ah, christmas time...

it's that time of year again, that time of year when i drool over needlepoint canvases and wish i had the money to buy me some of the stellar christmas stocking canvases out there - let alone the wools to actually put them together.  and i've been noticing something i haven't seen before:  the price of hand-painted canvases go up more the mesh guage goes up.  so a design on an 18-mesh canvas costs quite a bit more than a similar design on a 13-mesh canvas. 

does anyone know why this is?

i mean, the process i imagine to painting a canvas doesn't need to take into account the mesh size, so i'm a bit at a loss.  i'll probably be posting this tonight on the cross-stitch comm, too, but i wanted to see if any of my flist knew the answer first.

-bs, pondering