Things That Make You Wanna Slit Your Wristies.

Hey hey, Happy New Year, and all that! After 4 months without a computer, I'm now posting from a brand new Gateway laptop. I've been a Mac for almost 10 years now, so this is definitely a learning experience! To be honest, I got this computer in early December, so its not all that brand new anymore. And I didn't really miss having a computer since I have an iPhone ;) lol

Anyway, so, I logged onto to Flickr today, and I had a comment on this photo, titled "Crochet wristies":

The comment was from a woman telling me that Wristies is a copyrighted name, and told me to remove the word from the title, tags, and description. Well look at that; Wristies are a brand of polar fleece wristwarmers.

I changed the tags/title etc, but I found the whole thing a little disturbing. Firstly, she didn't say anything about this picture, which was right next to the other, and included the same words and tags.


Secondly, I thought it was pretty tacky, and unintelligent, that she decided to leave the cease and desist as a COMMENT on the picture. I didn't notice it for two months, because I just hadn't gone back to that picture. If it had been sent to me in a private message, at least I would have gotten email notification. And really, do you need to make sure that everyone that looks at these silly little crocheted tubes KNOWS that they aren't your polarfleece wristwarmers?

Wristies is a word that I've known, heard, and used since I was a kid! That's just what they're CALLED. I mean, yeah, they can be wristwarmers, but shoes can be kicks, and stockings can be nylons. Google agrees with me; a search in Images came up with a ton of not-Wristies-brand wristies. Is it really legal to copyright a word that is already widely used like that? Neither word is in the dictionary, as far as I can find. Just a whole lotta people using the term to describe the same thing: a glove, minus the thumb and fingers.

My first reaction, however, was: Why me? There are knitted & crocheted wristies on Etsy; if you search on Ravelry, you'll find 3 pages of patterns for wristies (and a whole lot more on the various other knit/crochet pattern sites out there). Most puzzling, is that a search on Flickr, where this person found my photo, brings up 680 results. I only glanced through the first few pages, but I didn't see any polarfleece Wristies. So why me? I'm not advertising my own wristwarmers, not profiting, nor am I claiming that I "invented" the garment (accessory?) or word. The only thing I figured is that the offending picture comes up as 3rd result when you Google "crochet wristies". But so do some others, and they don't have c&d comments on their pictures.

Tomorrow, I'm going to copyright "pants". All your pants are belong to me!