Quality and Price

One of the problems with selling crafts, especially ones with a wide variety of material like knitting, is that sometimes people don't understand why your prices may seem high/low compared to other people's. As the person making your product, you may have personal preferences that are hard to break, or you might be forced to use what's readily available to you.

Personally, I choose to use wool or wool blends, which tend to be more expensive, but obviously need to reflect in the price. I do so for a few reasons, and I try to explain this to my customers, of whom I have many repeat buyers, why it really is better to use higher quality wool.

- My most 'selfish' reason is that nice wool doesn't hurt my fingers. Cheap yarn burns my fingers when I knit, and it just feels awful. Higher quality material is much softer and gentler on the skin, which works out for me AND the buyer.

- Wool and wool blends are much warmer for the winter. An acrylic hat is no match for a hat made from natural fibers when it comes to keeping your head warm.

- I find the colours to by much more vivid in natural fibers, as well as there being a much larger selection of them.

I have made custom items in acrylic before due to allergies, but I really do prefer to use wool for everything I make. Some items, like the four panel Scotty hat, may seem expensive, but more than half of that is just the cost of materials. I may not be the cheapest on the market, but I stand behind my work, and the quality of what I work with.