It's New Years day and I have finally finished my first cow + the 1st draft of the pattern. Go New Zealand - land of cows and Fonterra. The hard part is over. Phew... after this I will just have a camel to design - to complete a full nativity animal set. Sorry to have missed the 2014 deadline Barb, but now there is always next Christmas! Here's the cow.

It took a lot longer to get to this stage than I had planned but I got sidetracked. I found out that my seahorse design has popped up (altered and marketed) as a Fantasia beads pattern. I guess I have had a wake-up call. I am now forced to get my best designs registered/patented. This is part of a letter I got from the site in question. 

"Especially you don't have patented the design. I could make an exact copy of your ones with a self made pattern and sell it. The copyright doesn't come into effect here.

We have previously informed us with a lawyer for German right, and our approach is completely legitimate, there for we are selling out of Germany, German right counts."

It's a bit scary to have high-powered German designers checking up on my patents here in New Zealand. I certainly don't have the copyright clout and budget of Disney.

They basically added bling, changed some details and rewrote the pattern using cubic RAW instead of plain RAW. The way I see it is this: You can take someone else’s design; change a feature, add a feature, and add embellishments. However, this does not make the design magically become yours. It just means that you have modified it – creating a derivation, not a design! And when you rewrite the pattern in your own words and sell it for a lot of money, telling everyone it is your design….. well, I'm not impressed! 

My 2001 seahorse design:

Their seahorse (nice fin)

Anyway the best advice I have read is that you have to stay one step ahead of pattern pirates, and not get bitter. So anyway, instead of working on the cow I have been making a new secret seahorse design - one to patent, register and protect. I too can use herringbone and sparkly embellishments.  My challenge is to make it better than the one above, and not to copy anyone else - but simply to be inspired.

I'd be interested to see if my idea of this situation is in keeping with others views, given that these are emotional issues. I had a blogger say "They did NOT copy you! and that I was being arrogant and presumptuous. She said "I was not the only person who said "I think I'll make a seahorse out of beads'". I was shocked that she said this. But I guess people get defensive, and not everyone understands copyright, or the design process.

Three new cow bodies. The middle cows head is ok and the bottom one has a more rounded tummy which I like and a better pattern. But it's still not the way I want it to be. Going for a walk on the beach now. I'm sick of cows!

Last weekend was spent on organising my girls birthday party, so I have only just finished the body and head of cow number two. the photo makes it look a bit weirder than it is.

This head is better than the 1st cows, although the pink nose needs fixing, and it needs a jaw. This time I put three round wooden beads in the body and they worked quite well. The belly needs to be fatter and rounder though. I'm not going to adds legs to any of my experiments on until I get the body shape right. 

I have noticed that most black and white cows seem to have a black rump, a black saddle and a black neck and head - with a white stripe on the nose, so I'm going for an interesting but typical patchy pattern.

My horse design. Horses are my favourite animals so it was nice to make so many samples in the process of getting the pattern right. It's a really long pattern, and it's with a bead fairy right now, cos I wanted someone to test it. I don't usually do that.

I have a very quiet spot on the teaching front, so I'm back into designing beaded animals again, after a very long time. And no more Ravelry for me (too time consuming and obsessive) although I do still want to knit some Christmas presents for the kids. I was asked some time ago to design a camel for a Christmas nativity scene, but I just can't seem to motivate myself, despite having obtained several little plastic camels to use as models. I found myself designing a cow instead. I have been working on it for the last 3 days (not all the time though) and this is what I came up with. I am happy with it for a 1st attempt. Its head, ears and horns are all wrong and its a bit lumpy in the wrong places, but well on the way to being the cow I want it to be. I developed it from a horse I finished a few months ago but didn't publish (yet). I probably won't finish this cows legs and tail - the next one will be worth finishing I hope.