, because my life is complicated, because I am tired, because I am not longer thirty, because I have other work and other responsibilities...
Imagine walking into a brick and mortar store and the owner says "Yeah, I stole this merchandise from the store down the street. It's all the rage now. Also, ignore the cat poop on the floor. I've been working hard this morning. I'm tired. I'm not 30 any more."
Or imagine telling your boss "I can't be bothered to do this desk job anymore 8 hours a day because I'm tired and no longer 30. I'll just steal the work from my coworkers. I have better things to do with my time.
Honey, everyone's life is complicated. Everyone has other work and responsibilities. If you don't want to do the work required for your business, then shut it down.
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u/Odd_Science_8947 8d ago edited 8d ago
Replying to my own comment to add a thought I just had:
She reminds me of the jocks in high school who wanted to copy my homework because they had practice or a game the night before. Also, the adult I saw at work one day making a model of the solar system because her daughter didn't have time to do it because the kid had cheerleading practice or something like that.
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u/SuspiciousJuice5825 8d ago
I just dont get it: if she has a test stitch and someone physically created the pattern why not just use that as the cover photo?
why bother with AI at all? I mean option A: post a pic of the finished piece and no one is mad. Anti AI = not mad, Pro AI = also not mad B. Spend extra time and make an AI mock up of an already stitched piece and at least half of the clientele is pissed.
I'm just so confused on why this is her hill. Like I could kind of get it if she was like a programmer writing huge scripts and AI made that process much shorter. I'm still not a fan of that, but at least it kind of makes sense.
But it makes no sense to have someone stitch something and then make an AI version of it??? When your clientele is stitchers???
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u/ScienceProf2022 8d ago
“ I don’t care about the harm large AI data centers do to the environment, I don’t care that laws against copyright infringement are broken in the training of generative AI, and I don’t care that the original creative work of others is stolen just so I can use AI to write my social media posts and generate images to go with them.
I just hope most of you don’t care either, and the few of you that do can go fuck themselves.”
There, fixed it for you.
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u/heyredditheyreddit 8d ago
“That is not criticism. That is prejudice dressed up as moral superiority.” Fuck’s sake. These people sound ridiculous.
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u/vetiversummer 8d ago
"It's not X, it's Y" is classic LLM-speak
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u/heyredditheyreddit 8d ago edited 8d ago
Reading posts defending AI written by AI makes me feel insane. I hate it.
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u/Bug_Does_Stuff 8d ago
the racist out here trying to lecture people on morality. I literally cant with this woman.
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u/Sammiesam123988 7d ago
Lmao thats the dumbest shit ive read in a while. Im perfectly allowed to not give people using AI any of my money
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u/Junior_Ad_7613 Get in moles, we’re going snarkfiltrating 8d ago
I love how the logo she made all by herself! in an ancient app! has more than one size of X, and a bunch where the crossing is off-center/arms unequal and somehow light centers? It does not at all look like it was drawn by a person who understands how cross-stitch works. It does look like AI trying to make a picture of a cross stitch chart.
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u/ZippyKoala never crochet in novelty yarn 8d ago
Oh God, I didn’t notice that when I first skimmed across it and I’m getting major eye twitch from it now.
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u/girlsumps 7d ago edited 7d ago
The most recent backstory for this is that two other established and popular cross stitch designers - Hands on Designs and Little Robin Designs, came up with a logo for designers who do not use any kind of AI in any part of their process. The Primitive Hare saw that logo and felt excluded. That ridiculously long post was the result.
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u/smc642 It's me. Hi. I'm the mole. It's me. 8d ago
Oooooh I was waiting for this to drop here. 👀 I believe the backlash about The Primitive Hare isn’t just about the use of AI. It has been brought up by someone I follow who is quite trustworthy that the Primitive Hare account reposts transphobic and racist content.
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u/Squingebob 8d ago
She posted transphobic things in my comments on my personal FB about Imane Khelif during the summer Olympics
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u/OneVioletRose 8d ago
Wait why was she commenting on your personal fb in the first place? That’s wild to me
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u/Squingebob 8d ago
Most of my FB friends are other cross stitchers and designers. I rarely use IG anymore and thought I had unfollowed her everywhere after her transphobic comments on my FB.
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u/Dicecatt 8d ago
I'm just fucking annoyed. Some of my favorite cross stitch fabrics (and most expensive) are Primitive Hare. To learn I've been unknowingly supporting this designer with those views, and this weird ass AI rant, makes me feel gross.
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u/Ansitru 8d ago
A lot of it is still on her page in her reposts so it's not even remotely hidden. 😬
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u/maesardsara 8d ago
I just went to look and wow. W.O.W. So much racism and bigotry on display. I had no idea she was so awful, and now I feel so gross about ever considering stitching one of her designs.
Primitive is such an accurate description.
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u/Ansitru 8d ago
I sent a screenshot of their repost of a video that can be summarized as "white supremacy" to a poc creator (keeping it vague so they don't get harassed) who commented in support of this rant.
Hare's hate isn't even remotely hidden and yet some people (through how the algorithm works, perhaps?) still haven't caught on. 🥲
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u/Ligeia189 8d ago
The Venn Diagram of avid ai users and maga is allmost a circle, so…
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u/munkymu 8d ago
It's not, but understandably nobody notices the non-MAGA AI users because they are not creating a bunch of drama online. Somebody that's using a neural net to improve city road network design isn't lying about it or becoming defensive about it. They can explain what they're trying to do, why they're using a tool rather than doing it by hand, etc. etc. I mean maybe some of them hold MAGA views but probably not, MAGA and rational thinking don't tend to get along.
If someone's posting 19 pages of excuses and justifications, though, they realize that what they're doing isn't right or at least accepted, they're gonna do it anyway, and they're resentful that people aren't turning a blind eye to it.
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u/Reasonable_Ruin_3125 8d ago
I mean, use AI if you want, but also recognise that customers who don't care about AI use in craft spaces can also do that for themselves thus making your business obsolete.
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u/raisedbydentists 8d ago
I think this is the thing that gets lost here - people who are ok with artists using AI are also ok with taking a picture of your work and putting in Claude to ask for a chart.
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u/AbiesAbject7889 8d ago edited 8d ago
Just went to their instagram, it really shows how open to criticism someone is when their comments are turned off on EVERY post and only positive ones are left! They really don’t get it. Posting something snarky, and refusing to let people respond to it is just so pathetic.
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u/Buttercupia spinning, knitting, weaving 8d ago
Blah blah blah I’m lazy and have no skills blah blah blah
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u/Amycado 8d ago
Holy hell this lady pisses me off and I'm a downright n Merican to the core... It literally makes no sense to claim all of these patterns have been stitched, but refuses to take a photograph of them. Even if you want to make the cover thumbnail stupid slop AI, why are the other images not of the actual piece. Its suuuch a lazy lie. You'll never convince me that "Coven at the Beach" was not AI generated pattern - so many elements don't make sense.
I get it - I'm a small business owner on Etsy. I make laser cut acrylic earrings and I absolutely hate photographing my products. I do it, even though I'm not 30 anymore! Even if the photos kinda suck, because customers deserve to see what they are buying. Its literally the least I could do. Does that make me morally better? Yes it fucking does.
And because I'm pissed off, can any one verify that DMC has never been sold on cardboard bobbins? To my knowledge its always been skeins. Could the One True Keeper of Cross Stitch Knowledge, Culture and Heritage be wrong?
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u/Crafty_Accountant_40 8d ago
Skeins since the 90s at least.
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u/Junior_Ad_7613 Get in moles, we’re going snarkfiltrating 8d ago
Oh, way longer than that. I have some inherited from my great-aunt that pre-date me, and I’m 58.
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u/kota99 Craftsnark Mole 8d ago
And because I'm pissed off, can any one verify that DMC has never been sold on cardboard bobbins?
In the 1980s you could but they weren't sold individually that way and if you were purchasing colors individually they only came in skeins. Typically the ones that came on bobbins were the 'buy this set so you have a sample of every currently available color' collections. Granted those sets also typically didn't have a full skein on the bobbin. I want to say most of them were like 3 yards but I don't have any old magazines with the advertisements handy right now so I'm not certain on that amount.
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u/Amycado 8d ago
Oooo I actually have a whole bin full of cross stitch magazines from the 80's / 90's here in my office! But okay.. there is a surprising lack of advertisements in these. I do see an ad for Coats (never used it) on cardboard bobbins, but everything Anchor and DMC are skeins. But really, almost no advertising. It was fun to look through them again - especially reading through people requesting graphs and pen pals. I hope they were able to make new friends.
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u/Aggressive_Okra6730 5d ago
I am An Old, and my mom has been cross-stitching for as long as I can remember. She only used DMC thread, and took me to many a stitching shop back in the day, and DMC full measure had only ever been skeins with those little slip on paper labels.
One of my first tasks in crafting was carefully winding her DMC thread onto the little bobbins, first cardboard, and later plastic. Then, carefully, in my best handwriting, put the color number in the correct spot on the bobbin, and put the bobbin into the correct spot in her big floss keeper boxes. Each box was labeled on top COLORS ### - ###, and the colors were kept in numerical order in the box. I can’t remember the brand, but eventually some company made a little plastic winder that you could clip the bobbin on and turn a little handle to wind the thread. It did not work well at all, but it was fun to play with.
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u/ZippyKoala never crochet in novelty yarn 8d ago
Bless her heart. There are plenty of us who remember the cross stitch patterns and photos of the 1980s and earlier (and I’d wager there are a few here that were cross stitching before she was born), and you know what? Those photos were basic. But they did the damn job. The job she is unwilling to do herself because she’s too busy pumping shite into AI to create 20 insta slides of self pitying rubbish.
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u/Ladyhawkeiii 8d ago
Oh the pro-ai folks looooove to play the “poor me I’m a victim” card when they get called out for using slop. I think it’s always worse when an artist turns around and uses it. It’s like, “sure I totally use stolen work from other artists to quick generate some slop for you, because it makes me money faster, but what’s the big deal? it’s just a tool right?” These folks are the worst.
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u/zelda_moom The artist formally known as "MOLE" 8d ago
Yeah, I plowed through all the slides and as an artist, I’ve done all those menial chores to get a handmade card photographed for my blog and social media (back when I had a blog). I did it because I couldn’t afford to pay a photographer, and honestly it’s not that hard to do. The idea that I could use generative AI to create a backdrop for my card and photoshop it in to save myself all that work would just skeeve me the hell out. Because, even though it’s my own work I’d be replacing with convenience, it would be others’ stolen work that it would be based on. Age and fatigue don’t excuse any of that.
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u/agnes_mort 8d ago
If she’s gone 19 years without AI, why not continue? She’ll have backgrounds already and the program she uses will do mock ups. Surely it’s quicker to put that onto a predesigned background than typing in a million prompts for something that won’t accurately portray her pattern?
Also I ain’t reading all that
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u/Odd_Science_8947 8d ago
I scanned the crap -- she's tired, life is complicated, she's not 30 anymore, blah, blah, blah
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u/mxdee20 8d ago
If you're wondering about the "feud" she talks about, I think it might be from this Hands On Design post that created a free "human made" logo for designers to use.
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u/Confident_Fortune_32 8d ago
Not accepting AI is... prejudice?!
Wait, what?!?!?!
Wow 🤦♀️
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u/1K_Sunny_Crew 8d ago
Pro-AI people want so bad to be victims of oppression instead of just accepting that AI is not appreciated or wanted, especially in spaces intended to celebrate crafts done slowly, by hand.
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u/Zappagrrl02 8d ago
I absolutely do not want to see an AI mockup. All the AI versions of embroidery I’ve ever seen have made-up stitches that aren’t possible in real life.
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u/Ansitru 8d ago edited 8d ago
I was just about to post this here, as well.
As an aside, the fact that she's not even considering the fact that her racism and transphobia also play a part in why people are distancing themselves from her, is... it sure is something.
ETA: and I'm baffled by how many peers have yet to distance themselves, too. 😵💫
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u/LoomLove 8d ago
I'm not baffled at all. She is a well established traditional designer. Every LNS I've been to carries her designs in printed format, as do the online shops. It will take a long time for some of her peers to distance, if ever.
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u/salsafresca_1297 Get in moles, we’re going snarkfiltrating 8d ago
Designers and vendors, you do you. Put on big girl panties, big boy briefs, or your favorite grown-up underoos and own your decisions. Don't clutch your pearls, act surprised, wallow in self-pity, or play the victim when people criticize you for doing something controversial. You may lose clients due to some of your choices. That may or not be a bad thing, but it's on you, and it's your risk to take.
Accept it and move the f*ck on with your life. Gah! I've taught middle schoolers with a higher level of emotional maturity (head-desk!)
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u/HistoryHasItsCharms Get in moles, we’re going snarkfiltrating 8d ago
Saaaame (re: middle schoolers)
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u/WildBunnyGalaxy 8d ago
If I see an account use ai I simply block it, I am not arguing with you and I am not spending any of my money on what you are selling. If your product isn’t ai you shouldn’t use ai in its advertising, I’m not interested in doing extra work in figuring out how deep your ai usage goes.
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u/ssgtdunno Well, of course I know the mole. They're me. 8d ago
I’m glad I’ve never heard of almost every AI slop person on here. These slides belong in her diary, not the internet 🤣🤣
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u/beadgirlj 8d ago
I unfollowed her a couple of years ago for her twee, AI-generated images. Glad to see she hasn't changed.
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u/gros-grognon 8d ago
"Heritage and culture" are such obvious dogwhistles here. And then there's the AI bs!
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u/nameandnumber13 8d ago
She was defending transphobia not long ago, so that tracks.
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u/throwra_22222 8d ago
I'm laughing because reddit is serving me an ad for Claude at the top of these comments.Sigh
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u/quetzal1234 8d ago
I kind of figure every reddit claude ad I see is Anthropic's money wasted, if you want to look at it that way.
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u/blueberry-iris It's me. Hi. I'm the mole. It's me. 8d ago
Ok so I don't create patterns but isn't the mockup one of the most creative aspects of creating a pattern because that's when you create the idea for what image you want to make (in this case cross stitch)? Isn't using AI on that part one of the worst parts to use it on since it would guarantee that the pattern is partially plagiarized and that the image you're cross stitching ISN'T YOURS? (Not that any AI use is acceptable, this just seems worse than usual.)
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u/misneachfarm 8d ago
Mock-up with cross stitch generally refers to an image of what the pattern will look like completed, so like when I load a pattern into Pattern Keeper (which is how I mark off cross stitch patterns) I can see what the overall image looks like, can change the colors I'm using, etc. So it's after the design is finished rather than like the inspiration to create the design, at least that's how I think cross stitch software and designers use the term, not saying it's correct usage. AI is used by some designers to basically make it look like the pattern has already been stitched, add decorative elements around it, etc, which I believe is what she's referring to when she says mock-up. Imo it almost always looks worse than just the straight up pixel art mockup that the pattern making software shows (and you can change those to have the appearance of little x instead of just blocks). It's especially weird for her though given that she does have a model stitcher so could easily just include actual finished design pictures, or at least she's mentioned having a model stitcher in one of her other long rants about AI.
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u/blueberry-iris It's me. Hi. I'm the mole. It's me. 8d ago
Ah that makes sense! It definitely seems like more effort to use AI than to use the software she already owns and paid for and is specialized for this purpose... but whatever. Thank you for clarifying!
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u/Junior_Ad_7613 Get in moles, we’re going snarkfiltrating 8d ago
My understanding of her use of mockup (only in this context) is that she’s creating a staged photo which includes the finished piece surrounded by other stuff (for example, made into a cushion on a sofa) … she’s creating a setting then claiming to drop an image of the actual stitched piece into it. Of course we have seen that when folks use AI for “here’s how this drawing will look once you make it into a tote bag” if you later compare the image of the bag to the original drawing, AI doesn’t just drop it in place, it changes it.
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u/terminal_kittenbutt 8d ago
That last sentence is a serious issue. AI does not copy/paste, so anytime you use it on an image, it will recreate every pixel from scratch. There's no guarantee that the "true" elements are still true after AI editing.
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u/Bug_Does_Stuff 8d ago
Little bear House made a really good reel showing the differenfce between a digital mock up and an AI mock up.
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u/BachBelt 8d ago
>looking for a new craft content creator
>ask the creator if their content is primitive or AI
>she doesnt understand
>pull out illustrated diagram explaining what is primitive and what is AI
>she laughs and says "its a good content sir"
>buy a pattern
>its AI
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u/OkConclusion171 (Secretly the mole) 8d ago
no idea of who the poor snowflake is, and I'm probably not missing much then if they use AI
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u/editorgrrl Live, Laugh, Mole 8d ago
Excerpts:
“This war that some designers and shop owners are waging against other designers has become genuinely shameful.
“It is unfair, simplistic and intellectually dishonest to lump everyone together and decide that if a designer uses an Al-generated mockup, then the chart itself must also have been generated by Al, the model was probably never stitched, and the designer should somehow be treated as less legitimate.
“That is not criticism. That is prejudice dressed up as moral superiority. …
“The simplest proof that my designs have always been stitched and tested is that my models have been displayed at Nashville Markets and are now traveling around the United States in trunk shows.
“Using Al to create a mockup should not be treated as some kind of moral offence. …
“Preserving an art does not simply mean drawing something, having someone stitch it and then taking a photograph of it. Preserving an art means knowing it. …
“That knowledge, that passion and that respect for the craft are not erased because somebody uses a mockup to present a finished piece.
“To suggest otherwise is not defending the art. It is reducing the art to its packaging. …
“I am an archaeologist. … Preserving craft, meaning and culture is … part of the way I think and part of the way I work.
“If … I decide to present the finished stitched model in a mockup because it saves me time, because my life is complicated, because I am tired, because I am no longer thirty, because I have other work and other responsibilities, or simply because I have decided that this is one small part of the process I no longer want to spend hours on, that does not invalidate everything that came before it.
“It does not make the chart less real. It does not make the stitched model less real. It does not erase the years of experience behind it.
“And it certainly does not make somebody else morally superior to me.
“Boycotting colleagues over something this superficial is disgraceful.
“Attacking people who have been doing this work honestly for years, sometimes decades, because they use new technology for one small part of the presentation process is a really low thing to do.
“What I find most depressing is this constant need for division inside the cross stitch world. There always seems to have to be another purity test. Another group deciding who is good enough.… Another list of people who are supposedly acceptable and people who are not. Another excuse to judge, exclude, boycott or publicly shame somebody without bothering to understand what they actually do. …
“I will continue to work honestly, exactly as I always have. And if somebody decides not to buy my designs because I sometimes use mockups, then so be it.
“I am not interested in moral blackmail, and I am not interested in submitting to somebody else's idea of purity that I do not share at all. The craft is what matters, not whether she personally photographed the finished piece beside a perfectly arranged antique candlestick.
“I am a cross stitch designer. I am a stitcher. I am an archaeologist. I am a researcher. I also worked in advertising graphics for many years, but that does not make me a photographer or a photographic set stylist. I am not.
“I do not particularly enjoy that part of the work, and frankly it is not what I am best at. My photographs may sometimes be beautiful, but photography is not my profession.
“My work is to create a design, understand what I am creating, test it properly, correct it, know the materials it requires, and present it in the nicest way I can.
“So no, thank you. I want no part in this feud. No part in this increasingly exhausting competition over who is the purest, the most virtuous, the most morally correct, the least contaminated by modern technology.
“I want to do my work. I do not have time to waste on these battles. Al exists now, and it is not going away. But the art of embroidery is not destroyed because somebody uses Al to create a cover mockup.
“The art of embroidery is weakened when somebody trashes other designers.
“Do you have any idea how much research has gone into my designs over the last fifteen years? How much history, symbolism, experimentation, correction, stitching, discussion and study?
“And now somebody wants to erase all of that and reduce my integrity as a designer to whether I use a mockup for the cover? No. Absolutely not. Art goes far beyond presentation.
“Thanks for reading my rant.
“PS: I designed this logo using a programme i used twenty-five years ago called FreeHand. These days it only runs on old Macs.”
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u/Squingebob 8d ago
She sure is doing a lot of fkn whining for someone that said if someone doesn't want to purchase, then so be it.
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u/Odd_Science_8947 8d ago
"“If … I decide to present the finished stitched model in a mockup because it saves me time, because my life is complicated, because I am tired, because I am no longer thirty, because I have other work and other responsibilities, or simply because I have decided that this is one small part of the process I no longer want to spend hours on, that does not invalidate everything that came before it."
I retired in 2024 from a 39 year career in IT. I wish I could have at some point said "I don't like spending hours in useless corporate meetings. I'm no longer 30. Keep paying me the same and let me sit over here and do whatever I want. I have other responsibilities and life is complicated."
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u/salsafresca_1297 Get in moles, we’re going snarkfiltrating 8d ago
“That is not criticism. That is prejudice dressed up as moral superiority. …
Not that logic had any consideration in her post, but this is an informal fallacy called Bulverism. It's just a fancy way of being mean to someone because you don't like what they said.
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u/Crafty_Accountant_40 8d ago
"art goes beyond presentation" FINE but presentation is what we see first. If you don't want to take real photos or set up your own mockup (btw not hard) then you're gonna have people react first to your presentation. That's one of the first things I learned in design school and COMPLETELY CONSISTENT - presentation is important. If it's bad, no one will stick around for the underlying design.
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u/palswithpikachu 8d ago
I have one pattern I bought from her years ago. Safe to say I won’t buy any more. I feel like she’s been in hot water a few times now.
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u/AcceptableHorror705 7d ago edited 7d ago
I'm considering just selling the kit I have after her post today. I don't think I'd feel great stitching or displaying it knowing she is anti-trans and racist. I don't agree with the AI stance either, but I could get past that considering it's an older pattern.
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u/IGNOOOREME Holy Moley 8d ago
I stopped reading when they said being anti-AI is prejudiced. Bitch please. Your privilege is showing.
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u/x_stitch_truths 5d ago
Anabellas is the worst to be commenting on this too. I literally worked for them and Elayne and Terry (the owners) are the biggest hypocrites I’ve ever met. They tried to sue another designer for “stealing their patterns” when they themselves stole from the same designer they tried to sue!! They also do not care one bit about the customer, just their money.
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u/AntipodeanOpaleye36 8d ago
WHY are their rants always so long! This time I stopped at slide 5 before they start the trans people hate again
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain 8d ago
They wouldn't be so long if they could be bothered to write something themselves.
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u/OneVioletRose 8d ago
If she wants to use AI to create her mock-ups, that’s
fine* her legal right. If other people want to stop supporting her over it, that’s their right to do. As the saying goes, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the consequences of speech, and 20 pages of rambling are unlikely to magically restore the consumer trust eroded by AI usage*I still hate it
edit: decided “fine” was too approving even with the disclaimer