Saving Money

Ever since the stock markets went into free-fall and the economy went sour I have noticed an abundance of money saving tips in pretty much every publication and internet post in existence. Most of these tips are benign and maybe slightly useful, but there is one that keeps surfacing that irks me: Save money by knitting.

To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity the fool who takes up knitting to save money.

Here's a rundown of what things cost me; I'll use the raspberry hat from a couple of posts ago for an example: One skein of the chunky Brown Sheep yarn costs $15.00. The hat took me at least 3 hours to make and at my current labor rate (from my employer) that would be about $60.00. $75.00 for a hat. That's not including the needles used to make it which I already owned and would cost about $8.00. Plus the design work which probably adds up to another hour. Hmmm...doesn't look like we're saving a lot of dough.

Yes, you can buy cheap 3dollar yarn from Wal-Mart and make something that's lumpy and ugly but you can also buy a warm and decent hat for 3dollars from Ragstock, and if you're really interested in saving money I'd suggest the Ragstock option.

Learning to knit with cheap acrylic yarn is asking for failure, frustration and disappointment. It's hard to work with, hard to fix errors and never looks good in the end. You'll end up spending twice as much time making something that looks half as good. That's not saving anything, especially sanity. If you want to learn to knit do it because you want to make something and learn a new skill, not because you want to save money. There are no shortcuts. The personal reward for producing something that is lasting, functional, and beautiful is immense. When you try to pinch pennies on materials or time, you are only shortchanging yourself.