The Value of Crafting as a Hobby: Why You Don’t Owe Anyone a Business

Your hobbies and handcrafts have value. Creating items with your own 2 hands helps your mental health, your physical health, and even wards off dementia. You do it because it brings you joy.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve been sold a lie. That crafts, and women’s crafts in particular, must have a price tag, or they dont have worth.

TL;DR: Why Your Hobby Is Enough

– Hobbies have inherent value—for joy, mental health, and even physical well-being.
– You don’t owe anyone a business plan—crafting for love, not money, is reason enough.
– Science backs it up: Crafting reduces stress, regulates blood pressure, and can delay dementia by up to 5 years ​⁠.
– Community matters: Hobby groups improve survival rates and provide a sense of belonging

I do run a buisness from my crafting hobby

Maybe I am a hypocrite, because I do monetise my hobby. I write knitting and crochet patterns, I sell them, and I put them on this blog where I earn from adds. My blog has support, hints, tips and advice for other crochet and knitting designers. In addition, I sell a service to help people turn their hobby into a buisness. But the most important think I think needs said from the start is this: you dont owe anyone a buisness plan, nor an etsy shop! Don’t let others pressure you into a buisness, if its not what you want for yourself.

Maybe I am a hypocrite, because I do monetise my hobby. I write knitting and crochet patterns, I sell them, and I put them on this blog where I earn from adds. My blog has support, hints, tips and advice for other crochet and knitting designers. In addition, I sell a service to help people turn their hobby into a buisness. But the most important think I think needs said from the start is this: you dont owe anyone a buisness plan, nor an etsy shop! Don’t let others pressure you into a buisness, if its not what you want for yourself. I also greatly enjoyed gardening, DIY, woodworking, sewing, and my pets. I keep these things purely as hobbies, and fully understand the importance of hobby for joy and recreation.

The Value of Crafting. The many ways it supports our health.

Hobbies have a purpose. They entertain. Fun is important! But more than that, they keep us alive, healthy and connected for longer.

Creating anything with your own two hands has multiple benefits. Firstly, it helps your physical health. It lowers blood pressure and heart rate. So does owning a pet. If you can knit or crochet every day with a ‘yarn goblin’ of a cat or dog in your lap, you are actively adding years to your life.

There is also huge benefits to our mental health. Studies show it can reduce anxiety and depression. Regular knitters are found to be prescribed medication for mental health less often, and for less time, than non-crafters.

Creative crafts also support our cognitive health. Several studies, such as this one, show that making things with your hands adds 5 years before the first onset of dementia in old age, and slows its progress. Any craft which uses both hands, draws on both artistic skill, and mathematical reasoning (which all crafts do, more or less, you are counting and thinking in numbers and shapes) have a big impact in keeping our little grey cells active, and warding off decline.

In addition, crafting also foster community. People with the same hobbies come together. In studies, people with hobby groups, such as a book club, were more likely to survive cancer. The researchers concluded that having visitors from the group while in hospital was one thing that had a huge impact on recovery rates.
Feeling part of a group is a human need. Whether you like knitting, fishing, or reading books, being part of a hobby group is good for you!
Crafting has been found to have many health benefits from relieving anxiety, reducing perceptions of pain, and even slowing the progress of dementia.

The value of crafting as a hobby and the pressure to sell.

But in the crafting world, there is a clear pressure to ‘sell stuff’. Spend any time on any of the larger Facebook groups, or scrolling Instagram, and for crafters, you would easily get the impression that if you are not selling your stuff, you are not doing it right. I couldn’t disagree more.

And many hobbies are allowed to be just that – fun hobbies for the sake of enjoyment, well-being and community. Imagine a successful male doctor who likes to spend his weekend on the golf course, or fishing. These are clearly hobbies. That doctor may dream of an eventual retirement where they can spend more time doing these things, but is unlikely to be put under pressure to make money from them, and quit their career.

But it’s quite different in some other fields. An overlap between the idea of crafting, and of selling, can be seen everywhere. A google search for ‘sell your crafts’ produces 266,000,000 results. That’s some serious industry in structures just to provide sales platforms.

This puts any crafters, especially young crafters, under huge pressure. In communities where so much talk is of selling, I see so many young crafters saying they are going to quit, because they don’t make any sales. ‘It’s not about the sales!’ I want to yell. ‘You are allowed a hobby, and no, you won’t get rich selling little crocheted bees. And you might never sell any. But if making them gives your heart joy, get a display shelf. And give as gifts. It’s OK to do it because you enjoy it. Your worth is not measured in the Kaching of an Etsy sale.’

The difference between traditionally female crafts, and others.

So, what’s different between the male doctor who has a sport hobby, and the (probably, but not always) female who crafts?

Firstly, different hobbies are treated differently. Sports don’t produce a tangible good, nor do other hobbies such as reading. But in crafts and arts an item is created – physical or digital. You can’t sell the 6 hours you spent curled up with a good book, but it’s theoretically possible to sell the painting you worked on for 6 hours.

We live in a capitalist society that tells us that if goods are being made, they must also be sold. Maybe the painter approached the paining just like the reader approached the reading? Because they needed some chill out time after a hectic week? And what if they want to hang the painting on their own wall?

Gender preconceptions are an important aspect. Our society views male and female productivity differently. On the one hand it devalues women’s work. But ironically, it also doesn’t award women time away from work in the same way. The man who worked all week and spends the weekend fishing is on a well deserved break, but the woman is culturally expected to spend all her non employment time caring for family, and generating extra income as part of that. For well over a hundred years women in the west of Ireland, and Dublin would spend every spare minute knitting Aran jumpers which were sold at high cost in the states, but traditionally these women were often paid in basic food parcels, not even cash. There is a long, sad history everywhere of exploitation of crafters for capitalist production. We can celebrate the craft without being part of that exploitation.

Conclusion

In my blog I look at some aspects of setting up The Fairythorn to sell knitting and crochet designs, and support designers and makers. Whether you want to learn how to grade a pattern for multiple sizes, or sell your products to the EU, I’m here for you. But for everyone who is here because they are sick of constantly hearing ‘oh, you should sell your hats’ or ‘why dont you set up an etsy shop’, know this: Your hobbys and crafts have value. They make you happy. And they are good for you. So, they dont need a price tag.

Just remember, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You are supporting your health with every hour spent crafting. So whether you knit, crochet, sew, needle felt, do pottery, woodworking, or anything else, you have a right to that hobby!