Yesterday I was supposed to do a Zoom presentation for a guild and at the last minute they emailed to cancel as they were under severe weather warnings with risks of losing power and of course, internet. I hope everyone is safe and well, and we will re-book at a later date.
In the meantime I’ve been seeing a lot of posts online about things like AI, monetizing hobbies, and such. To be clear, I do not advise *any* weaver to check anything with any version of AI – none of them know how to weave. They are a ‘predictive’ machine – they try to parse what you want to know and feed you something, anything, that ‘sounds’ like a reasonable response to the question/prompt you gave them. Whether it makes any kind of logical sense within the actual infrastructure of the craft, or not. And, of course, it is all being done off the backs of actual humans who DO know something as the AI dudes literally stole their work and even make up false citations.
As for monetizing a hobby, I have mixed feelings. Not everyone wants to try to sell their hobby ‘production’. And being in business is complex (not unlike weaving, seriously), with legal responsibilities, which most people who have never run a business or made something for sale, have any knowledge or understanding of. However, if anyone *is* interested, my memoir on ko-fi talks about my life as a production weaver and for anyone interested in selling their weaving, the lessons I learned along the way might be helpful.
People new to the craft rarely create a textile that is…state of the art, shall we say? Very few people ever sit down at a loom for the very first time and make a textile that is reasonably good quality, based on a lack of physical skills, lack of experience in design (not all, some people come to the craft with designing skills – but a lack of the technical expertise to make their designs actually function), a lack of appropriate production equipment, and a willingness to make things in a way that makes the effort of creating cloth ‘efficient’.
None of those are important if weaving is a ‘hobby’ and should not be taken as some kind of judgement on them.
Guilds frequently have ‘standards’ that must be met before guild members can offer their textiles in the guild sales events, so they need to inform themselves about what those standards consist of. They need to pay attention to their federal/provincial laws, especially regarding legal requirement for labelling and the taxes that are required to be collected.
If they wish to sell independently, at craft fairs or markets, those organizations will likely also have requirements that need to be met. And the booth fees for *most* high end professional craft fairs can be eye watering so they need to commit to producing enough inventory to last them the duration of the event, and be ‘open’ during the event hours, not pack up 3 hours early because ‘no one is there’.
Selling one’s weaving is not for everyone, nor should it be. It is perfectly valid to make what you want to make, when you want to make it. Some people join study groups and spend most of their time *studying* the craft by exploring different weave structures, or other aspects of the craft (design, colour, texture) and never make much in the way of a ‘finished’ textile. Some people take a deep dive into the history of the craft. Others make items for gifts for family and friends.
And all of that is valid.
Trying to earn an income from the fruits of your loom is hard, physical work. And it is not for everyone.
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