Starting to Think I Should've Waited

[MommaM61]

Ivy,
I feel your pain. It is too late for this year, but you should consider craft sales. my son-in-law said to try custom orders too. Good Luck and don't give up.

[SusansSoulShines]

I find it's hard to sell crocheted items people don't appreciate the value in the time that you put into it also there are so many people out there especially now at Christmas selling their stuff that it's a tough market. Way more supply than demand. What have you tried selling and where have you tried selling it

You're right Debbie. The rare pieces one might sell is touch & go, and you can't make a lot of misc things ahead of time. And there's use your time & yarn for things that you don't even know will sell. The public is trendy and wants cheap items, apparently wanting them made really good but wanting to pay little for them! Most of them don't understand the talent & time put into handcrafted work that we love, they just want to get a good deal on.

It's good to sell items on ETSY and it's affordable too, but there is a lot of good competition on there.... plus it's no longer an all handcrafted site now since they've begun to sell imported mass produced items on here that has hurt all of the talented artists and small business sales on there. You may get an occasional order locally or even online if you list your work & prices online like on fb where people may see it, and show people examples of your work but let them know you can make most other items (if you can).

I've learned that you really can't make a profit selling handcrafted work of most kinds. We won't have time to make things we want or need to make for ourselves if we crochet items for others,, and if you don't get 100% payment in full up front, you're very likely to be completely burned by getting ripped off by the customer backing out of the sale. I see it all the time in groups I'm on, on fb.

One thing you can do if you can write patterns is sell them on Craftsy or Ravelry, but not everyone who crochets can write patterns. I'm in a quandry about continuing my blog for the new year since payment for some of the sites I need to run it are coming up to be renewed. It's great that people love my blog site, but it's not free to operate and if I can never make any $$ at all somehow thru it, then I'm only spending time doing the blog posts when I could just be learning new stitches myself, designing my own pieces ,selling patterns, making items from other people's patterns, and making gifts and donations.

Many blog sites have yarn or other product sponsors backing them, and they often still having trouble financially operating their blog sites too. I'm going to just stick to crocheting, designing pieces for myself, writing the patterns and offering them for sale on Ravelry & Craftsy, paying only the PayPal fees.

[Beading babe]

Keep working on getting better. You will. Don't ever give up.

[SusansSoulShines]

Keep working on getting better. You will. Don't ever give up.

No, of course not, never give up on your crochet abilities, practice / trial / error to keep improving your work, I was only referring to the difficulty selling of work in today's market.

[Susan2014]

Hi Susan from Susan2014 in Minnesota, Hope your Holidays are Blessed with Gods Miracles of Love, Peace and Good Food.
Ive been away as last 3 weeks had flue and pnemonia. God Bless my friend.

[SusansSoulShines]

I should have waited longer before buying more yarn to make things to sell. I just don't think my crocheting is good enough right now since it doesn't really seem to catch anyone's eyes. I suppose I will just find some old yarn I don't use and just keep practicing. I'm sure eventually I'll get good enough at it to bring in some extra cash. Hopefully it's before I graduate from college because I'm not sure how my schedule will be after I become a nurse. I just wanted to let that out to people who understand, I don't think my fiance cares very much about my crochet talk. Sorry for being whiney everyone.

You need to talk about it, so do it here! We all understand so much about it, we feel the same in many ways! that's why we're here, right?! Men can be very supportive but when they don't understand a lot of our crochet lingo, they're a little confused, so will be limited in their interest due to that alone, lol.... my husband supports me, tells me how beautiful my things are, understands some of what I show & tell him, and he shows how much he cares, which I'm very thankful for.... he's also very happy to see me happy, and being able to do another hand craft after so many years of awful pain and health problems, and he sees how it's brought me such great joy and excitement, when nothing else could cut through focusing on pain for so long. I still have my disabilities of course, but crochet is my therapy, as it is for many people. I love it SO much, we're all pretty much fanatics! And that is good!

But I've come to determine that no matter how good you are, people often aren't willing to pay for the value of our work, and so like many others, I've concluded that making things I love for myself, donating what I can to charities throughout the year, and making what gifts I can to loved ones is about the max of what I'll achieve. And I'm fine with that. I started my blog this past July, have a fb page, and am on google+, twitter, pinterest and am in many crochet groups on fb, which is as many social media sites that I'm willing to do, no Instagram, or anything else. AND, so are hundreds of others doing the exact same thing, and many are waaay better than me and having many more years of experience. I'll never stop crocheting, improving my abilities, and learning new things about it, but selling it has become so competitive and time consuming, and you need the best yarn and lots of time & knowledge.... and I don't think I have the ability or desire to compete with all of that. They're so far ahead and more advanced than me that I feel light years behind, but I don't care at all, because I'm doing what I want to be doing in exactly the way I want to be. I'm re-considering my blog right now at the year's end, so am in a state of decision making right now as to the future of it. Everything has to be renewed and I'm going to talk to my subscribers about it this week.

Keep your yarn, return some of you feel you should, but meanwhile, make every beautiful pattern you see & that you can & want to make, enjoy it, wear it for others to see, and if someone wants to buy something and will pay you up front in full the price you ask for (compare to ETSY to be sure you're pricing right for all you have in it), then sell it to them. If you want to try the social media way, do that, but you'll see what I saw and what everyone else sees on there... a helpful, encouraging, supportive crochet community, including this site, and you'll make a lot of wonderful new friends, that's one of the best things I've done besides improve my crochet and learn all about video tutorials, written patterns, yarn types, hook sizes, etc etc... good luck to you, and I don't mean discouragement, just giving you my perspective on what I've learned in this past year. I've got a longgg way to go and am glad for it - this is a lifelong learning project that I'm up to the challenge for, and I hope you are too!

[SusansSoulShines]

Hi Susan from Susan2014 in Minnesota, Hope your Holidays are Blessed with Gods Miracles of Love, Peace and Good Food.
Ive been away as last 3 weeks had flue and pnemonia. God Bless my friend.

THANK you, susan2014, and I wish you the very same! I'm sorry you've been so sick, I hope you're much better now. I'll add you to my prayer list tonight! I'm going to be putting a new blog post out this week, so be looking for it! Thx for the message and support on my blog site. I hope that God comforts you with His Holy Spirit all throughout the holidays and all through the year as well. I'm so glad that you're one of my many new friends, and to have so many new Christian friends has been such a blessing. For now, susan

[Jean Marie]

Hi Ivy,
I normally just do sc, hdc and dc. Sometimes I will try a new stitch. I don't know how long you've been crocheting but it takes time and practice to get you tension right. Every stitch I do isn't always the same although I try to make the stitches the same size. When I crochet a stitch - a sc for example - when I pull the yarn through the stitch so I have 2 loops on the hook I pull the yarn up higher than I need to w/my right hand (I'm right-handed) and then pull the yarn back down with the other hand and then pull it up a little bit again w/my right hand so I can get the hook through - I do this for tension to try and make the stitches look the same.

You can tell your fiance, that's if you want to, that you have friends on crochet talk. We don't just talk about crocheting . We talk about anything and everything. And if your fiance wants you to be happy and crochet talk makes you happy then why wouldn't he like you to be on crochet talk. Maybe he thinks that you being on crochet talk is taking time away from him. Just some of my thoughts.

Jean Marie

[Jean Marie]

Hi Ivy,
I don't know why you think you should've waited before buying more yarn. I have yarn in the house that I can use when I want to crochet and I don't have to go out to buy more yarn unless I need more yarn of a certain color. Try not to put yourself down. We all make mistakes and frog our work.

[sonnetta]

Hi Ivy, I know how you feel. I have only been crocheting about 3 and a half years now and I still make mistakes. If crocheting makes you happy then don't give up. My fiance' is so supportive. He don't always understand when I talk about the different stitches and stuff but he knows how much it makes me happy and it helps me relax plus I have parkinson's disease and heart disease and diabetes among other things and it helps me alot. He is supportive of me being on crochet talk. He thinks it is so great. I am part of the pen pal letter writing group and he is always happy for me when I get the letters from my friends. He says it is wonderful that I have friends to talk to and get advice on crocheting. He takes me to craft shows to sell my stuff. The first year i did it I didn't sell anything. It has taken me several years to sell what I do. I do other crafts as well not just crochet. When we moved I told him that I would give up my craft shows and my crafts for awhile till we saw if we were going to have enough for me to do it and he said no way. He encourages me to keep them up because he sees how good they are for me. He reminded me that everything would work out because the Lord will help us and He has helped us. I am actually looking for more yarn. It took me this long to get some of the crochet things to look right. I still have problems on some. Just keep on practicing and doing them and don't stop the craft shows. Sooner or later your things will sell really well. Most of the time it is not you it is just the people. They don't want it right then but there will be someone who comes along who will want something and buy it. I wish you all the best in all you do. I know it will get better for you and you will do great.