My Two Cents... and a recipe

The recent developments between MTC and Provo Craft have been preying on my mind enough that I finally have to say something and be done with it. Read on if you wish or scroll down to the very bottom of this post for just the recipe page.

On the cold, corporate level, these are what I believe to be the basics: Provo Craft and their partner/half owner Bank of America, filed suit against MTC for alleged copyright infringement and MTC settled out of court rather than run up legal bills it could not possibly pay. Quite frankly, if MTC had the time and money to fight PC and BOA, I think they could have won.  The only thing MTC may have done wrong, in my opinion,  was create a means to back up the Cricut Cartridges that the user owned but that feature was removed after only 2 weeks of existence so there was no reason for a lawsuit.  If you are reading this then you use a computer, so you should know that once you buy your hardware, you are free to use any software that you choose.  There are tons of legal precedents showing that a hardware developer cannot prevent a software developer from creating a program to utilize their hardware.

On the warm, human level, MTC is not a corporation.  It is a young programmer, Andy, who wrote a program for his wife, Ann, so she could cut her own designs rather than use the cartridges full of designs that did not appeal to her.  Once written, he chose to share it with the rest of us.  MTC is the only reason I bought my Cricut Expression.  And with he and Ann expecting, he really had no choice but to settle out of court.

On the warmer, personal level, MTC allows me to keep busy and to keep my mind off the pain. You see, I hurt… ALL the time.  Some days it’s just a little and other days it’s a lot but the pain is ALWAYS there.  I have arthritis in my spine and have had my neck fused.  I have arthritis in my knees.  Crafting has always been my oasis. I have often said that as long as I have the use of my eyes and my hands and can craft, I can overcome anything.  When crafting, my mind enters another world where there is no pain but the arthritis is in my hands and has gotten to the point where it prevents me from crafting. There are days when I can’t hold a scissor or use a paper punch or even hold the paper to ink the edges so I use what the medical professionals call Adaptive Therapy.  I find a tool to help me do what my hands can’t.  I have a Teflon coated metal plate and magnets to hold my paper while I use the ink applicators from Tim Holtz (love you Tim) to ink the edges.  I have magnets on my Stampa-ma-jig to hold everything in place while I stamp.  And I had MTC and my Cricut Expression to do the fussy cutting around my stamping, my paper punching and die cutting.

I shouldn’t take it personally, but I feel like Provo Craft and Bank of America have told me to put my big girl panties on and just live with the pain.  Well I have been wearing big girl panties long before I was a big girl and I’ve been dealing with this pain for most of my life with very little medication by crafting!!! So for now, I will continue to use MTC with my Cricut Expression.  I will not be able to update MTC and will miss out on any new wonderful things Andy adds to the program until I can find a way to purchase a different cutter but I will be able to keep smiling, laughing, joking and creating. Thank you Andy and Tim and Penny and Kim and StampinUp and all my other fellow crafters who have made it possible for me to continue doing what I love.

Which brings me to the recipe I mentioned...  It was my month to supply the recipe for our SU Recipe Club and since it was March I decided to do my version of Irish Soda Bread.  This is the original recipe as I did it for years but now I use butter and put the whole batch into 1 greased cast iron skillet. I hope you enjoy it.

 Til next time...