Friday, October 26, 2007

One months work

What you see here is 7 oz total of brown Corridale 2 ply yarn. It took me a month to spin it at the rate of about 2 oz per week. Now according to established guidelines, this yarn is costing me: 6.00 purchase price 3 hours of spinning each at 1.00 per hour and 5.00 per oz in overhead. I will soon be adding 10 cents each for labels. That adds up to 14.81 roughly.
I WOULD NEVER PAY THAT FOR A SKEIN OF WOOL YARN! (maybe cashmere or silk but not wool alone)
Now here's where I go wrong. It takes me too long to spin too little. That means I have to apply a large amount of overhead to a small amount of product. OK, so instead of 8 oz a month lets try 8 oz a day. (We would spin singles for 5 days and spend 2 days plying)

Now we can have the same time it takes to spin 3 hours per skein, the fiber still cost me 6.00 but I have 10 lbs to spread that overhead over, so it drops to something like 1.26 per oz. That makes the skeins cost 6.07 instead. But that would earn me 3 dollars an hour. Here's where a lot of people go a little nuts. I can't see charging much more than that. I might bring it up to 7.00 tops but not more, meaning I'm still making squat.

There are things you can do to alter the numbers, buy cheaper fiber, spin faster, don't ply, reduce your overhead costs, OR charge 15.00 a skein because you are a human and not a machine. In the end it's up to you. If the people will pay it by all means charge it. It's nothing less than you deserve, and worth every penny for one months work.

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