Buy Me A Coffee?

Well, we've got to talk about a subject that no one really likes to talk about.

No, not politics. I'll yell at you about that all day.

I'm talking money.

Most of you know that I do not have any actual personal income aside from the odd dog sitting gig.

For most of my adult life, I haven't been in a well enough mental state to hold down a job, much less get the license required to drive a car to get *to* said hypothetical job. (No public transport in these parts...)

I've tried various methods of selling things I make and all of them have pretty much been colossal failures. (Want to hear about the craft show with a $50 table fee where I made $2 the WHOLE DAMN WEEKEND?!)

Commission work isn't feasible, either.

For one thing, no one would actually want to pay the amount I SHOULD be charging.

A shawl takes me usually about 2 weeks to do going at a steady pace and not my usual ridiculously tight turnaround times where I nearly murder my hands, wrists, and shoulders.

So let's say I'm working 5 hours a day on said shawl (which is pretty typical). So that's 70 hours for a shawl. I wouldn't charge less than $10 an hour for said work. And that's low-balling.

Are you REALLY willing to pay me $700 for a shawl?

"But Ashtan!" you cry. "That's so much!"

Listen here, friend, I have put 5 YEARS of time into learning knitting and honing my skills.

Let's assume that it averages out to about 2 hours a day of knitting over the course of those 5 years (and that's probably a VERY conservative estimate). That's over 5,000 hours I have knit. FIVE THOUSAND.

Would you offer someone else who has put that much time and effort into a skill mere pennies?

But fine, let's play the Minimum Wage Game.

The current federal minimum wage is a paltry $7.25 an hour. (We can discuss the problems with that later.)

You're still looking at $500 for a shawl.

Mind you, that's not how much I'd actually have at the end of the day.

Yarn isn't cheap. Depending on yarn content, you're looking at easily $40 to $60 a shawl. And that's for something simple.

Celestarium? That's $120 in materials alone.

Find Your Fade? One those was gift yarn, to be fair. But if you want to do the math, mine used 7 different colors. A typical skein of fingering weight is $27.  Sooo.... $189 in just yarn.

"Why don't you use cheaper yarn?"

Listen, would you want something that's going to be running through your hands for HOURS made out of cheap materials?

That's what I thought.

So, like I said, cost-wise commissions aren't worth it.

The other problem with commission work is just how soul-crushing it can be. Being at the whims and demands of a client would kill my creativity. ESPECIALLY if said client wants a bunch one particular thing.

Doing all those bulbasaurs a while back nearly drove me to stab the crochet hook through my eye and swear off ever doing any yarn work again.

I thrive on variety. There are so many damn patterns out there, so why would I ever want to repeat one? Not to mention the fact that lately I've been unsatisfied with just picking out a pattern and making it. More and more I find myself just grabbing some yarn and needles and just going in whatever direction creativity takes me.

And while that is rewarding and fulfilling, it's still not a viable way to sell shawls seeing as these prototypes are needed in case I want to try and recreate the pattern.

Speaking of patterns, that's another avenue I've tried going down, but there is A LOT of work involved with pattern writing.

It's not as simple as knit the thing, write it down, throw out into the public.

There's testing, rewriting, swatching, editing, re-knitting... And THEN you have to find test knitters, which deserve some sort of compensation for their work, edit the pattern AGAIN when you get their opinions after doing the test knits... And now you have to do all sorts of promotional advertising to try and get the excitement up.

And then you can sell the pattern.

Which is way more energy than I have most of the time.

There are patterns I would like to eventually sell, but I'm still ways away from being able to release them because of all the steps above.

I also don't really want to run ads on the blog because I would be a giant hypocrite with my little Ad-Block Plus extension running on my browser.

So, how the heck can I get some sort of compensation for all the things that I do?

Well, it occured to me that I can just... ask.

A lot of my other artisan friends have links to paypal, ko-fi, venmo, and what-have-you on their social media so that way if people are so inclined, they can donate a few bucks.

So... I'm going to do the same.

At the end of each blog post from now on will be a little blurb about donating if you'd like to with links to my personal paypal link and my ko-fi account. (For those who don't know, ko-fi lets you buy "coffees" for a person at $3 each). If you've enjoyed my writing and are able to, consider tossing a few bucks my way.

I'm not looking for enough money to single-handedly support myself (though that would be nice). But yarn ain't cheap and I'd love to be able to help lessen the cost for myself. Not to mention the fact that my yarn winder just broke and I'd like to actually buy a nice one to replace it with.

So, want to buy me a coffee?

Buy me a Ko-fi!

Donate Directly Here!