When we buy handmade, are we paying for a blanket — or for the hours, skill and care that went into making it?
Today, while sitting crocheting yet another hexagon for a blanket I’m making, I started thinking. Not about the pattern. Not about whether I had enough yarn. But about time.
And about some of the comments makers hear all too often:
“My granny made me a crochet blanket . The dog sleeps on it now.”
“I saw a little crochet knee rug at a market for $50. What a rip-off!”
“Someone gave me a handmade crochet blanket once, but it wasn’t really my style, so I gave it to the op shop.”
And my personal favourite when someone who is a crafter passes on:” what a I supposed to do with all this stuff that my Mum made? I don’t want any of it and I’m sure no one else will want it either.”
None of these comments are necessarily meant to be unkind.
But perhaps they tell us something about how disconnected we’ve become from the true value of handmade.
So I decided to do the maths.
First, there’s the time
I timed myself crocheting one of the hexagons you can see in these photographs.
It takes me approximately 45 minutes to make one.
A smallish knee rug takes around 42 hexagons.
That means I’ll spend approximately 31.5 hours just making the individual hexagons.
And I’m not finished yet.
They all need to be joined together, which will probably take another hour or two.
Then there’s the border — another two or three hours.
So let’s keep the maths simple and call it:
35 hours to make one crochet knee rug.
Now let’s put a price on those hours
This is where things get interesting.
Let’s value the maker’s time at just $20 an hour. (Not the hourly rate of a highly skilled artisan.) Not a premium for years of experience. Just $20 an hour.
35 hours × $20 = $700.
That’s $700 in labour alone.
And we haven't bought the yarn yet
Even acrylic yarn isn’t particularly cheap anymore. Move into beautiful natural fibres such as pure wool or alpaca and the cost can climb very quickly. But again, let’s be conservative.
Let’s allow just $60 for yarn.
Our fairly simple crochet knee rug has now reached a value of approximately:
$760
And there’s something very important missing from that calculation.
How do we put a price on skill?
I didn't suddenly pick up a crochet hook this morning and start producing these hexagons.
Like every maker, I learnt, I practised, I made mistakes, I pulled things apart and started again. Over time, my hands learnt what to do almost without me thinking about it. That knowledge has value. When we buy something handmade, we aren't simply buying the hours it took to make that particular piece.
We're also buying a tiny piece of all the years it took the maker to become good enough to make it.
And yet, we rarely think about that when we look at the price tag.
Then there’s something money can't really measure
Imagine that blanket wasn't made to sell. Imagine somebody made it for you. Someone chose the colours, bought the yarn and then sat down with a crochet hook.
And then spent around 35 hours of their life making something they hoped would keep you warm.
Stitch by stitch, Hexagon by hexagon, Hour after hour. There is love woven into handmade things that simply can't be entered on a spreadsheet.
So, would you pay $760 for a crochet blanket?
Probably not!
And strangely enough, that's exactly my point, because perhaps the question we've been asking is the wrong one. The next time you walk through a handmade market and see a crochet knee rug priced at $50, instead of thinking: “$50? That's expensive.” Perhaps we should be wondering:
“How on earth can the maker afford to sell it for so little?”
And the next time someone gives you something they have made especially for you, perhaps look at it a little differently. Don't just see the blanket. See the hours. See the years of practice. See the materials. See the mistakes that taught the maker their craft. See the hands that made it, and see the person who thought you were worth spending all those hours on.
Because perhaps handmade hasn't become too expensive.
Perhaps we've become so accustomed to things being cheap that we've forgotten what human time is actually worth.
