Tuesday 19 July 2011

Hello again, long time no see and the reason why!

Hello everybody, it really has been a long time since I have been here isn't it?

I have had so much on that I am afraid that this little blog of mine got bumped down the list quite a bit, what has happened since I last posted, numerous things to be honest but with regards to Loves a good yarn, I have had a number of orders to complete either side of a massive weekend to the F1 at Silverstone with my brother, (that was a weekend and half I can tell you, the content of which probably wouldn't be suitable for this blog!!)
It has been so busy here that I haven't had a chance to make any new stock for my Folksy shop or take part in the daily listing clubs on there and I am missing the forums too!

Do you want to know what is keeping me so busy now....well here it is;

Yep, I have decided to make this Christening Gown to enter for a competition....it is made from #20 crochet thread so is quite fine(!)

and the skirt is worked in one piece of 720 stitches (again!), 

I am only half way up the skirt and have to complete this in about 3 weeks to enter the competition....do you think I will do it?????? Hmmmm?

Anyway, this has led to numerous conversations between DH and myself as to what this would be priced at for sale, I have an idea of a price and his idea is about 5 times more than I was thinking.  This is a regular conversation between us, I suggest one price for something, he suggests another much higher price and we tend to fall somewhere in the middle.  He has even researched on the internet and there is nothing out there that is in anyway similar, does that mean I could charge what I liked as no-one else is selling something comparable?

So, the age old argument for pricing handmade items starts again, now I know there are various formula for working out prices and these work well for a number of crafts but for crochet and knitwear these formula do not work.  The time it takes to make an item of clothing, you cannot set a decent hourly rate as people would not pay the price.  Now nothing is more annoying than someone under pricing their work as that brings all yarn based crafts down etc etc but incorporate a minimum wage into the formula and the price is ridiculous!  Two of the pattern rows on the Christening Gown can take an hour to complete, the others thankfully are worked up slightly quicker. 

So my question is, what kind of price would you put on something like this and how did you come to that amount?  I would be interested to know your opinions.