Friday, January 11, 2008

The Yarn Economy

On the way home from work, I was listening to a show on talk radio about the current state of the economy. I'm sorry that I missed the name of the speaker because he was brilliant. But he made me worry about my role in the economy of yarn....

The chain of events they discussed was this:
  1. The mortgage and financial institutions are not lending or providing credit as freely as previously because they overextended themselves to people who couldn't really afford the loans they were getting.
  2. People who used to go into credit card debt and/or take out easy home equity loans to support their overspending now cannot get credit or home equity loans, and so...
  3. People will potentially buy fewer goods and services
  4. The companies which provide these goods and services will have to lay off employees to cut costs because they won't have as much business
  5. The suppliers to the stores will have to make less inventory, and so will have to lay off employees as well.
This made me think. In an effort to save money and be more financially responsible, I am trying to knit from my stash and buy less yarn. If lots of people do that, then the yarn stores will potentially have to cut hours/personnel because they won't have as much of a market for their goods and services! And...if that happened, then yarn companies would make less yarn! And...if that happened, there could actually be a SHORTAGE of yarn in the future. This thought terrified me, because in our quest to save money and be responsible now, frugal knitters could actually knit up the stash of beautiful yarns that we will potentially NEED in the future.

So a "Yarn Diet" now could deprive me of future yarn because it could collapse the Yarn Economy! Excuse me, while I run off to the yarn shop to save the world!!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Christy, nice blog! It's Squirrelnutzippe, otherwise known as Ann, trolling around the internets tonight. Found your blog through your post on Knitty, in which you describe essentially the same little number of hits a day as I. Here's to increasing traffic! Your post on yarn dieting makes sense, in a very twisted sort of way, BTW. :-)