We put a lot of work and love into our knittings. We wish that the recipients of our creations will take good care of them and wear them often. But with wear comes tear and sometimes (heartbreakingly) moths! All is not lost. A little darning can go a long way. Provided….you have the right wool for it! And that’s why providing some extra wool in a small plastic bag alongside our homemade creations is a thoughtful gesture. In the same way expensive clothes come with one extra button, I suggest our knits could come with some extra wool.
If you are knitting for customers, offering that little extra wool, empowers them to handle minor repairs or darn small holes with ease. It’s like giving them a safety net to ensure that their piece will last a long time. You might want to add a business card in that same plastic bag, a card that will be a physical reminder of where their items comes from, offering them easy access to your online presence (webstie, Etsy shop, Instagram account, etc.).
If knitting for friends and family, this extra wool bag enables you to use up your stash with the safety of knowing they can mend their gifts at any time. If you know them to hate needlework and being unwilling to do even very minor repairs, you could keep that same small amount of wool at your place, making sure to enclose a note referencing when and for whom it was knitted. So instead of giving them extra wool, you can also tell them that you are willing to have a go at trying to mend their knit if they need to. People close to us might feel shy at revealing that they stained their knit, that the beautiful sweater you knitted for them now has moths holes, etc. If we care for the durability of our knits, I think it’s worthwile to be proactive in our communication : yes, life happens and no, we don’t expect our knits never to need any mending.
(Sideline : the same goes for what we knit for ourselves : we can set apart a small bundle of wool for future repairs. I don’t like stash yarn to be just stash yarn. I prefer to have bits and pieces of same weight yarn in large ziploc bags so that I know which quantities of yarn I have. Setting apart wool for future repairs allows me to knit up the rest of my stash wool without having loads of stash whenever I might need it” (most likely never).
For reasons I ignore, we knitters tend to undervalue our knitted artefacts. Patterns get sold at prices that are ridiculously low (when you consider all the work that is involved in their elaboration). Etsy is laying off 11 % of its workforce (225 employees in total), which of course is very bad news for handmade creators. It’s a tough environment for all the people trying to make a living in the fibre arts. I have no insight into the market or solution to offer. However, I think we knitters need to differentiate ourselves and our productions as much as possible from fast fashion. The production of knitted items or patterns is very labour-intensive and all the handmade businesses are small-scale production. Which means knitters just can’t afford to try and compete with mass-produced items : the price tag needs to be high enough to create a profit margin that equals to a living wage. But how do we get our craftmannship to be valued appropriately ? I don’t know, really. Yet I am convinced that the winning strategy is to posit hand-made objects in the niche of high quality productions. A daintily wrapped extra bundle of yarn alongside our finished objects (FOs) could be part of this strategy. This small addition reinforces the message that our knits are not short-lived gimmicks It’s a deliberate step away from disposable trends and a keepsake of our craft and expertise.
What do you think ? Do you agree or disagree ? Are you trying to posit your craft as one that is one of highly qualified craftmannship ? Please share your thoughts on this topic in the comments below!
Resource : here is a link to a youtube tutorial by knittyJO learning you how to make a yarn butterfly, a pretty way of displaying a few yards of extra yarn for future repairs.
Unsolicited Knitting Advice 