If you’ve been hanging around my blog for some time you’ll know the Crojoretro origin story.
Maybe you’ve made your own version of the blanket or perhaps you started it in lockdown but never finished it when things returned to the old normal.
But if you’re new here, just poking around for the first time, you may not know the full story so in this post I’m going to revisit Crojoretro; five years later.
It all began when I had to cancel my Crochet workshops and Retreats in March 2020 as a result of the emerging Covid Pandemic. This was devastating for so many businesses and I watched with abject fear and horror as my only source of income stopped overnight.
I knew that the people working on the front line of this pandemic were bearing the weight of a nightmarish scenario and if all I had to do was stay home and crochet, I’d make that my mission. I’d pursue it with laser focus, as if my life depended on it.
Because it kind of did.
I’d been running The Mercerie on a knife edge since 2012 and what I lack in business acumen I make up for with tenacity and more than a little recklessness. So it felt fairly normal for me to invite a global crochet community to join me on a mystery crochet along.
Except with this mystery CAL even the designer didn’t know what she was doing.
On the 15th of March 2020 I posted this on Instagram:
“Dear friends, followers, likers and lurkers, in an attempt to cheer myself up after making the sad decision to postpone next weekends Crochet Retreat I’ve decided to design a self isolation ‘stash busting’ project.
So – anyone care to join me?”
A few days later, on the 24th March, the UK was in lockdown and I wrote this in a blog post about my lockdown mystery CAL the next day.
“So right now when I see the amazing people working on the front line of this global crisis I feel thankful and grateful, and ever so slightly guilty that I’m stuck at home fiddling with wool.
BUT – I also believe that whatever one chooses to do in life should be done with passion, authenticity and generosity. So all I can do right now is work to my strengths and bring a little colour and joy into our creative community.
I’m currently working on a brand new crochet design; CROJO RETRO. It’s growing organically. I can’t show you a picture of the finished product, I don’t know how much yarn I’ll need and like most adventures into the unknown it’s already filling me with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.”
I invited people to join me by signing up to my newsletter and I’d mail out the instructions as I wrote them and upload video tutorials on Youtube for each instalment of the pattern.
In my usual fashion I’d launched into this head first without really thinking it through. I just thought it would keep me busy and help to keep others busy and distracted during a difficult time. If it also helped me grow my Newsletter subscriber list that would be great too.
It really was that simple. But from where I’m standing now, in 2025, I can see that this decision was the lifeline that saved my business.
In March 2020 I think I had about 2,000 Instagram followers and maybe around 800 newsletter subscribers. It had been a very slow grow and I’d really struggled to get seen online as a solo independent designer with no connections or affiliations with big yarn brands.
But by the summer of 2020 I was beginning to see some real growth and the feedback I was receiving online gave me the confidence to attempt to monetise my work.
In a blog post in July 2020 I announced that I’d be launching my first online crochet course.
“Teaching is so important to me. It’s my interface connecting me with the ‘real’ world and why for so long I’ve insisted that my work is delivered, not through instant digital downloads, but through real life interactions with people. Lots of people. People that bring the outside world to me with their stories, characters and humanity.
For me, a design is brought to life when I share it with others. It’s the real time conversations around it, watching it take on new identities as others engage with it, rework it, play with it and make it their own.
So in September 2020 I packaged up Homage to the Granny Square; one of my courses that before lockdown I’d been running in real life, and I launched it as my first online course.
Once I’d made this big decision the next question was “Is anyone actually going to pay for a crochet course?” Crochet is a notoriously hard sell!
Back in 2020 even £10 for a downloadable crochet pattern was considered extortion and I’d been told this by several crafters looking for a crochet blanket freeload on Ravelry.
But I felt confident that I had the skills and experience to offer much more than just an online CAL and I knew there were people out there looking to broaden their own skills and knowledge.
So the next question was “How much?”
- Is it the same as a real- life course?
- Is it less because it’s digital?
- Or is it more because of the additional time and expenses involved in making, publishing and marketing the content?
I asked around – and immediately wished I hadn’t as everyone gave me a different answer ranging from:
“What?? You can’t charge that for a crochet course!” to “I think that sounds amazing!” This was all a steep learning curve and required a lot of soul searching but I eventually settled on a figure that was slightly less than a real-life course.
I reasoned that the cost of producing and managing the course, plus the time invested in helping and supporting my online students via email and virtual meetings, justified this.
I felt that anything less undervalued my product and I’ve always been an advocate for crafters charging their worth.
I believe that when you undervalue your own craft work, you undervalue everyone’s. How often have you seen beautiful but shockingly under priced work at craft fairs and felt a stab of betrayal?
Ultra-fast fashion brands love to capitalise on the romance of a seemingly hand crafted product, and consumers will buy into this aesthetic for the duration of a micro trend.
But at the other end of the spectrum is the crafter struggling to earn even minimum wage creating hand made products that to a hungry consumer look like overpriced copies of mainstream fashion.
It’s a confusing imitation game where the originals and their bland simulacra have become parodies of each other.
When you raise the bar for yourself, you raise it for the whole craft community. We’re in this together and we all have a responsibility to address the paradox of the handmade – and it’s paltry price tag.
So, after an agonising assessment of self worth all I had to do was persuade my online audience that my courses would provide good value and I tried really hard not to read the “What?? You can’t charge that for a crochet course!” comments.
I launched my first online course: Homage to the Granny Square in September 2020 with 160 members from all over the world.
I was, and still am, eternally grateful to everyone who took a punt and joined me on this pilot course.
Oh, and I was also terrified.
I ran the course a second time, with 180 members and then six months later I launched my second online course: Wallflowers.
When my second course recruited 200 members I knew I’d found my niche and I began building a collection of crochet courses. I now have 9 online courses and I’m in the process of writing the 10th.
Crojoretro continues to be a really popular free course that I offer to all my newsletter subscribers, and to date I’ve offered this course to over 20,000 people.
I’ve learnt so many things in the five years since Lockdown but I think the two most important lessons, and the ones that I’d share with crafters everywhere, are:
- When you do the best work you can, and value your skills, you can confidently charge your worth. And this, in turn, will allow you to be generous with your gifts.
- When you invest time in developing your craft skills, rather than chasing likes, it doesn’t matter who’s tailing you, or how fast they’re running. When you run towards the light you’ll always stay ahead.
We’ll be celebrating Five Years of Crojoretro at Yarndale this year and on this year’s stand we’d love to feature some images of the many beautiful #crojoretro blankets that have been created in the 5 years since lockdown.
We know there are THOUSANDS of fabulous Crojoretros all over the globe and we want to celebrate the blankets and the brilliant crafters who made them
If you’ve made a blanket or have one in progress we’d LOVE to have your Crojoretro as part of our stand – and while we know we can’t have them IRL we’d like to collate as many images of Crojoretro blankets as we can and showcase them all together!
If you’d like to take part – here’s what you need to do:
- Follow this link by clicking HERE
- Add/upload JUST ONE image of your blanket to the Dropbox folder
- Name your image using this format ‘YOUR NAME – YOUR LOCATION’
ALSO – If you have a story or a few words you’d like to share about the project please do email them to Jess at hello@themercerie.co.uk and we’ll do our best to include them in the display.
*Please note that by submitting your image you are giving us permission to use it and your name in publicity materials, on our website and on social media*
Thank you everyone in advance of receiving your contributions.
If you haven’t registered for Crojoretro all you need to do is sign up for my Newsletter and we’ll send you instructions on how to access it.
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Sue well done you are amazing!!!
Hi Sue!!! Thank you so much