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Sleeping like a baby or Do people really like that kind of cushion?

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sleeping beauty

sleeping beauty

Hearing the soft snoring of two snotty noses through the baby monitor just reminded me of the picture I took of my daughter last weekend with the intention to post something about cushions.  After an exhausting day playing with the visiting grandparents she just fell asleep on one of my knitted cushions. This particular one is really soft, I had used Sirdar Snuggly Stripes with 80% bamboo and 20% wool. When I took the picture I thought about “Sleeping like a baby” as a title for a cushion related post but it might be a bit cheesy.

So how about my mother’s comment when she saw me working on a cushion cover and in fact the pattern for it: “Do people really like that kind of cushion?

flowers

flowers

Well, yes some do indeed. But I guess tastes are different. And to be fair, it seems to be a bit of a cultural thing as well and I am  often  overwhelmed by the amount of cushions in some B&B’s or when watching some of those home improvement shows. Can you really increase the value of the house simply by adding cushions? Well, I hope mine have this magic 🙂 I guess I shouldn’t be making fun of cushion obsessed people as after five years in the UK I’ve got apparently infected and I have created a few cushion covers for our couch in the living room as well as for the children’s cosy corner.

I think knitted cushions are actually quite nice gifts as they will most likely really stand out from the cushion crowd and be very special. So a cushion will be very personal but still relatively simple in contrast to a knitted piece of clothing

So far I have been unable to actually produce one with two alike sides. I just like the idea of contrasting sides and being able to turn the cushion depending on my mood.

The first few I made where really simple and it was the self striping yarn which did the trick. But I have to say, as I only used very soft and stretchy garter stitch pieces sewn together, they actually lost shape very quickly. Now I prefer much more to use pieces of contrasting cotton underneath the knitted coat and as back of the cushion. That keeps not only the shape much better, it also enhances the contrast of both sides.

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waves of dropped stitches

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strong contrasts

I’ve seen a similar cushion in a magazine once and I really liked the contrasting colours. This one is knitted from top to bottom rather than starting in one corner which I started doing with the next ones.  It is just easier to adjust the pattern to whatever yarn you want to use and to whatever cushion size you want to knit.

Ok, now I have been talking so much about  cushions, I will have to start knitting another one.

 

 

Pricing

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Before actually starting Atelier Oursonne, I was thinking and researching a lot about the pricing of hand made items. There seems to be an agreement in the online world that 2 or 3 times the price of the material is appropriate and I have to say that I find that calculation a bit odd and does not value at all the amount of work that goes into a knitted item. I came across this blog post http://ittakesballstoknit.com/?p=2457 from a guy who is even suggesting that people should not buy any hand knitted items sold at ridiculously low prices.

And on Portobello Road Market I once saw a stand with lots of hand knitted sweaters in children sizes for about 8 to 10£. They were only made of very cheap acrylic yarn but still, this is ridiculous. It barely covers the costs of material. So where did they get the yarn from and who has been knitting? Certainly no one in London, or the UK, or Europe… I still regret that I didn’t ask the lady when I passed. I was clearly under shock.

Obviously, if I would calculate the price of a very simple sweater for a baby by adding the costs of the material to the labour costs (even if I just used the minimum wages for my calculation), then I would have to price it somewhere in between 100 and 150£. Some might find that a tiny bit too much for any garment for a baby…. And I have to say that I personally would not pay that kind of money for a knitted sweater for one of my children even if it is made of 100% pure merino wool. I would just knit it myself 🙂

I know that some people are actually prepared to pay even more for a special piece of their toddler’s wardrobe but I also think that every child should have the right to wear a good quality woolen sweater during the cold winter months rather than the statically charged and sweaty acrylic version. Well, “every child” is probably a bit ambitious considering that already the material costs easily 10 – 30£ depending of the size of the sweater.

So I have finally decided to take many things into account when calculating my prices: the amount and quality of the used yarn, the complexity of the actual work (sometimes it is simple and you can do it whilst doing other things too, sometimes you really need to focus), labour time to a certain extend and the “intended purpose” to name just a few.

Intended purpose  means that the price of the necessary woolen sweater for a child will not depend much on the labour time whilst the price for the pretty cushion or for the delicate lace shawl knitted from a silk-merino blend will reflect those hours of work much more.

So, having high and low prices in the same shop might look odd at first but I hope I could make my choice clear with this post.