Many of the gifts I gave this year were handmade by someone, somewhere. Many of them came from Etsy. The site recorded its one-millionth sale last summer, so apparently I’m not alone. Now, there’s a long and interesting article about it in the New York Times Magazine. As someone who has struggled for a while now to conceptualize a satisfying — emotionally, politically, and financially — exisistence outside of the corporate sphere, this part in particular really hit home.

Many crafters no doubt feel passionately about the ideals suggested by the Handmade Pledge — a horror of sweatshop labor and corporate conformity, concern about the environment — and would be pleased to see the broader consumer culture embrace them too. Meanwhile there is also the more salient matter of how to make a rewarding, meaningful and satisfying living without having to give up on those ideals. The women who have led the craft movement don’t want to work for the Man. But many are also motivated by having reached adulthood at a time when the Man is slashing benefits, reneging on pensions, laying people off and, if hiring, is looking for customer-service reps and baristas. This is not a utopian alt-youth framework; it’s a very real-world, alt-grown-up framework.

From Handmade 2.0, December 16, 2007.