I should be a millionaire

[40cakes]

Even before I got into the habit of making stuff, I always tagged along with my mom to local craft fairs and markets. I've picked up the notion that no matter the "style" of the hootenanny, you end up seeing a bunch of variations on a theme: the "granny" craft fairs will give you 500 booths with slightly different tea towels, and the "alternative" craft fairs will give you 500 booths with slightly different antique brass necklaces with bird and key charms.

That being said, the one facet I can't stand about hipster/alt craft fairs is the idea that ugly=awesome. Today there's a "warehouse sale" downstairs in my building. There's this open space that they rent out to different groups, so a few weeks ago we had a pre-Christmas craft fair; a few weeks before that, there was a grand piano dealership going on. In the pre-Xmas fair, there was a lot of yarn/fabric stuff with visible stitches and lopsided fabric or things that didn't match up quite right, selling for beau coup bucks. One woman had little dolls she called "ragamuffins", which were little shapeless dolls with visible seams and stitches, and lopsided button eyes - $35 each. SERIOUSLY?!? Today's warehouse sale had gauzy pieces of fabric with bad hand-embroidery (I suppose to affirm that it really was done by hand, fer realz) selling for a minimum of $110. AND PEOPLE WERE BUYING IT UP.

Dude, I should just give up on saying "No, I'll start selling stuff when I get really good and I'm actually proud of what I've done," and start selling shit now, mistakes and all. Durr.

Comments

[online-stalker.livejournal.com]

last year i went on a frenzy of knitting calorimetrys and gave them to a few of my friends. one of those friends was in bergdorf goodman a few weeks a go and said there's someone knitting those up and selling them for $100! i'm a fool to stay in my current profession.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, same here.

[pyrobovaphiliac.livejournal.com]

You should knit something that incorporates visible stitches, dirty looking brasswork, bird silhouette motifs, and key motifs. Maybe it should have a pirate or a ninja on it. Not only would the same audience you speak of love it, it would be parodying those aspects of craftwerking you hate so.