Why would you want to knit or crochet when you can buy mass-produced machine-knitted goods far more cheaply? Your great-great-grandmother might have knitted out of necessity, but that necessity is long gone.
It is a fair question, and the answers are better than nostalgia.
Because you get exactly what you want
The colour you chose, in the fibre you chose, at the size you need.
Mass-produced clothing is made for an average nobody actually is. A hand-made garment fits the body in front of you, in the shade you could not find in any shop.
For anything unusual – a very tall person, a very small baby, a specific character on a blanket – handmade is frequently the only option at any price.
Because the quality is different
A cheap machine-knitted jumper is made from the cheapest yarn that will hold together, at the loosest gauge that looks acceptable. It pills within a season and loses its shape.
You can choose a better fibre and a firmer gauge, and the result lasts for years rather than months. On that basis handmade is often cheaper over its life, not more expensive.
Because of what it does for the maker
This is the real answer, and it has nothing to do with the finished object.
The rhythm occupies part of the attention and frees the rest. It produces visible progress in a world where a great deal of work leaves no trace. It occupies the hands. It is sociable if you want it to be and solitary if you do not.
People do not knit because it is the cheapest way to get a scarf. They knit because the evening spent knitting was better than the evening would otherwise have been.
Because of what it means to the recipient
Handmade things get kept. People hold on to a knitted blanket for decades and hand it down, which is not true of anything bought.
A gift that visibly took hours carries something a bought one cannot, and everyone knows it.
Because of waste
The cost of disposable clothing has become hard to ignore. Making things that last, mending them, and knowing what they are made of is a direct answer to it.
The honest limit
Do not make a plain jumper to save money – the yarn alone will cost more than a shop one.
Make it because you want a better one, in the right colour, that fits, and because you enjoyed the making. Those are sufficient reasons.
