Posted by Peg in South Carolina
Stranded Yarns recently led me to an interesting piece. It is called Etsy.com Peddles a False Feminist Fantasy. It can be found here.
The title, I suspect, was composed as an attention-getter. I love the alliteration! I think there is more to the piece than the title, at least for me.
One of the things it did make me think about was this. What if, some 35 years ago, I had been weaving. We had two small children. My husband provided the income. I had no need to work outside the home. And what if there had been an Etsy.com. I think I might have thought seriously about selling.
Why? Because Etsy. com appears to offer an easy way to test the waters. No talking to retailers. No going to craft fairs. No having to deal face-to-face with strangers. I am bashful now. Then I was very very bashful.
Perhaps even more important, it appears to test a weaver’s ability to enter into production weaving on a small scale. I’m almost sure I would have failed that test.
But even though I have no plans for selling my weaving, posts like the one called The First 4 Steps toward Selling Your Art pull me in. This particular post deals only with step one: Devote Yourself Completely to a Studio Practice. What an important step this is! She does a really good job of explaining what she means. The hardest one for me to deal with, though I try very hard (despite the fact that I have no plans to sell my weaving…….) is stated this way:
It’s also important to be able to turn down requests and invitations that would take you away from your studio time.
So why do I read this stuff? Why do I take this stuff very seriously if I have no plans to sell my weaving? Because the more I weave the more I get drawn into the wonder of thread/color interlacements. Because crackle has sucked me in. Because I am ambitious and driven but not to sell or even to show.
40 years ago I would have been ambitious and driven to show.
Related Post:
Weaving for a Living…….or Not
Designing Issues and Weaving Shows
Weaving for a Living…or Not (about weaver and fiber artist Anita Luvera Mayer)
“Selling My Weaving…Not” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on August 12, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
2 comments:
I guess every weaver and fiber artist thinks about this from time to time.
I did not have a successful Etsy experience, though I know many others are quite successful. It actually requires a lot of time to take good photos & edit, write good descriptions, and keep one's store up to date. I sold two items and I can't say it was worth it for that. I thought the record keeping for the sake of taxes a nuisance too. Many times I would tell myself, "I'd rather be weaving!" On the other hand, I wouldn't have known if I hadn't tried.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sometimes you just have to try something to see if it is right for you.
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