Thursday, January 12, 2012

Knitting is effing valuable.

Knitting fits into the category of women's skills. Nevermind that for centuries knitting was done by men and women alike. Nevermind that there are male knitters today. Nevermind that it's only been one or two generations since knitting was taught in many Europen grade schools to boys and girls alike. It's still considered a feminine task. Because it's considered a feminine task, it's undervalued by 95% of the population.
Think of it this way, I spend thousands of hours honing my fucking skills, I learn new techniques, I learn a new language (because anyway you look at it, patterns and charts are a new fucking language), I purchase needles and yarn, I knit on a pair of socks for 4o hours-somebody offers my a measly goddamn 40 or 50 bucks for the pair of socks and thinks they're being generous.
Not including the knitting needles, a skein of decent sock yarn (not that Walmart crap) costs about $20. So that leaves $20 for my time. Which works out to a max of FIFTY FUCKING CENTS AN HOUR! That doesn't include the cost of the needles, and the hundreds of hours spent perfecting my craft so that I am actually able to produce a product that people want to buy.
How about learning to knit? I have people ask me to teach them and offer to pay. Now I am more than willing to teach people to knit for free, knitting is like herpes and I want to spread the love around. I am totally insulted by how my time is undervalued. Ask me to teach you to knit, I'll say yes. Offer me $10 or $20 and I'll tell you to go pound sand. If you appreciate it as a favour, I can handle that. I can't handle you thinking that my time is worth well below minimum wage. It makes me want to punch you in the face.
How about the cost of yarn? You know why good yarn is SO expensive? Because it's not made of shit. Shitty yarn is cheap. Good yarn costs more. I fucking hate seeing someone in a $300 jacket bragging about how they buy 6 billion fucking yards of Red Heart for $7 at a store that is destroying our economy. I honestly don't mind if people who can't afford any better buy that stuff. I don't look down on people that have an extremely limited income and do what they can with what they have. I abhor stupid people that think they have a genius level intellect because they by cheap ass shitty yarn. Like the rest of us that prefer quality and don't like to wear dead dinosaurs (acrylic comes from plastic, plastic is a petroleum product, petroleum comes from oil, oil is made from millenia old organic matter-therefore it's made from dead dinosaurs)-like the rest of us are stupid for buying merino, alpaca, and silk.
And baby yarn? Why the fuck is all the baby yarn made of plastic?!! Who's brilliant fucking idea was that? Newsflash people-what happens to plastic when it gets hot? It fucking melts, that's what. So all those fucking plastic bags I save from the store, I'm gonna knit those fuckers up and make me a big ole baby blanket. don't give me the old wheeze about acrylic being washing friendly-there's this magical fucking product called Superwash Wool, check it out sometime, it might change your life.
There's the really old saying, you might have heard once or twice before. You get what you fucking pay for. Take a quiet moment to reflect on what that means and go buy some yarn that doesn't suck.
Shit like this makes me an angry ass knitter

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