Long, long ago... (again?!)

... so much happened!

For instance, now I have lots of time to create - but I don't have money. Funny, because when we have a job it's exactly the opposite, isn't it?

During my absence here in the blog I created a lot. The Drift Scarf has grown a bit, but there still is a long way to knit... I'm still embroidering the first part of the nativity scene... and I got to start and finish a pair of fingerless gloves! I've also made a cover for the new laptop of the house, I'll write a tutorial for that.

Today, however, I write to comment on a case that got to me yesterday. My friend Méri sent me a message regarding the beautiful works of Karen Ruane, because they're being used in a blog here in Brazil, on a slide show on the side bar, without giving the credits to the artist.

For what I know about the internet over here, there are lots of people that create blogs with no updates, to use them as previews - free websites. It seems to be the case, and I also think that the blog owner is not the same person who created it. There's an address and two phone numbers from Rio de Janeiro, but the person did not answer Méri or Karen e-mail messages, and Karen has even sent a text message to the mobile number, with no answer.

In Karen's blog, she seems to be very upset with what's happening. No wonder, right? It's her beautiful work that's out there, with images taken from Flickr, and the quality of Karen's embroidery pieces is undoubtedly much higher than the ones present in that site. Surf around her blog and you'll see what I mean, everything is really tasteful and pretty. The site that's using her images, however, doesn't show anything of note.

I know these things happen all the time, but that's no reason to ignore them. Original work must be credited to the responsible artists, even if they have no interest in earning money from it. Reading the comments on Karen's blog, a suggestion seems to be the simplest one to me: adding her name to the image. It will be some trouble, but I think that, in the lack of an answer from the person who's using the images without authorization, it would solve the problem - and, who knows, it would stop it from happening again.

The only thing that can't happen is the talented people like Karen give up showing us the beautiful things they make, isn't it?