Oh that's frustrating...

So I get messages from time to time on Etsy from friends of friends being sent to me looking for a particular crocheted thing.

Most of the time, after they hear/see the price they almost always "Thank you for your reply."

Which among us crafters is code for "Why the fuck would I pay that when I can get it from Wal*Mart for 3.99?"

The item in question this time was a beautiful crocheted cloche with flower embellishment.  22-25 bucks.

That covers the materials (which would need to a bit finer of a yarn for the flowers and leaves) and barely covers my time.

This is one of the most... derogatory things that happens on a weekly basis for all crafters I think.  Someone asks us to make something and for how much and then what happens?  The above.

Something else that coincides with this response is almost always the fact that the person who does this, 95% of the time is the same kind of person who bitches about "American jobs being sent overseas".  Here's a newsflash for you oh stupid one, stop fucking taxing businesses out of existence.
Here's a little background for those of you who aren't familiar with how hand crafts like mine work.

We'll use a beanie, as an incredibly simple example.

The basic beanie, can be down with one thread or two.   With any of the stitches know as single, double or treble and hell all the ones in between.

It takes 1-3 skeins of yarn, depending on how nice of a yarn or color variety you want. These range in price from 3.14 for 236 yards of thread (215 meters) to 8.99 for 174 yards.

Then the average crafting time is anywhere from an hour and 45 minutes to five hours (this is dependent on skill level and experience level).  I average an hour and 45 minutes on simple beanies.

Now, let's just say that for a really nice cloche I decide to go with a finer thread for the flowers.  This finer thread costs 6.99 a skein, and I get two in two different colors.  Then one skein at 3.14 for the main hat.

Now that puts me at 17.12 already.  And I haven't even started working on the hat yet.

So we'll say there's four flowers.  Each flower takes me 45 minutes for a total of 3 hours.
The cloche takes me 2 hours to make.

So that's five hours for this hat.  Now at the higher quoted price of 24 dollars minus the 17.12 leaves 6.88.

Now divide 6.88 by 5.

That is 1.376 an hour.

We won't go into any of the other things I make.

I put five hours of time into a hat, and am only asking 24 bucks for it.

Do the crafting community a favor: If you aren't willing to pay for quality and for the investment of our time, don't even open a fucking conversation with us.

In case you're wondering what it would cost if I put in the 8.75 min wage just to give you a baseline:
43.75 and that's just the cost of the time.  Plus material and shipping... try 60 bucks at least.

Do me and the rest of the crafting community a favor: don't get snotty, snobby, condescending, arrogant, snide, rude or belligerent with me when I give you a very reasonable price, when I'm the one who knows how much time goes into my work, not you.  I know my work is going to last you for several years when that junk you buy from some chain store is going to worthless in less than a year.

Stop your bitching about sending jobs overseas when you won't even invest in small business here.

Older patterns (and the headaches they caused....)

"Good gods Evie... what is that???"

That, is what an older piece of a pattern that I'm trying to work from looks like.  My fellow crocheters will be recoiling in horror at the moment.

This confusing discombobulated mess, is from a pamphlet of crocheted table clothes.  The booklet is so old, I can't find a date anywhere on it.  This tells me at least the 40s or 50s, is the time period because I've noticed in a lot of the older publications that they didn't really think it was important to include dates.

Now, being the valiant and committed crocheter that I am (Yes, read that as stubborn and stop snorking...), I did attempt as per exhibit A, to your right to follow said instructions.

...

Yes, to you looks lovely my dears, but to me... I know better.  This is a part of the curse of knowing this... is nothing like the example picture, and that the person who made the example picture piece was a dirty rotten whore.

There's the concept called "Frogging".    No not frog hunting.  Basically means doing any stitch necessary to make it look right OR undoing the whole thing.   It's not a fun concept and one I try very hard to not need to do.

So, because I'd like to incorporate these concepts (many of which are Irish lace) into my work, I'm going to be working modernizing the language and terminologies used.  Along with fixing the mistakes.  This is going to probably be a year long if not multiple year project.

Worth it?

Oh totally!

Prototypes: They are a must!

A long long time ago, in what seems like another dozen lifetimes ago, a woman taught her eldest daughter how to crochet, and a few years later how to read a pattern.  Then after about a decade and a half, that now grown daughter began to freehand her patterns.

Yeap, I was probably around 6-8 years old when my mom took those first steps of introducing me to the world of crochet.

It was simple things at first.  Afghans and hats. Yes, actually afghans are incredibly easy and when they get to a certain size, you can curl up underneath of your work during the cooler months of the year.  I really really like making afghans and shawls.

In the last couple of years, I've stepping outside of the pattern books.  When I moved home with my parents for a time again, I was still struggling with being able to find a big enough comfort zone to be able to work a "normal" job again.  *shudder*

I had already been crocheting constantly at that point as it was an incredibly good coping mechanism for what I was going through. One day I got froggy, and decided that I was going to make a crocheted coat.

I had a large amount of yarn as well that I was trying to get used up, but this prototype was an incredibly important step in my creative endeavors.  I proved to myself that I could design something when I put myself into it.

Now I learned several lesson from this particular prototype:

1. Measure, measure, measure!  Especially the armholes.  The sleeves were massive on this thing.  Way too big for a lean critter like myself.

2.  Always double check my sleeve placements.  The sleeves on this piece were almost two inches, too far back.

3.  The neck was too small almost.  From this coat to the next one I made, the front pieces were made more narrow as I worked my way to the shoulders.  This allowed for the hood to fit better, and gave the next piece a very nice sculpted look.  I really wish I had taken a picture of it, but it was a late order that year and it needed to go out.

4. As you can see from the front of this, the bottom was almost too narrow.  It really doesn't sit well anywhere.  This lead to me making the bottom part a couple inches wider than the person's hips and once above the hips, taking it in just a couple of stitches.

5.  On the next coat, I learned the lesson of "Don't be afraid of an extra wide edging."

This summer I've ended up with three coat orders, and will be documenting their progress and if any new lessons are added to the ones above.  Two sized mediums and one size small.  I did the small one first, because that's my size and I can get better pictures of these coats now.

Without having done this prototype, I wouldn't have ever even considered making coats, nor would I be anywhere near where I am currently in my skills and the things I can offer as a crafter.

I have a large amount of scrap yarn ("Gee really?") that I use to test stitch styles before committing them to a project.  Color test swatches have also entered my toolbox so that I can get the colors right before I start work.

This prototype coat, I did in what's called a Shell Stitch and in Double Crochet stitches.  As you can see, it looks good... but not great. I wasn't pleased at all with how it wanted to droop because of how loose the fabric had ended up being.  It was too inclined towards stretching and didn't mold to a body properly.   These days, I use the very simple Half-Double Crochet stitch.

It creates an amazing look, gives the work a stiffer fabric and molds better.  Instead of drooping... it drapes. Almost all of my work that I present now via the shop, was preceded by a prototype. In some cases, several prototypes.

If you've not considered using prototypes in your work before (whatever your work might be), I would highly recommend trying the process out.  I do prototypes with even my cooking these days.  =)