Undervaluing your craft

About a year ago, I bought a book on eBay, and when it arrived I found a little surprise waiting for me inside...


A clipping from a what I'm guessing is a Queensland newspaper from around 1985, if the location and date written by the original owner on the inside cover of the book are any guide.

I always knew that the going rates for knitters who were willing to knit for others had been low, but this just blew me away. Just by way of contrast, I'm fairly certain that at around the same time you could have earned around $9 per hour working in a department store as a shop assistant with little or no experience for basic award rates. And these charges aren't even an hourly rate, as I'm sure very few people could knit through a ball of yarn in an hour -- OK, I'll admit that I certainly can't -- let alone the 15 to 20 minutes you'd need to achieve to even start to make a reasonable income. Talk about undervaluing your craft, and the years it took to acquire your skills... :(