I’d agree with what people have already said, but I would like to point out that at least crafters are doing something creative with their time and money spent. We could be going to bars, gambling, who knows what…at least knitting, while an expensive hobby, does actually have some redeeming quality to it and is accesible to many.

I also see knitting as filling a void that our high-tech jobs build - a need for community, creativity, and something tangible to complete. Perhaps it’s a re-purposed art/craft, just like those ties that made a handbag.

Some knitters may be cranking out FO after FO so that they feel they’ve made something ‘real’.

After all, why do we blog? For me personally, it is not because I have some amazing information about knitting, or mad technique skills that need to be shared - it’s because I don’t know many like minded people in real life and wanted to know if they exist ‘out there’.

And to think that I could meet them when I travel would be amazing, and would make a disconnected world feel smaller.

It’s not surprsing that tech and division-of-labor between them make bought clothes usually cheaper than homemade; I think that would hold (less strongly) even without exploited labor and environments. I suspect that the idea that homemade clothes “should” be cheaper is left over from the era when women’s labor was underpaid, often free. Note that the belief that it’s cheaper to grow your own wheat died out much sooner…

The cheerful sides of craftery seem, to me, to be first an immersion in the sensual that virtual and massproduced life blunts; and second, the opposite of alienation of labor - my sweater is lumpy but it’s really, really mine.

Some of the shopping is understandable as a sensual pleasure, like color-field paintings. Sure, some of it is showing-off; that’s not new; we can expect a revival of the nineteenth-c. essay genre of “My workbox is exactly right in plenitude and niceness, whereas simpler ones are underprepared and fancier ones are vain.” I think Catherine Beecher wrote one of those.

I agree with the comment above that there’s a lot of cool craft in reusing exisiting postindustrial Stuff; I can’t forget the Victorian games of potichomanie, or making things out of the wings of dinner turkeys, or hideous cardboard mats…

If I’m going to spend a month knitting something that I could buy next door at the Gap in five minutes, then I’m not monkeying around with no Red Heart. Know what I mean.

That said, I see lots of beginners forking over way more than they need to just because some particular (very expensive) yarn catches their fancy.

For me, a large stash (I just read that some knitter has about 2,000 skeins (!) in her stash) would be overwhelming. I pick up nice yarns when I see them and when I have a project in mind for them (and when they fit into the budget). The little ephiphany I had recently was that I realized that it’s YARN. There’ll be more yarn later. It’s not absolutely crucial that I buy this yarn right now no matter what.

I truly wonder how many of us could survive in the days of make it if you want it, grow it or kill it if you want to eat it of our ancestors. I’m happy I don’t have to knit - or I’d have precious little to wear. But I’m happy to knit what I want.

Also, a lot of traditional crafts were literally pastimes–something to fill up long winter evenings in the pre-TV era. Now, when someone crafts an object, it’s usually because they want the object itself, not the activity.

So one reason (IMO) crafts have become more expensive is that crafters don’t want to go to all that effort to make something shlocky.

My dear grandmother crocheted with whatever yarn was on sale–she said it kept her fingers limber as she got older. But in all affection, I have to say that the things she made were hideous. Not for lack of craftswomanship, but because she started with hideous materials.

Molly, NYC

Also in the way of finance, what I’m seeing more and more on those craft boards are “reconstructed” crafts: jewelry made from those flat-bottom glass marbles for aquariums, purses made from ties (I was so impressed by it that I made one myself), a punk corset made from pieces of a taken-down billboard poster with boning from old plastic bottles, and various furniture pieced together from things around the house that really looked artistic. I believe this is where real crafting, like in the early days of crafting, is going, away from the expensive scrapbooking kits you buy from major chain craft stores.

I started crafting (sewing, crocheting, knitting) after-hours because I wanted to be sure my garments were not sweatshop-made and to increase my number of organic and cruelty-free wears. Neither a guaranteed union-made label nor organic one has a big selection in plus sizes (and thrift stores holding my size? If I’m LUCKY). Months later, I’ve learned that sewing takes so many hunched-over (owww!) hours that I’m really rethinking that purchase of a used sewing machine; and the organic yarn and fabric prices are astronomical. I knew I wouldn’t actually be saving money by doing this but it seems to be cost the same as or more than shopping at expensive boutiques for clothes. In addition, there are the hours put in on it. Plus I suck at sewing.

Probably the aspect on your wish that I wish to see is someone that not only knits, sews, whatever, and blogs about it but actually wears the crafts s/he makes the majority of the time.

I’m de-emphasizing gender on purpose here, too, because it seems that men are getting into the crafting aspect in larger numbers. Whenever I go into the fabric store, for instance, I see just as many men as women there, and the men aren’t there with their girlfriends or wives (or boyfriends, to kick a stereotype). The craft boards appear to have a growing number of men posting their creations as well.

Great article you wrote!