Charity Knitting
Dec 23
Last week I promised to write about my opinion on charity knitting. It seems like such a miserly topic to write on this close to christmas. And yet, tis the season for giving knit items. I’ve been extremely lucky giving knit gifts that they have always been very appreciated for the time and love that goes into them. Sometimes people request items, but with the understanding that I will get to it when I get to it.
What makes a hand-knit item different from a store bought or machine knit item is the time and love that went into the making. Someone sitting there making stitch into stitch just for you. So what if I don’t know the person receiving the knit item? In can still put all the well wishes and care into it that I do for people I know. Freely given they are priceless. The thought of someone walking around with a hat, or a pair of mittens I made gives me the warm fuzzies. Warm fuzzies are the best!
And then comes charity knitting, the kind where you, or I knit things to be sold on a christmas market or charity fair for the cause. I knit and someone else puts a price on my work. Usually the price is rather low, say 15 € for a pair of hand-knit socks. Now 15 € for a pair of socks might seem rather a steep price, unless you consider that someone spent between 10 and 20 hours knitting them.
Another effect is at play here too, once something has been given a monetary value, we lose sight of the other value it might have. The value of someone knitting my socks for 15 hours and then giving them away is supplanted by the hard value of whatever 15 € mean to me. No warm fuzzies here.
Then there is math. A pair of socks costs between 6 and 10 € in materials.
Part of me wants to look at the question why knitting is devalued so much that low prices are the norm and everyone nods when someone says ” but who would pay that much”. Another part sighs and says that it’s because knitting is women’s work, it’s a hobby, not something to be taken seriously as work. I’ll leave it at that and let you make up your own mind on this.
And so this is my charity knitting policy: I like to knit for people, so any drive where my items are collected and redistributed directly, I want to participate. If the items are distributed through a sales channel, I do not want to participate.
I totally agree with your comments about the low value that’s often put on hand-knitted objects. That is really not acceptable and even for charity projects, we should not condone this by allowing our handknitted items to be sold at the price of materials with no or very little markup for the work that went into it. BTW: The editorial of the latest edition of VERENA magazine (Winter 2012) was dedicated to the same topic, so that seems to be a hot topic for knitters right now.
If people use the price of an industrially manufactured piece as reference for the price, well, then they should buy the mass production piece and be happy with it. But even for mass production you can easily pay way more than 15 € for a pair of socks – if they are special in any way (yarn quality, color, design, or just brand) – so I really don’t get the pricing of these charities.
Under these circumstances, I’d rather donate directly to a charity than having my work sold at such low prices.
To me, the hand-knitted piece is of higher value because it is unique – but I realize that not everyone values this uniqueness, and that’s fine, too. It reminds me of the different views towards antique objects: some people attribute a high value to them because they are old and often rare. They even appreciate chips and imperfections because they are a sign of the old age of the objects – while others (including me, I must admit) prefer new stuff, modern design, and having six identical plates that don’t have any chips.