Time literally on your hands...

... is the ultimate luxury

Disclaimer: this is not my most thought-out and edited piece here on Substack. Forgive me for that and taking space on your inbox. I just really need to take it out of my system and my drafts, but I lack the bandwidth at the moment to do it “properly”.

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This is not so much a blank statement or affirmation, as it is a question, an invitation to reflect and exchange ideas. And yes, it’s me digressing and, once again, declaring my love for all things crochet and all things handmade.

<3

When you do crafts as slow as crochet, knitting or any handmade craft, time is almost always on your mind (even if only after, since it’s easy to lose track of time when making). Or on the minds of people around you who may - or may not - understand why you spend so much time doing things you could simply buy.

But it is not the same thing, is it?

I know it, you know it, and those people probably also know it deep inside, even if they can’t help but wonder, since “time is of the essence”, “time is money”, and “I don’t have the time to spare”.

It’s not the same thing because the things we make with our hands are literally unique, one of a kind, not available for purchase in shops with the same design, the same colours, the same materials, sizes, shapes, you name it. Not the same thing because the things we make ourselves, by hand, stitch by stitch, hold a little piece of ourselves inside, our time, our patience, our creativity and imagination, our care.

Not the same thing because that finished or unfinished object is so much more than a concrete, particular, object. It’s a process. A whole story that started we don’t even remember when or where anymore. Maybe it started when we were kids and got used to seeing our mothers and grandmothers spend their evenings crafting. Maybe it started at school when we got a chance to make something with our hands. Or when we were at college and needed to find something to calm ourselves down to handle exams and papers. Or later, when we welcomed a child to the family, our own child, a sibling’s or a friend’s child, and were filled with this urge to make something special as a gift. Or maybe we were already adults, trying to figure things out, to understand if a 9-5 (or maybe longer hours) of toil and worry were all there was to life, and we had a hitch to scratch, a hole to fill, with something we could call our own.

Either way, regardless of how that story started, it did start. And that object began germinating at that moment, it began in our head before it moved on to our hands. That story has episodes told in notebooks filled with drawings, made of trips to shops to choose a yarn, or trips to our stash to discover the skein that was just waiting to be picked up. You don’t need me to keep adding details to this story. You’re recalling your own story as you read this, picking up pieces here and there, each one a bit different for each object you made with your hands.

In my case, my stories are mostly made in crochet.

I think of crochet, I wonder about crochet, when I’m not crocheting, I’m thinking about crocheting. Or it’s a big candidate to be one of the things on my mind. And it is slow. Sometimes, depending on what project you decide to tackle, painfully slow.

There’s the concept of being a “result” crafter or a “process” crafter. I can’t really make up my mind about what side I’m at. If I had to, I’d say I’m on the “process” crafter side, only because I love the process. I crochet because I like crocheting, and not because of the final result, the final “product”. But I do crochet thinking about the end result. Of course, after I arrive at it, I begin thinking about the next process and the next end result, and the next story, and probably I start thinking about it all even before I’m finished with the previous one.

I’ve written here before about the question of time and money, and of how people who don’t do crafts such as crochet don’t value the work, or don’t really have a clue of the work it’s involved.

To free or not to free... the pattern

The truth is handmade has been devalued for a long time. The devaluing process, if we will, has been in the making for a long time. The truth also is, and call me naïve if you want, I believe this has been slowly changing, even if only for a few people. Not that it reflects directly in yarn crafts like crochet, but it is a sign of a wider movement of reacting against the fast pace and industrial production modes of our times. A reaction to digitizing our entire lives, to making everything virtual, and instead taking it down a notch, back to analog. Back to human. I find that hopeful and beautiful.

It’s also a privilege.

There was a time, the time of our ancestors, closer or farther, when handmaking was a necessity. It still is for many people. And it can be sometimes for many of us. Today, at least for a significant portion, making by hand is a choice. The necessity is not in the object itself but beyond it. It’s in slowing down, in getting our hands busy so our brain can rest or do some creative resting and even rewire. It’s in the creative process. In the power of it all. In the discovery of unknown or forgotten power.

And my power - or better yet, what empowers me - is crochet.

There was a time when I felt guilty or even stupid for putting so much effort and time into something that wasn’t considered “productive”. Didn’t bring any money, didn’t even pay for itself. It made it hard to justify to my close ones. We humans are strange creatures… We did pull a number on ourselves with this capitalist, industrial, fast-paced, money-centered system of ours, didn’t we? Thinking we were freeing ourselves from the toil and unpredictability of Nature, we got ourselves some fancy shackles in the process, getting seemingly tighter every day. There’s been huge and positive progress, I don’t deny that. But maybe we’re taking it a little too far.

Moving on, everything is very subjective. We can try to establish some criteria if we’re thinking of selling something we made ourselves. Maybe because someone showed interest. Maybe because it would be nice and very welcomed to earn some extra revenue. Maybe because we dream of leaving our 9-5 (in Portugal is 9-6, btw; Dolly Parton’s movie posed some challenges to translaters back when, I guess).

But continuing on the topic of criteria for pricing, there’s only so much we can really control. I’ve had a dear colleague of mine look at a bag I made, and immediately say she wanted to order me one. I’ve been through this before, when someone really wants to buy a crocheted piece only to say later that it’s too expensive. So I told her to hold on and wait for me to give her a price, with no commitment and no hard feelings from either one of us. Let’s just say I didn’t even need to do any math and give her a quote: she was shocked to find out that it wasn’t the materials that cost the most. It was the time it took to make it. Time not many people can afford or are willing to spend.

With crochet, there’s no way to go around the issue of time. And even if or when I’m able to do it faster, does that mean I can put a lower price tag on an item? Does that make sense? What about the time I spent and spend developing skills, learning new ones, perfecting a design or creating a portfolio of designs?

Any of the bags I’ve made so far in overlay mosaic crochet can take from 10 to 40 or 50 hours, at least. Out of curiosity and as a point of reference to me, I’ll usually time myself making 2 rows to then extrapolate and have an idea of how long it’s going to take me to finish the bulk of a particular project. I lack the discipline to keep records of every step, like the bottom or the straps and extra bits (and it probably wouldn’t do me any good, anyway). I also have a few designs I want to make that will probably take longer. So, why do I make them? Why should I put myself through this?

The thing is: it couldn’t be any other way. I just have to make. I’ve reconciled myself with the realisation it’s not worth even trying to build a business model, no matter how small, around selling finished items, and still come up with a way of making some money from my crochet while, in the process, taking something from it all that is not dependent on turning a profit to make it worthwhile. So, I develop crochet designs and patterns, I teach people how to make them, and no matter what, I end up with a fantastic collection of handmade, one of a kind, luxury bags, that I had the joy and fulfilment of creating myself, of making stitch by stitch.

When we make the worth of something we love depend on the money it earns, we kill the joy of it all. It’s nice and to many it’s essential that it does pay. But if it’s not, and as with many other things in our lives, the reason we dedicate ourselves to it can’t be dependent on results we can’t control and that are outside of ourselves. It’s in the why. The why, the how, the what immeasurable value it brings us, in the moment and afterwards, that help preserve the gift we give ourselves when we decide to put time and effort into something like handmaking. A bit like loving someone. Trully loving them. Or doing the right thing. It’s the thing itself that has value in and of itself.

…

I started this long and windy and kind of wobbly one a few weeks ago, and just had to take it out of my system (and of “draft” mode). To give you a gift for getting this far, I leave here a quote and a link to this piece by

Anne Vally

I’ve read recently and that spoke to me. I want to give it a special place here so I can easily come back to it. I hope you save it as a keepsake too.

"And yet others of us knit and crochet because it’s a radical thing, in this world of fast fashion and fast food and low prices and gig work, to say I am going to make this by hand. I am going to make it by hand simply because I can, and I love taking the time to do so. This is a radical, beautiful thing, especially in a world that commodifies our attention.

"To use our attention and our hands in a way that brings us joy matters, and it matters deeply.”

(...)

"It’s not about what we knit, or why we crochet, or whether we are wearing what we’ve made. It matters that we sit and take time—precious, valuable, our one wild and precious life—to slowly and deliberately make something by hand. Something we could buy, or speed through, or otherwise consume. But we don’t. We wind a skein of yarn into a ball. We run the fiber through our fingers, and with needle or hook, we start making stitch after stitch, creating our own fabric. We turn those stitches into something useful or beautiful that can have a good, long life in our wardrobes or our homes.

"When you or I knit, crochet, embroider or stitch, we are doing something that is radically counter-culture and deeply nourishing. It’s a statement about what we value. It’s slowing down and knowing that life is right here, now, in these stitches."

Why knitting matters

Have a great start of the week, fellow human!

Ana <3