I Took The Handmade Pledge! BuyHandmade.org

In the spirit of the big online push to buy handmade this year, as well as my hope for less consumption overall this holiday season, what did I do? I went shopping. Namely to the DC Craft Mafia’s holiday craft festival. It was a lively, friendly event, with some beautiful things, but not a lot that caught my eye. I did get a couple of small hand-sewn gifts, but I was really hoping for innovative handmade toys–there was nothing.

I also was hoping to see more made from recycled, reused, or repurposed materials. There was very little of that. My favorite was UglyKitty who makes neat address card boxes where the address cards are recycled reply cards from magazines.

There were a couple of crocheters:

DC Craft Mafia Holiday Sale
This is Needle Noodles, I especially loved her play food.
DC Craft Mafia Holiday Sale
I can’t find the card for this vendor, but I think it’s Oh Dear.

Heidi Roland had some unusual earrings featuring her photography. I loved that idea, but wished I could have earrings with my own photographs in them.

I was hoping to see some new trends in the design of indie crafts, but there were still a lot of themes that I’m pretty bored of: monsters, sea creatures and birds. Also, each monster, sea creature and bird seems to look like every other. Also, there are A LOT of aprons! I do love aprons, but the market seems to be saturated. What’s next?

Overall, I can’t believe that people can even cover the cost of their materials because the prices are so low. I think if crafters don’t charge what their crafts are worth, then their audience will never understand the time and effort that goes into creating them. I used to be part of this circuit, selling crocheted scarves before I started designing for publication, and even though I was charging far more for my work than the prices I saw yesterday, I was barely breaking even. But that’s a rant for another post.

Last night, I finished my Calorimetry.

Calorimetry

It’s super-comfy, tho I think it doesn’t look as cute on me as I think it would on someone with bangs, but I love the yarn (still haven’t figured out what it is), and I love how it covers my ears and lets me keep the pony tail.

Calorimetry

The button is from my grandmother’s collection. I recently inherited a lot of antique buttons from my mother-in-law, and today I bought a box at the hardware store full of 64 little drawers to organize the buttons. I’ll get started as soon as I get Jay down for his nap.

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Handmade Holidays