Originally published Dec. 1, 2020:
This started as an Instagram post, before I realized I had much more to say than was appropriate for a social media post. I also wanted to put these thoughts in a less ephemeral space than an Instagram post, where it would eventually be lost in a grid. So, instead, here's a permanent page on my tiny corner of the internet, where I'm going to rant for a bit; pull up a chair, take a swig of tea, ruminate with me. Sorry/not sorry for the length; I'm a rambly soul.
I thought now seemed like a good time to say hi and re-establish a few things. First, that I'm grateful for everyone who likes and shares my posts, who buys my patterns, who slides into my DMs to share crow and raven memes. I'm one smol person, and it means so much that I can, even in a small way, mean something to you too.
So here's some stuff that's been on my mind that's likely gonna lose a bunch of you: with the advent of seasonal sales upon us – from Thanksgiving to Black Friday/Cyber Monday to Christmas, I have been feeling utterly overwhelmed. I scroll through my various social channels, and all I see is the capitalist colonial machine at work, and it's primarily the sales vehicle.
I'm not trying to shame anyone, because there are a lot of makers whose work I admire, support, who participate in seasonal sales, and I know a lot of us are here just trying to scrape a living. I sell shit too, dude. It’s how society works. But it makes me uncomfortable when I feel the nasty spikes of it digging under my own skin: competition, jealousy, inadequacy. The scarcity sales, the jonesing, the consumerism, the token charity sales and hollow virtue-signalling – it's not why I started designing, why I started knitting, why I want to be here. But I feel like I lost sight for awhile of that, started pushing myself to produce more designs, to have "popular" designs with lots of sales. And don’t get me wrong, I like the things I've designed – but I can see clearly where I've drifted from my original vision of the story I want to tell through my designs.
So here's a business outline from me to you: I am an agnostic anti-colonial anti-capitalist, trying to survive in a capitalist colonial society. I am vehemently anti-police, anti-settler state; I’m a white nonbinary queer intersectional feminist. I believe the land should be given back to Indigenous peoples, and that the best path to conserving the environment and creating a sustainable future is to reinvest in Indigenous knowledge, science and stewardship. Scarcity sales (intentionally, absurdly limited availability of a product or discount for absurdly short amounts of time) and seasonal/holiday sales are never going to exist here. Nor are token charity sales: I never want to leverage others' suffering to boost my own sales. Ever. If I donate to mutual aid and advocacy work, I do it on my own time, my own dime, and I do not actively promote it as a sales tactic. If you have any questions about my politics or my values, I'll answer them honestly, but I hope my general way of being speaks to how I live and what I believe.
The fibre world is already such a materialistic place – it makes sense, it's a material craft. But so much of it is empty, meaningless; I see some businesses wildly rewarded, financially, communally, for their emptiness: for products that don't tell a story, for resolutely not telling their own story, for refusing to speak about other's stories, because "we just want to focus on knitting." But nothing exists in a vacuum, and the endless churn of consumer sales, of getting ahead, of getting "more" grates on me. Why do I see stories building empty hype counting down an hour, ten minutes, two, before I can never buy that skein of yarn again? Why make me invest so much meaning into something that never spoke to me in the first place? I see it on the consumer side, too, people boasting of whose yarn they bought, how much yarn they bought, how they couldn't really afford it but they had to because the yarn would be gone forever, because they don't want to use "cheap" yarn. On the design side, I see pattern testing calls offering testers yarn bundles so they can use the suggested yarn that even with a discount would mean dropping $350 on materials just for the smallest size.
I am NOT bashing small businesses trying to promote their products, eke out a living, build a following. I vehemently, enthusiastically, energetically support small business: I think small biz is the shining light amid the crap that is capitalism. I think small business is the only ethical business – but there's a way to ethically do business even as a small business, and I do not like the trends I see particularly around seasonal sales, around charity sales. The small businesses I tend to support and promote are the ones that tell me a story; the makers who have a concept, who put thought and intention into their products and their promotions. What pisses me off is manipulating the good intentions of the consumer, of fellow makers, just to get ahead; to mindlessly create new items using scarcity tactics or undercutting competition in order to win more sales. I can't blame anyone for it; capitalism is a bitch, making a living as an entrepreneur is terrifying and exhausting and all-consuming, but as a community, small business has to stay committed to not becoming consumed by the capitalist void.
How does that translate into my own business model? Well, you won't see big flash sales; no seasonal sales; no charity sales. In particular, as someone who is not religious, I have zero plans to capitalize on holiday sales, discounts, giveaways, or other events. In particular, "holidays" that celebrate settler colonial violence, such as Thanksgiving, will be deliberately ignored. I WILL continue to share and promote sales events by queer, trans, and BIPOC makers.
All that being said, I'm re-committing myself to slowing down my designing to focus on more meaningful projects, slowing down my personal knitting to reclaim some of its magic for myself. I want to engage more with ideas and conversation in the community versus rushing to have a new FO to share. I have a few new ideas brewing – some big, some small – that I'm excited to share when they're ready, but in the meantime, I want to get back to basics: knitting as therapy, purposeful, magical, meaningful. Thanks for being here, for sharing space, and I hope you stick around.