The Yarn Owl

Pricing handmade items is hard. On the one hand, you spend a lot of time creating something and want to be fairly compensated for that time, but on the other hand, when it comes to time-consuming projects, if you charged enough to earn a fair wage for your hours of work, you’d be charging far more than most customers would be willing to pay. It’s a fine line, and it’s something I’m still struggling with as a shop owner.

There are lots of formulas out there to come up with a fair price for handmade goods that take into consideration the cost of materials and time spent working, like this one:

(Hourly wage x # of hours worked) + Cost of materials= wholesale price. Wholesale price x 2 is your retail price that you should be charging your customers.

So for example, if I spend 6 hours working on a crocheted toy (that’s about my average for the medium size toys I sell) and I want to earn $9 an hour (our minimum wage here in CA), that’s $54 plus material costs, which are luckily usually pretty low, around $3-4. So I’m looking at a total WHOLESALE cost of $58. Multiply that by 2 and your looking at a retail price of $116 for a 9 inch stuffed toy. Hmmm. Maybe there’s people out there that would have no problem paying that amount for a high quality handmade toy, but I know it would put my items out of reach for the vast majority of shoppers, which is not something I want.

On the other hand, if I price something too low, I’m not only essentially giving away my time, but I’m also hurting other handmade artists by undercutting their prices, which drives down prices across the board and negatively impacts the handmade marketplace as a whole. So it’s a balancing act, and I try very hard to look at it from both sides.

For me, I rarely have very much money in our budget to spend on gifts or something for myself, so when I plan to buy something I am very careful and weigh all of my options. I read product reviews, I compare prices, and I consider what makes one product superior to another. And for that reason, whenever I have the chance I buy handmade. Part of the reason is that I think it’s really important to support my fellow crafters because I know just how hard running a creative business can be. But mostly it’s because handmade items really are special, and for the most part are built to last. Knowing that something was made by someone’s hand especially for me makes me feel connected to that person and their products, even if I don’t know them and will never meet them personally. It gives things more meaning, and I find that I value those handmade items more. But then there are times when my budget forces me to the usual big box stores and their consumer-friendly prices, and that’s okay too. What’s frustrating is when people want the handmade quality at the big box price.

When you sell handmade items, it can be discouraging when people compare the price of your item to the price of something similar they can find at a large retailer. While I think most people do understand and value the time, effort and skill that goes into making something by hand, there will always be those who would rather pay a lower price for something mass produced by machines if it serves the same function. In the end though, while you may not be able to realistically charge what the formulas say you should and still get sales, it’s important to find a balance and not accept less than what you feel is a fair price for the work involved in creating your product. That number will be different for everyone, and it’s up to each person to find their own system that they’re comfortable with. The important thing is to give people the best possible product, hopefully at a price you can both live with.

And if you’re a handmade shopper, please keep in mind that you’re not just purchasing a product–you’re buying the time, effort and love that the artist put into creating something unique and special just for you! That’s not something you’ll find at Walmart.

I simply can’t believe Christmas is next week! This has been a whirlwind year and I feel like I’m still running to catch up! Luckily we settled pretty easily into our school routine and are now enjoying our winter break, along with some exceptionally cold California weather to inspire some new crocheted goodies! While I haven’t had a chance to get to all the projects on my to-do list for the year, I’ve been using my little bits of free time to work on some just-for-fun things, something I haven’t been doing enough of lately.

My kids had been asking me if we could do Elf on the Shelf this year, but to be totally honest, the Elf kinda creeps me out, so instead I decided to crochet our own. I found this adorable pattern for a Lalaloopsy elf from Epic Kawaii and I absolutely love how she turned out! This is my second doll pattern from Epic Kawaii and I was once again very impressed with the quality of the pattern and the amazing attention to detail.  The first one I tried was another Lalaloopsy, Winter Snowflake. (I’m so glad I at least have one girl to make all these cute dolls for!) The patterns cost a little more than I usually like to spend, but they really are worth the price!

I know I really shouldn’t talk about cold weather, we Californians are pretty spoiled in that department, but it got to around 18 degrees last night where I live which is pretty cold in my book. As usual, this kind of weather gets me in the mood to make some new winter accessories, and I had been on the lookout for a new glove pattern for awhile when I came across this beauty: Cabled Wrist Warmers by Julee Fort. This is available as a free download on Ravelry and I LOVE them! They look complicated but the cables are actually really easy, just front and back post double crochet. I used Lion Brand Heartland in Glacier Bay. This has become one of my favorite worsted weight yarns, it’s so soft and the colors are gorgeous!

And here’s a preview of my current project, the Rustic Fringe Infinity Scarf by Rebecca of Little Monkey Crochet. This is another great blog for beautiful free patterns, definitely worth checking out. For those of us that crochet Christmas gifts she even has a free download for “Honest Gift Tags” to show your loved ones how much hard work went into their gift. I will definitely be using these ^_^ !

Everyone stay warm and enjoy your holidays!

Well goodness. Life has a way of turning out unlike anything you would have expected. So there’s a few reasons I’ve been MIA for so long, and I’m sorry it’s taken me awhile to fill you all in! Around the beginning of the year I felt like I hit a wall, creatively and physically, and while the Holidays usually leave me feeling joyful and refreshed, this year they just left me feeling exhausted. I decided I needed to take some time to regroup, so I put my Etsy shop on vacation mode and took a step back from creating to figure out what I really want and am able to do. I know some of the exhaustion was due to some health issues I had been dealing with, but I think a lot of the problem really came down to feeling disconnected and overwhelmed by our crazy schedule.

I realized I had kind of been on autopilot–homework, check. Dinner, check. Bedtime, check. Clean the house while wrangling my now very mobile toddler….not so much, but the effort was made. The kids were bored, I was irritable, and between all of our obligations and getting everyone in bed early enough to be somewhat functional the next day, poor Papi wasn’t getting any quality time with anyone.

As the year wore on, I was feeling more and more frustrated by the amount of homework being piled onto the kids (when did they start giving homework in preschool?!?) and watching as their enthusiasm and love for learning was slowly being squashed out of them by the endless test prep, drills, and pressure to meet the “standards.” A was already dreading Kindergarten and B was bored out of her mind with the constant review of concepts she already knew. Something needed to change. We thought about switching them to private school, but it just wasn’t possible due to finances and the lack of good choices near us. That’s when we started talking about homeschooling.

This is something I had never even considered because, let’s face it, I’m not the most patient or organized person in the world, and I was afraid I would be a terrible teacher, get frustrated, and end up ruining my kids. But the more I looked into it and prayed about it, the more I was convinced this is what we needed to do. Not just for the kids, but as a way to bring the whole family closer. So we finished out the last few weeks of school while I learned everything I could about what we were getting ourselves into.

Now that the new school year has started and we’ve been at it for awhile, I’m so glad we decided to go for it! I’d be lying if I said it was easy, but it has been very much worth it! The freedom it has given us is amazing. The kids are flying through their lessons and they finally have time to just be kids–no homework to take over their fun time with Papi, no stress over getting up early or missing assignments.  And I’m getting the chance to re-educate myself and fill in the gaps my own traditional schooling left. Despite my fears, I see they’re actually learning and once again excited about it. I think my biggest problem has been relaxing a bit and realizing there is no one perfect curriculum and there’s no one right way to go about it. It’s a matter of finding what works for us.

So things are still a bit crazy around here, and the house still isn’t clean (and probably never will be now!) but we’re finding our joy again. And I’m finally picking up my hooks again. I promise I won’t turn this into a homeschool blog, if you’re interested in our adventures on that front I am starting a separate site for that. I just wanted to share with you the unexpected turn our lives have taken, and let you know that I’m finally feeling inspired to keep creating and sharing with you all. Thanks to everyone who has stuck around, and I’ll talk to you soon!

For awhile I’ve wanted to take on a big project, I just have had a hard time deciding what. I know I tend to start things and leave half of them unfinished, so I think that to have any hope of finishing a big project, it needs to be something I can break into bite sized pieces. So I was super excited when I saw a recent post by Sarah of Repeat Crafter Me about her latest project–26 days of crochet animal appliques! Each letter of the alphabet will be represented by a different animal applique and then put together in an afghan. Over the next month she’ll be adding the free applique patterns one by one to her blog. So I’ve decided to follow along and commit to making an applique each day until it’s done! Since the first two patterns have already gone up I went ahead and did both today, so here’s my alligator and butterfly ^_^

I think this would be a really fun Crochet-Along project, so if anyone is interested in working on it with me, I’d love for you to share your progress! Maybe we can help keep each other on track;) Here’s the patterns for the first two appliques:

Alligator

Butterfly

And here you can see a preview of all the upcoming appliques!