everything in the stores was made in China.
It's almost impossible to get a reasonable price for something you've made by hand. I know knitters, really good knitters, who sometimes sell stuff for only a little more than what the yarn cost, just to make back the price of the yarn.
I participate in an employee craft fair at the hospital I work at each November. I sell crocheted scarves, which I mostly make while at work. I'm on the information desk and I have a LOT of down time. I've figured out a very simple pattern, make them from Lion's Brand Homespun which comes in wonderful colors, machine washes and dries like a dream, and I never pay more than five dollars a skein and sell them for twenty. I sell enough over the winter, both at the craft fair and discreetly from the information desk, that I get an extra few hundred dollars. This coming winter I'm planning to work two or three more craft fairs just to see how I can do.
But good for you for trying to subversively get people to buy quality stuff instead of cheap junk. I do think that many people, when they get to see quality alongside of junk, tend to get it. Once in a while someone will be shocked that I want twenty bucks for a scarf, when, so they tell me, they can get something just as good at WalMart for five dollars. I just repeat how mine is hand made, and that I have to pay retail for the yarn. Plus, the yarn really is pretty nice, especially for a simple crocheted scarf.
I have a semi-secret dream of crocheting enough scarves to get one of the kiosks at a local mall at Christmas time. I may do it someday down the road.
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