A Handmade Morsel

When I opened my Etsy shop, A Handmade Morsel, I had this wonderfully naive dream of fully supporting my knitting habit with the profits.  Yarn, after all, can be very expensive, and my husband was tired of my large fiber purchases.  I was going to knit, sell the things I knit, and then buy yarn so I could knit some more.  It was the perfect plan!

The problem is that my shop has been open since last April and I've sold exactly 7 hats.  The highlight of my selling career was when a stranger asked me if I could make a custom hat with a bow from some white angora.  Mmmm, angora!

I'm not yet disheartened.  I enjoy looking at my shop stats and seeing that 2 or 20 people have viewed my items in the last week.  I like taking pictures of my hats on a little mannequin head.  She even has a pretty wig.  And for Christmas, I was given a mannequin body to help display scarves and cowls.  I like setting up sales and conversing with potential buyers.  And I love packaging my goods to ship them out.

But I wonder what more I could be doing.  Could my pictures be brighter?  Do I need a larger social media presence?  Am I using colors or materials that customers don't want?  Are the patterns I used too simple or complex to draw a crowd?  Are my prices wrong?

Let's talk about that for a minute.  What is a fair price for hand knitting?  Obviously, the cost of the materials should be included, and that means something made from alpaca yarn is going to be way more expensive than something made from cotton or acrylic.  Some knitters try to estimate how long it took to knit an item and give themselves at least minimum wage.  But I knit for fun and while I'm doing other things (like watching tv), so I don't really keep track of how long it takes.

The rule I generally go with is to charge by the yard (5-8 cents), add the cost of materials, and then look at similar items on Etsy to make sure I'm in the right neighborhood.  I don't want to try and undersell the other merchants; not only would that cut into my profits but it would undervalue knit goods all together.  And I'm not interested in getting the highest price because as a customer that's not what I would buy.

I have a friend who makes and sells unique a line of plushy donuts cats (among other stuffed toys) at Pike's Place Market.  She's put her entire life into this pursuit, all but quit her day job to make her passion a reality.  She's an inspiration, and it gives me hope that one day I'll be able to quit my day job, too, to follow the things that matter most to me.

Until then, I'll keep knitting, writing, and dreaming, knowing that the good I put into the world will come back to me in time.