That's exactly it. If you have to actually do this for survival or to make functional products at the pace of making a profit it's no longer "wistful and whimsi

That's exactly it. If you have to actually do this for survival or to make functional products at the pace of making a profit it's no longer "wistful and whimsical". These fetishes come from living in a time where industry and automation has dealt with most of our problems and we can romanticize hand work, etc.