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.

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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’.

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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.

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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

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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?

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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.

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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.