(Not At All Naked Wednesday)
The song Pink Pony Club was an earworm for me for a while this year. I saw a really charming version by an account called Grandpa Sings. It tickled me to hear a grandpa wistfully singing about stripping at the Pink Pony Club. Unfortunately the only version on YouTube doesn't have the visuals of him singing, but it's still pretty great. His piano playing is fantastic too.
In case you've been living under a rock, here's the original version of the song by Chappell Roan.
And, here's not at all naked smarty in her fluffy pink bathrobe with a pink knitting project.
As long as we're on the topic of knitting, I promised @spunkycumfun a dissertation on why it doesn't make sense to knit for money.
He did a post about an artist who visualized global temperatures rising. (I was going to link the post, but went through two or three months worth of posts and couldn't find it. Damn you are prolific Spunky!). I commented on the post that it's quite popular for knitters to do a similar kind of project where they create a "temperature" blanket that visualizes the daily high temperatures (and sometimes lows) over the course of the year. Different colors get assigned to different temperature ranges. Here's an example of someone else's project:
Spunky's reply was that he thought I should start a business making temperature knitted pieces and he would be my first customer. So here's a lesson in the economics of knitting.
Let's say I decided to buy a yarn bundle from one of my preferred vendors, Modern Daily Knitting. This lovely "starter pack" (implying that you will possibly need to buy more to complete the project) is for sale at the low low price of $299.
Now let's figure out labor. On an optimistic guess I'll say that doing two rows of an afghan (not a full sized blanket) for the high and low temperatures would be about 20 minutes a day.
20 minutes x 365 = 7300 minutes = ~121 hours. We'll round it up to 130 since there will be a lot of time weaving in loose ends for all of the color changes. Since I enjoy knitting for the sake of knitting, let's price my labor quite low and charge $10/hour. $10 x $130 = $1300.
$299 yarn plus $1300 labor = $1599. I'm throwing the the needles for free since I'll be able to use them for other projects. 😁
Still interested in having a temperature afghan, Spunky?
12
15 comments
The Pink Pony Club is not about a strip club. It is about a LGBTQ club in West Hollywood named, "The Abbey" It is about being free to dance and be who you are. Not about stripping at all.
Interesting. I think she was trying to imply otherwise though (having it both ways). The whole thing of the mom crying “god, what have you done?” I realize that could also be dismay about a daughter hanging out at a queer nightclub but most listeners would assume it was something more serious.
I have a bunch of old afghans my mom knitted. I'm trying to find a way to unload them. Tried a local buy and sell site, but sadly, no interest.
Maybe a donation to a nursing home?
Oh, now you are making me feel bad for not keeping those ol' afghans from the relatives.
Nah, sometimes other people’s creations are not to our tastes. If they didn’t bring you joy, you shouldn’t feel obliged to keep them around.
We looked at sweaters in Iceland. Great wool sweaters. Now Iceland is expensive in general but these were way out of out prices range.
I’m going to Iceland in September and will definitely be sweater shopping. Or possibly yarn shopping.
@smartasswoman daughter brought back a bag of yarn. she made us stop at several yarn stores on the island. she is a big knitter.
Sadly, this is exactly why knitted and crocheted items are becoming less common at church bazaars and charity fundraisers—you simply can’t recover the ‘cost’ of the materials and labor involved. Ironically, my church recently received a donation of two large garbage bags filled with beautiful crocheted blankets. Some of these will be donated to a local long-term care facility, as they make perfect lap blankets. The two finest pieces will be packaged together as one of the draw prizes for the ACW May Tea Party.
I think such items are much better being donated, and I'm glad the blankets are going to a long term care facility. ❤️
As you might recall, I knit and donate items to an organization that gives gifts to seniors. The org does a silent auction in the fall and someone asked why I didn't donate an item or two to the auction - my response was that I would probably feel hurt by whatever the winning bid was, so I'd rather just make something for a senior than knit something to try to raise money.
Hey! I like living under my rock!
Since I only crochet afghans, I buy the cheap acrylic (cuz it's machine washable) but now I'm wondering how much those aghans are "worth".
Figure out your labor and I bet they're worth a lot!
I'm thinking my acrylic crocheted throw is going to be much more sturdy and durable than the knitted blanket I made a few years ago (which is pilling horribly). There are definitely arguments for acrylic even though it's not environmentally PC.
I must be living under a rock because I've never come across the Pink Pony Club song until reading this post.
I still stand by that you can knit for money. If the demand gets too great, you can always offshore or, as a new term has emerged, friendly-offshore though that clearly excludes Canada, Mexico, Europe and any place where penguins live!
Here's my link, DEAR WEATHER . There's already a Ed Hawkins' climate-striped T-shirt range on sale.
I think I heard about Chappell Roan on that podcast I listen to about trends (It's a Thing). And then I stumbled across Grandpa's version on social media, which led me to look for the original, and voila! Ear worm.
I could figure out my own bundle of cheap acrylic yarn but really, yarn is not the major driver of cost here. And acrylic is not a sustainable choice. Although I did use acrylic for the crocheted afghan I recently finished - mostly because it was only my second crochet project and I wasn't sure if it would turn out nicely, and didn't want to waste money on expensive yarn.