It Always is. Well, except for those times it isn’t.
How do you make a crocheter angry?
Call what they make knitting!
It happens all the time and it’s not really a problem (she says through clenched teeth!). It’s mainly the result of knitting being the yarn craft that most people are aware of so everything that’s made of yarn or wool tends to get lumped together under the heading of ‘knitting’.
But as crocheters, we really don’t help ourselves. In our bid to blur the lines even further we have made stitches that actually look like knitting! Have a look at the 3 photos below:
One of the photos shows a knitted piece and the other 2 show crochet. Which do you think is which? I think they’re quite tricky to tell apart.
The main issue with this is fast fashion and this is because crochet CANNOT be made using a machine whereas knitting can. This means that knitted items can be produced a lot quicker and, therefore, cheaper than crochet, which is why it is the predominant choice of manufacture.
However, crochet is having a moment and these trends will be trickling down to the high street and, inevitably, fast fashion stores. Please be mindful when you are buying any items that look like crochet, they have been made by a human and the average time taken to crochet a sweater is 20 – 30 hours. This means that if a crocheted sweater in a high street store is being sold for £30, the hourly rate of the person who made it would be £1.20, wouldn’t it? Well, no. It would be even less as this doesn’t account for all of the business costs and profit that also need to come from that £30 price tag. Have a look at this article by Bella Coco on this subject.
And that isn’t all. Many of the patterns used by these businesses are stolen from independent designers (despite being copyrighted) who are generally not in a position to challenge these multinationals.
So, please, have a careful look at what you are buying and make the best choices you can.
(And the results from the photos are HERE in my latest TikTok video!)
