Terms of Service — Stitchsums

The short version

Stitchsums is a free suite of knitting and crochet calculators (plus, eventually, a chart editor and AI features). Use it freely for personal and commercial designs. Double-check load-bearing math against your gauge swatch. We provide the tools as-is and aren't responsible for swatches that lie or stitches that drift.

1. Agreement

By using stitchsums.com, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the site. These terms apply equally to free users (everyone today) and to future paid Pro subscribers.

2. What Stitchsums is

Stitchsums is a collection of pattern-math calculators, a future chart editor (Phase 2), and future AI assistance (Phase 2+). Calculators run entirely in your browser using deterministic, unit-tested math. The math is the same for everyone — affiliate relationships, account tiers, and AI features do not change what a calculator returns for a given input.

3. Free use, with goodwill

You may use the calculators on this site for any purpose — personal projects, commissioned work, paid pattern designs, classroom teaching, or YouTube tutorials. You don't need to credit Stitchsums, although we appreciate it when you do.

You may not:

Scrape the site at a rate that interferes with availability for others.
Republish the calculators on a different domain pretending they're yours. (If you want to embed our calculators on your site, we will publish an official embeddable widget in Phase 2 — see Creator Embeds below.)
Use the site to do anything illegal in your jurisdiction.

4. Math accuracy

We take math correctness seriously — every calculator module is unit-tested before it ships, and "validated by Stitchsums math" is core to how we describe the product. That said:

Your gauge swatch is the ground truth. Calculators assume the gauge you input is what your fabric actually does. If your swatch was wrong, the math will be wrong — that's not the calculator's fault.
For commercial patterns, double-check. When you're publishing a pattern other people will pay for, run the numbers through a second method (hand math, a paper pattern from a similar design, a swatch-test of the finished math). Stitchsums is not liable for errors in published patterns.
Bug reports are welcome. If a calculator returns something that looks wrong, email hello@stitchsums.com with the inputs and the result. We fix math bugs fast.

5. Your patterns are yours

Anything you create using Stitchsums — patterns, charts, calculations, finished objects — belongs to you. We claim no ownership of your designs, your gauge data, your stitch counts, or any artefact the calculators help you produce. Once a future Pro account exists, the same applies to anything saved under that account.

6. Our content is ours

The Stitchsums wordmark, brand, written explanations, illustrations, and the source code of the calculators are owned by Stitchsums. You may quote short excerpts of our written content for review or commentary purposes (fair use / fair dealing) with a credit and a link.

The math itself — formulas like "stitches × inches × gauge = total stitches" — is not copyrightable and never has been. Don't credit us for the math; credit us for the implementation if you reuse our explanatory wording.

7. Affiliate links

Some links on this site are affiliate links — when you click them and buy something, Stitchsums may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We disclose this in full on our Affiliate Disclosure page and inline next to the link clusters where it matters. By using the site you acknowledge this practice.

8. Creator embeds (planned)

In Phase 2 we plan to release an embeddable widget so pattern designers and crochet/knit YouTubers can put a Stitchsums calculator on their own site, branded with their handle and optionally routing affiliate commissions to their accounts. That feature will have its own terms — a Creator Agreement — published before it ships. Until that exists, please don't iframe-embed the live site directly; it's not designed for embedding and will render poorly.

9. Future paid tiers

When the Pro tier launches, there will be a separate set of subscription terms layered on top of these (cancellation, refund window, upgrade/downgrade behaviour, prorating). Those terms will be presented at signup. The free calculators will remain free; we have committed in our product strategy that there will be no soft paywall on the free chart editor or on any individual calculator.

10. Disclaimer of warranties

Stitchsums is provided "as is" and "as available." We do our best to keep the site working, accurate, and accessible, but we don't warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for any particular purpose beyond the general descriptions on each calculator page. To the maximum extent permitted by your local law, we disclaim all implied warranties.

11. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Stitchsums total liability for any claim arising out of your use of the site is limited to the amount you have paid us in the last 12 months — which, for free users, is zero. We are not liable for consequential damages, lost yarn, frogged projects, or pattern-publishing income you believe was reduced by a calculation error. Consumer-protection laws in your jurisdiction (e.g., the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015, the EU Consumer Sales Directive, US state consumer-protection statutes) may give you stronger rights that override this section.

12. Indemnification

If your use of Stitchsums causes a third-party claim against us — for example, you used our site in a way that violated someone else's rights — you agree to cover our reasonable legal costs in defending that claim. This clause does not apply to claims caused by our own negligence.

13. Termination

You can stop using Stitchsums at any time. We can suspend or block access for anyone who is abusing the service (scraping at scale, attempting to break the site, harassing other users in any future community feature). We will explain why in the rare cases where this happens.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction where Stitchsums is operated, except where local consumer-protection law gives you stronger rights that cannot be waived by contract. If a dispute arises, both parties agree to try to resolve it informally by email first.

15. Changes to these terms

When we change these terms, we will update the "Last updated" date above. For material changes — anything that affects your rights, your data, or what you pay — we will surface a notice on this page for at least 30 days. Continued use of the site after that constitutes agreement to the new version.

16. Contact

Questions about these terms can be sent to hello@stitchsums.com.