The Touchwood Project

I love when I try something new, think I’ve failed, and then it turns out great. Such was the case with my first attempt and dyeing, carding and spinning my own yarn, the first of which I’m calling “The Coming Storm”. But it’s also brought up some questions about why getting paid for something seems to equal appreciation.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to create a yarn that captured both the colours and feel of this photo:

The lone house waits for the storm to come

I decided to divide the colours into two: grass and sky. My idea is knit it up as a tapestry that will hang from the homemade knitting needles I’ve started doing. This is what the grass looks like so far:

The Coming Storm yarn knitted up, on the bobbin and in fleece form

I’m going for a deliberately very textured look because it shows the colours best and the texture is way more fun than your usual simple yarns. When I first spun it, I had real trouble and it looked messy and like exactly what it was: my first attempt at spinning this kind of yarn. I thought it was a dead loss.

But I’ve started knitting it up and I’m really enjoying it. Since this week I’m doing an exercise from Go Put Your Strengths to Work (more on this once I’ve finished the week and can report on it) where I record every time I’m doing something that makes me “feel strong” — i.e., happy, relaxed, like I could do this forever — I’ve noticed that seeing the final result put together is something I find enormously enjoyable.

I didn’t particularly enjoy almost every other step of the process though, which means I don’t think I’ll be doing a lot of this, at least not everything all myself. But I do know I love the finding the photo and story and mood, selecting the colours, and carding just the right combinations together.

I’ve switched to the sky now and here’s what that looks like in progress:

Adding the sky

What a blast!

When I’m done, I’ll be sure to post a photo so you can see what I mean by a tapestry.

How does anyone make a living from this? Even remotely?

One thing I will say is all the work and the expense brought home to me how enormously difficult it must be to make a living from doing crafts in general, yarn making in particular. I estimate it took me 80 hours to make this yarn and knit it up for a single tapestry so far, so let’s say it’d take me 90 hours all told to make maybe 6 of these things.

Let’s imagine there was a market for it, that people coming to Orkney or who are fond of it and want to be reminded of it and this tapestry strikes a chord for them. What would they realistically pay? £30? £40? And that’s retail. With all the packaging.

If I were lucky enough to sell all 6, I’d make at most £240. For 90 hours of work. Minus the £20 for supplies. So about £2.50 an hour. That just depresses me.

But it’s only a hobby

I know creative types complain about this all the time. Maybe you have to be a genius to get paid well, or be an excellent marketer.

Seems to me most people say “Well, it’s just a hobby.” But let’s face it, money is one of the ways we measure success. Okay, it seems to be one of the ways I measure success, now that I’m thinking about it.

If someone isn’t willing to pay for it, they don’t want it enough and therefore it’s not as good as you’d like it to be.

Money = success

It’s not that I want to be paid for something I do as such, though that’d be nice, I think it’s that I’d like the recognition that someone else thought it was worth something, that it was worth more than the tatty Made in China stuffed puffin toy or plastic Viking cap they otherwise would buy.

I make these yarns and this tapestry because I want to share how these scenes, this mood of calm, of transformation, steals over me by living here in the way we do. And I hope it invokes a similar feeling in the person who has it. That it reminds them every time they look at it of the magic they experienced in Orkney (or imagine when they dream of it).

I used to hear from Malcolm when he would do his driving tours of Orkney that his guests were always looking for souvenirs to buy but not always finding something that really captured how the place really felt to them.

So I wanted to try to make something that does say Orkney to me and that, at least for people who like wool kind of stuff, appeals. And somehow just making it for myself, while fun, isn’t quite enough. But as soon as I imagine going down to the local shops and seeing if I can sell it, I just envision a lot of work, not being paid very much, and the possibility that no one will like it anyway.

Oh no, is this something as cliched as a fear of failure?

Huh. I can see I’m going to have to ponder these things this week and see what solutions I can work out. Well that’s something to look forward to.

Tags: Orkney

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