Claire Black: 'If you must give homemade tat as a gift then you must do so sparingly'

SO, CAN I tempt you with a hand-painted lampshade? A pair of slippers made out of your old jeans? A homemade laptop case, which if you make it a few sizes smaller and add a well-placed popper will be a purse, a few sizes bigger and you'll be able to pitch it in a field and live in it?

A revolution has been unleashed that, if left unchecked, threatens to bury us alive in a mountain of lavender-scented corn dollies. And frankly, that's not the way I want to go. I'm talking craft, and I'm just saying "no".

It started a while back with all those middle-class, meedja-types finding ways to bolster their fragile freelance incomes by telling the rest of us how to knit shoes with yoghurt. "It's craft-chic, darling," they purred, tucking away their advances to be spent in Harvey Nicks at a later date. But frighteningly, it has gone on. It goes on. We're surrounded by it and we must resist.

I grew up wearing homemade Cloth Kit outfits (coordinating skirts, tops and reading books by the light of a homemade shell-encrusted table lamp, beneath the foliage of a wandering sailor nestled in a homemade macram plantpot holder. I've marbled paper, painted eggs and made my own candles. I've tie-died T- shirts and sewn my own table linen. I know craft, so I'm right when I say that craft items always give more pleasure to the person who makes them than the poor sod who's unlucky enough to get them as a birthday present.

It's nice to make things. I get it. I understand why my dad spent weeks cutting out full-page cartoons from a national newspaper then sticking them on to quarter-inch thick board, which he then varnished.

I'm less clear on why he then thought the best thing to do was hang them (they lined our pine-clad staircase from 1982-86). And I would not have understood or approved, even then, of giving them as gifts.

Homemade tat is meant to stay at home. And if you must give it then you must do so sparingly. As for trying to punt it for pure profit, no, no, no.

The new craft movement and its devotees like to pretend that the items they make look just as nice, and work just as well, as their shop bought equivalents. They don't. Legwarmers and a snood made from an old jumper (I'm not joking, I've seen instructions for how to commit this crime against fashion in the name of craft) look like bits of an old jumper worn on your legs and round your neck. Fine if that's the look you're after, but the problem in these cash-strapped days is that one person's hobby is another person's key into the Dragon's Den. It's about money.

Take a look on etsy.com and among the genuinely lovely stuff made by genuinely talented people, you'll spot the items that, well, no-one should be paying money for. It's the same at craft fairs. Nestling among the cute and the kitch are things that should never have been allowed to leave the kitchen table. And that's why we must all say no to craft for cash. Or pretend that homemade is the same as professional. It's not.

And for the record, I've never seen a nice corn dolly. Ever.