I hope this helps clarify things! It's very true that the nature of our event means that we're not for everybody, but that's totally fine - no single event could possibly be perfect for every person. But we're always striving to be as accessible and inclusive as possible. Cheers!

Your example of only having the capacity to fold laundry and start the dishwasher in a day really resonates with us. In our organizing team, for example, if someone doesn't have the spoons, we do not judge; we look for alternatives.

But generally, I think you'll find that our "vibe" is flexible, easy-going, and understanding. We're not just catering to crafters with accessibility challenges, we also try very hard to be accessible to our participating designers AND volunteers.

I appreciate that there are people who don't or can't run their businesses like that, and of course everyone should run their business however it works best for them and their customers. However, in such cases, I suspect our event is probably not a good fit with those businesses.

True, we do request that participating designers respond promptly and professionally to customer messages and prize winners. We didn't figure this was a cumbersome requirement, since folks running their own businesses generally need to respond to inquiries in a timely and professional manner.

It's really all stuff that comes with being part of an event like ours.

Additionally, we do list a number of suggestions for how to maximize your participation, but those are all totally optional.

Another is setting up the event discount code on your discounted patterns. Another is to work with us to make sure that the data we're publishing on the website about you and your patterns is correct.

There are eight main responsibilities for participating designers. We feel they're all reasonable, and achievable by many designers. For instance, one of the responsibilities is that you have to sign up, which is kind of an unavoidable requirement. :)

We do expect that designers' products will be of professional quality, and we feel that's a very reasonable expectation. Our website does go into further details into what we mean by that, but we've never said "everything must be tech edited".

As far as some of the other concerns go, we don't have a twenty-point checklist. The qualifications for participating designers are pretty minor, mostly relating to the above criteria for selling platforms, which stems from the nature of the event.

But, I saw you've been considering Payhip - lots of our designers use that! Ko-fi is another turnkey solution. There may be others, e.g. Gumroad, Shopify. (Lovecrafts unfortunately doesn't do coupon codes.) Some designers have put together custom websites, but that's probably more effort and moolah.

"Available for sale online" means being able to do a 100% self-serve online purchase. Our buying audience expects to be able to pick a product, buy it online (using the discount code if applicable), and get the product right away. So, I'm so sorry to disappoint, but manual fulfilment doesn't work.

(That minimum number is different depending on a designer's portfolio size. But it never has to be 100% of the whole portfolio.)

And in absolutely no way do we "forbid" participating designers from using Ravelry as a selling platform.

Many of our crafters and designers can't/won't use Ravelry for accessibility reasons. (That was actually the impetus for creating the event in the first place.) So, all participating designers must have a certain minimum number of their patterns available for sale online on a NON-Rav platform.

Hi there! Thanks for looping me in, @veg-grower.bsky.social ! I think I can help. There seems to be some misunderstanding about how our event works expressed in this thread. So I'm going to try to clarify. (Bear with me, it'll take a number of posts to do so.)

(And if I had actually included the #FastenOffYAL hashtag in the above post, it would presumably have actually SHOWN UP in the Bluesky feed. Facepalm. Using this reply to correct that error.)

I mean, not to brag, but, as you know... ;) www.fastenoffyal.com/search.html

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We hope you and yours have a safe, healthy, happy, and wonderful 2025!

~ The Fasten Off Yarnalong team