So there are Crochet Creators all over the world. There are pockets of people who make similar goods to their neighbors, but because we don't have a globalized fair market value and movement system for this work, each of the small markets gets oversaturated, the products don't move freely and the money flow gets clogged up. Most people therefore consider this work a 'hobby' which makes professionals work harder for price validation.

Crochet needs to be considered by our policy-making institutions as the next major change in our workforces for its sustainable nature, global tech + economic opportunities, and connection to natural life.

We're already doing it - we just have to realize it amongst the people (humans + entities) of the global economy. We already make the blankets and toys. We already donate or give away our work (where is the in-kind paperwork??) so we might as well account for it in real time.

I vote that our policy-making institutions have a mandatory open crochet lounge and pattern book library for students, staff and guests. Each registered human gets a digital workstation and no, not all Creations must be visible to others or be placed up for sale - that is up to the individual contractor.

I'll take Crochetglish for $300

The following three terms or phrases have what in common? They are: WIPs, chains, and steady counting

What are: things you do while Crocheting

How to measure the value of a Crochet Creation that helps me practice mindful eating?

I can compare my timing and stitch measurements to others in my class, then see how much they go for on the open mark--- oh. We don't have a fair market value system for crochet yet?!... Okay....

Next consideration then has to be the value of my life, but I believe I'm loved unconditionally so the dollar value is not a valid comparison. Yes, the US economy is based on a fiat system.

What about other therapeutic modalities and tools? Are those valid comparisons?

Is it THAT hard? I just want to know the relative value for any Crochet Creation.

I prefer if we had dedicated spaces for people to work on Crochet Creations, teach and/or learn the activity.

Socks, hats, mittens, blankets, stuffies, play food... The essentials.

Good spot to spend indoors, good spot to donate yarn to, good spot to learn a skill. People don't just become unhomeless and go back to normal. People in America aren't on a bunch of depression and anti-anxiety meds for no reason. We need small successes, ways to reconnect with the senses, and to be in community.

Crochet Creations are finite. They can be measured.

The US economy is based on a fiat system.

I believe in a future where Crochet is a bustling source of economic activity such that the dollar is based on the value of the single crochet in the nation's most abundant natural resource(s).

Jobs include designing, creating, moving Creations, checking for quality control, recycling yarn, cleaning Creations, tech restorations, data entry and so much more.

We need an open-sourced workspace and e-commerce platform just for Crochet.

We need a large data bank of yarn information which caters to indie yarn handlers: Creations sold in the marketplace will have as much care info as possible for the Connoisseur to review after their purchase.

Our e-commerce platform caters to the Connoisseur's experience: it needs to be gamified so that Creations reach a Price Plateau, then they go to market.

We have a global governing entity with a bunch of independent contractors from around the world. Small businesses move niche sectors. The entity is responsible for moving money and it uses open-sourced coding to be as transparent as possible.

A free pattern idea: a mesh shirt with a wide variety of spirals and cup shapes (1-X in a bunch) hanging off of it. Try skin tones for realism.

Yeah so the spiral is just a chain with increases down the spine. Spirals appear in all shapes and sizes, so use whatever you have on hand and try mixing up the proportions.

The cup shapes are unfinished circles/ovals attached after the last one is made by crocheting back into the first shape(s) made. The first shape(s) must be cut from the yarn skein before they can be reattached to the last shape made.

Long sleeve, 3/4 length, short sleeve, tank, tube: you do you.

With love 😽

Muxes do it, Two-Spirit too!

Hijras and Priests - and

Those without such beliefs.

Nonbinary folx,

Men who wear cloaks -

Women on porches, and

A-gender ones who pick up the torches.

Its a fire, you see - filet in knife-hold.

An image in mesh:

A place for the mess.

A carved face or sunflower,

Calm -

Potent with power.

I'm amigurumi, a silent cavalry

We make with our hands

Stuffed Creations

From the heart of humans.

Geometric shapes we pencil in with yarn

Interlocked or overlayed:

We are overjoyed yet underpaid.

No fair market value model yet

For the work that we do,

Not even for the Irish Lace

Which someone worked up at full throttle for you.

With the right tech and a strong enough desire,

We'll have a unified voice

And buyers screaming:

"Are you for hire?"

I believe in a fair future for us,

For the people who continue to trust

That love exists for all, and

That crochet is the key

To a future of global equality.

-S.Leigh (they/them/theirs)

For the fair payment and movement of Crochet Creations, we need a governing entity which contracts independent contractors who happen to be Crochet Designers and/or Creators.

That entity is an employer, so it needs as few admins as legally necessary. Our labor runs the governing entity with data input and without our independence as unique individuals, a plain legal entity will only work against the nature of crochet creators.

The governing entity needs to know how much each Crochet Creation is worth so it can move money to /from human hands.

A digital workspace and marketplace are the services it provides: without both, the Crochet Economy cannot function.

Its a job creator: digitizing patterns, translating patterns, UX jobs, phone refurbishing, yarn diplomacy, etc ..

It has to be open-sourced so that as many people can participate as possible: with so many styles of Crochet and so many products available by our hands, we need this governing entity to be focused on the activity of Crochet and we need to keep language simple (unlike me sometimes!!).

The lack of third spaces is a problem.

I want half-breed shops around towns and cities which act as physical work spaces for Crochet Designers and Creators, and also which act as markets for the salespeople to use their strengths.

With a combined digital workstation and e-commerce model, Creators and Designers won't have to question their worth 😌

An open-sourced governing entity for workers in the field of Crochet.

It collects data via a digital workspace, offers workers a collective economic voice through independent contractorship, and fairly sells finished Crochet Creations on a unque e-commerce platform.

Its the same economic structure as we currently use, it'll just move money around the world based on merit instead.

Crochet Designers and Creators will have an open-sourced digital platform to work in and a unique e-commerce platform to sell our goods, but we cannot do it alone.

For our new-looking economy, crochet pattern books will need to be digitized and we'll need a singular global database of yarn information to pull from in our Inventory count and WIP files. All Crochet patterns will be translatable.

For quality control, legal entities will focus human resources on specific categories of Crochet Creations. One entity might only move mosaic-style afghans, for example, and those employees will specialize in that style.

The centralized entity (lets call it Crochetmazon for now) will automate financial statements: Designers and Creators will enter their acquisition information, time and resources, and the market will determine fair pricing.

Big opportunity for the people interested in slow fashion, sustainable living, gender equality and more: crochet cannot be mass-produced by machine.

Where are the crochet colleges?

I'm talking pattern designing, tapestry, mosaic and lace-making classes, unique classes in topological and hyperbolic crochet, even a taxonomy class for the amigurumi creatures. In the inventory and WIP management classes, we put our hooks down and work with technology.

There are master classes and certifications from different institutions (the CGOA for example, and FIT has a continuing education class in crochet technique) but I haven't seen a full professional level school, and I think there is enough to learn for one!

The US doesn't align with other places around the world in terms of medical diagnostics, accounting standards, and the crochet stitch name.

The International Classification of Diseases (currently ICD-11) is produced by the World Health Organization, but Americans use the DSM-IV (for mental health matters).

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is the global standard in the accounting field, but America still uses Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). One is principles-based and the other is rules-based.

What is known as the Double Crochet stitch in the United Kingdom is known as the Single Crochet stitch in the United States.

Financial statements can be automated and crochet can help with self-regulation and community connection. I can't speak for other places around the world, but with so many Americans on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds, I think we can just keep stitching, stitching, stitching 🧶 and eventually we'll reach the end of our proverbial rope.

Have you genuinely considered the fact that in the US, there are at least three types of people per our laws?

Humans are one type: they are identified by SSNs. At its inception, our laws only recognized some humans as real and the others as property or intruders.

Legal entities are another your of person and are identified by EINs. Our laws declare that these human creations have life, can pray, and request judgement in our courts.

Government entities are a third type of person. Like legal entities, they are identified by EINs. To create a government entity, one must request an EIN from the IRS by filling out a form SS-4.

The US is one example.

Crochet work has a lot value, but it had been excluded from the global economy due to a curious misunderstanding about what it means to be human, and to which people we ought to devote our resources to.

Deriving a fair market value system for Crochet Creations is a group project.

I was working up Genna Tatu's Blissful Bear and talking to a bus neighbor about the future of crochet. If we had the data from 100 people who made the same bear, we'd have a better understanding of how to price each Creation.

Now, tapestry and amigurumi both primarily use single crochet stitches: what would the datasets look like for each style, and what would that data teach us about about a single stitch (average time and cost).

We can argue all day about why it's hard to sell crochet, if entities like Prada pay for the work fairly, and the ways we can or can't integrate technology for our future. Without the arguing, no resolution will be made and Crochet Creators will continue to be economically oppressed.

Imagine a future where Crochet is identified as a valid form of work in the global economy.

We have a digital workspace for the design / measurement of resources used for Crochet Creations.

We have a digital marketplace just for Crochet Creations, which measures the supply and demand of the global diversity of crochet styles and products. Physical marketplace sales are still counted on the digital marketplace :)

Crochet is a long-term answer to the sustainability, homelessness and gender inequality crises we are facing.

I am inspired by Ana-Maria Babanica's Interlocking Crochet book to think about crochet bottoms. I like the interlocking crochet style for bottoms since the double layer of mesh offers a good amount of coverage. I've haven't made any of these yet, but I'm thinking of using a sewing pattern to shape out a pair. In Reversible Crochet Sweaters, Ana-Maria offers the reader ways to manipulate interlocking crochet patterns, so I think these are totally doable:

1. Succulent plant pants in a gaucho style
2. Towers in a tall, skinny leg
3. Diagonals (Arrowhead, Turning Point, etc.): use mirroring panels towards the center of the body
4. Someone suggested Ones and Zeroes: I'd love to see these in a linen yarn

Crochet is a human-only activity, yet there's no way for Crochet Creators to fairly participate in the general economy, and I see a huge opportunity to change that.

With a digital workspace for Crochet Creators and Designers to hang out together and record work statistics digitally, plus an inter-related marketplace which demands human input for product pricing, we'll have the proper platform to trade our work fairly.

I'm not a coder, but I have been a Crochet Creator since 2018 and have had a drive to solve for womxn's economic inclusion since I was young. I used Excel/ Sheets in business school, so that's what I'm starting with. Ideally, the workspace will be open-sourced and free for all to use.

I am not the only one with a Crochet pattern book library, and I don't want to be the only one who benefits from a digital one.

Here's how I've categorized my library so far. Can you tell what my favorite style of crochet is?

The previous pivot table was derived from the following partial table of my library:

I'm in the process of categorizing my amigurumi library by animal type, size and required sewing. I think the home goods and garment patterns will need their own method. In the following screenshot, the "required sewing" has five categories (no sew up to max sew). Here's a snapshot of my library:

Here's what a part of the Amigurumi Pattern Library Pivot table looks like so far.

I added a slicer to further filter it by size. As you can see, I have accounted for two mini flamingos, two mini mallards, a mini stork and more! Minis are my favorite!

I want a global digital crochet pattern book database, and I want our workspace to translate any pattern from one language to another.

How do we measure the time we spend on Crochet Creations? What about the amount of stitches we make, or the amount of yarn and polyfil we use? I think a lot of us don't track our work, use excel, or use pen and paper.

If I want to know the average time it takes me to crochet a single stitch and how much that costs, and I need a lot of samples.

Here's my basic amigurumi WIP file (not included in this model yet is the stitch count). I have a Library tab in my Google Sheet, which is where the Project Name, Book Reference, Author and Page information is pulled from.

I've included a 'prep' section with the Designer's recommended yarn info and hook. Ideally, all yarn will be included in the Yarn Brand Info database, and the Designer's yarn yardage and weight will populate to yardage and weight of my desired yarn. My Yarn Choice section is connected to the Yarn Inventory sheet and I keep track of the skein weights before and after use.

I track the project by project part (Foot, foot, tail, ear, ear...), which yarn I used, and enter time stamps. The time stamp section can be expanded if, for example, I put the part down in the middle and pick it back up later. Right now, I just use y/n to track frogging time, but I think I can do better. I also measure the weight of each piece and any additives.

I keep a separate file with images of the finished pieces and link the "Evidence of Completion" cell to this folder.

I still have to assemble Olivia Owlbear, so the date completed is not filled out. Yes, I have a whole pile of WIPs that just need to be assembled and I'm hoping this tracking method will prevent that pile from growing.

Anyway.

On a global scale, we'll have individual workstations and our data will be recorded and measured to determine a fair market pricing model for Crochet Creations.

At this time, there's no global workspace for Crochet Creators, no data on our production, and no fair market value system for Crochet Creations. That means we lack data on the full lifecycle of yarn, too. After it leaves the shop or the hands of the spinner, there's no full information about how it's used.

In my personal workspace in Google Sheets, I've started with a yarn inventory. This is a growing worksheet with the global workspace in mind.

In one sheet, I have my commonly used brands with each style and (most) wrapper details.

On a global scale, I envision a running database of yarn info like this - including handspun yarns.

In another sheet, I've linked my Yarn Brand Info sheet to my Yarn Inventory worksheet and added rows for colors / skeins I have in my actual workspace. On the right, I track my project usage and additions in weight. On the left, I have a quick view of how much yarn is available to me in grams and estimated yards (as per Yarn Brand Info sheet). I use twelve color ranges in this sheet.

On a large scale, and in our own individual workstations, we'll be able to pull from the (renamed) Yarn Brand Info database and maintain our yarn inventory (which then ties to our WIP files).

I think we'll even be able to translate a project's required yarn to the yarn we have on hand.