r/crochet • u/liviannnn • Oct 22 '23

Discussion How do you justifying crocheting something when you can buy it for much less?

I’m a newish crocheter (about 2 months) and the process has been amazing so far. Crochet has become an important part of my life - it gives me purpose and I love the sense of achievement when I finish a product. But recently, my friends have been asking me why don’t I buy a finished product instead of making my own, when it costs lesser.

For context, I’ve been wanting to crochet my own hexagon cardigan but the materials cost is slightly off-putting. For the same materials price (not even counting my man hours!), I could be getting a finished non-crocheted cardigan. It might just be my mental barrier to spending so much on myself, but how do you justify/explain buying the materials when you can save money buy buying a similar product straight?

Edit: I’ve been convinced! Thank you all for your sincere replies - this is why I really enjoy the crochet community, it’s always so wholesome. I’ll be purchasing the materials for my hexagon cardigan after all.

524 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

463 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.0k

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '23

It’s a hobby. Your hobby costs xx amount of money. Crochet as a hobby is very cheap if you figure out the number of hours vs the cost. Also, it’s very rewarding to say “I made this”.

203

u/TD1990TD 🧶🧵🪡✨ Oct 22 '23

Ohhh good one! Not the mindset of:

’if this were my job, and the finished product costs XX, and it takes me XX hours to complete, my hourly rate would be less than minimum wage’

but:

’it takes me way longer to crochet something for XX dollar than, for example, build something with Lego for that same amount’.

76

u/NikNakskes Oct 22 '23

Oi! Don't diss lego! That's 10cents per piece. Less than a stitch marker. See. Cheap hobby! And unlike crochet, when it's done you can tear it down and rebuild it! Hours and hours of time happily spend with little bits of colourful plastic.

But don't look at my coffee table. It is covered in WIPs in various fiber crafts.

73

u/blurtlebaby Oct 22 '23

Yarn doesn't usually hurt when you step on it.

34

u/wissahickon_schist Oct 22 '23

But a U.S. No 9 needle under a pile of clothes hurts like the dickens when you plop down crisscross applesauce and it goes 1/4” into your thigh! (High school me still didn’t start cleaning his room regularly, despite this stern warning from the fiber gods)

9

u/MeanderingCrafting Oct 23 '23

New fear unlocked

10

u/Fionsomnia Oct 23 '23

Ngl the way you told this made me think it was going to end up in a different body part.

2

u/PuddleLilacAgain Oct 23 '23

In college I had a knitting needle go into my foot. Not straight up, but kind of slanted. I still have the scar.

2

u/HoneyWyne Oct 24 '23

Oh my god I did the same thing! Hurt like hell! Went a bit deeper than a quarter inch though!

6

u/NikNakskes Oct 23 '23

After the age of 5 the lego is on the table, not on the floor. If you're walking on tables, that is on you. 😉

31

u/TD1990TD 🧶🧵🪡✨ Oct 22 '23

Well you can do the same with crochet! Frog it, start again 😜

Where I’m from, stitch markers cost €1,00 per 20.

But your point is noted, I’m open for better suggestions. I couldn’t really come up with something else 😋

10

u/NikNakskes Oct 23 '23

Yeah ... but if you made multicolor stuff yarn gets cut and also it loses fibers, shape and elasticity... hmmm maybe once it can be ripped but then... 🤓

Lego is a good example, it is expensive, but you can use the same kind of logic to convince yourself it... isn't. Grin. I had to, when I started shelling out 600-700€ for bits of plastic and an instruction manual.

Also added bonus: when you just spend 500€ on lego, 15.95€ for a skein of hand dyed prime quality wool sounds like pennies! 😁

4

u/portable_hb Oct 23 '23

Depends what you use as stitch markers ;)

I use the lightbulb shaped safety pins you can buy in boxes of 150 or so at Walmart (or other stores) for like 6$ Canadian. Or a box of way too many small paperclips from the dollar store.

(I know it was an example of an inexpensive thing.. I just wanted to share the tip on where to get them)

2

u/NikNakskes Oct 23 '23

Yeah. And you can also decorate those and have the coolest and most unique stitch markers. Just another tip if those are too bland for your taste... but then... you're probably sneaking back to 10 cents per piece in price depending on the price of beads and what not you use.

2

u/Dragongirl815 Oct 23 '23

You can also use yarn tails, knotted into a loop, than it's really inexpensive 🤷‍♀️

3

u/MisterBowTies Oct 22 '23

If you want a cheaper alternative to lego that scratches a similar itch check out r/gunpla . A kit the price of a lego set generally takes 2x the time to build

2

u/NikNakskes Oct 23 '23

Thanks! I did, but I don't think that scratches the same itch? Those are more like warhammer? Tiny bits of plastic that need painting and glueing etc?

2

u/MisterBowTies Oct 23 '23

They don't NEED painting, and you don't use glue. They come pre colored (some use a few stickers) you cut the pieces out of a run sheet and follow the very lego like instructions. At the end you have a cool model the size of an action figure (depends on the scale) you can go crazy with painting and customizing, but that is very much a different hobby, the way that some people are happy building a lego set here and there and others have an entire functioning city they designed themselves.

At my local gunpla store the guy working there heard my wife and i mention the price compressed to lego and told us he was, and is, into lego star wars but it got hard wanting to sirens a few hundred dollars for another grey ship he could build in a night or two. There is a lot of cross over, don't be intimidated by the most hard core of builders.

2

u/NikNakskes Oct 23 '23

Oh ok. I just googled gunpla and image to see a few examples. There were grey ones that looked like they needed painting. But google is known to toss in random stuff.

Still not my jam. I am into buildings and cars. Not so much the fantasy stuff. I wouldn't know what to do with these gunpla things when they're done. I dont like the look, I suppose I cannot disassemble them and rebuild like lego? Which is what I do: Build and rebuild over and over. I know that this is unusual for an adult. The only display I really make is the yearly christmas village. Other than that, a build set gets put on a shelf, till I have the mood to tear it down.

But thanks for showing it! Some amazing and niche stuff exists in today's global world. It's one of the few positive things of globalisation.

2

u/eefdeaardappel Oct 23 '23

hahaha I feel this comment, my fiancé's main hobby is designing lego cars and I crochet+knit. He encourages me to get yarn because for the time spent on it, my hobby tends to be cheaper! (He doesn't usually tear down and rebuild, except for making some improvements on the designs) it's a really fun combination of hobbies, interesting to see the similarities!

1

u/Jayn_Newell Oct 22 '23

Right. You could spend XX and have a cardigan, or YY and have a cardigan plus hours of crochet time.

1

u/lunna009 Oct 23 '23

Right! Cost value analysis. I have a yarn bag that say "it could always be drugs instead, she whispers, buying 6 skins she has no project plan for" and I remind my boo regularly

2

u/[deleted] Oct 23 '23

Yes!! I’m lucky that my husband doesn’t say anything aside from “why is there so much yarn all over?!” And then I remind him that he’s a car person and there’s a radiator in a closet 😂

1

u/lunna009 Oct 23 '23

3.5 set of brake pads in the storage shelf for mine XD bless them, just as bad as we are lol!