Ahhhh! It's nearly the end of the month and I haven't blogged ANY of my Q2 finishes! And I have managed some!
So, quickly from the archives...
This is a Taina shawl, a nice, free, simple pattern that I have made before.
This time it was made for a co-worker's mother, after he went "ooh, my mum would like that shawl" at my Nudibranch Madness shawl.
After some "I have no idea" confusion, we settled on a pattern, a yarn, and a price, and I scurried off to knit. It had to be finished by May 1st, which, due to life, I was slightly late on (knitting in a field full of mud, especially on a commission piece, is not a good idea, so he had to wait a couple of days)
There's really not a lot to say about this. The pattern is simple and pleasing TV knitting, and the yarn, "Starlight Express" from AllsWoolThatEndsWool was soft and lovely to knit with; it didn't split and the stellina didn't annoy me like it often does!
I ended up with about 15g left after I'd done 3 repeats of the pattern, which I used up last week on another shawl!
It blocked out to about twice it's unblocked size (blocking. It matters!) and has a lovely drape.
Apparently it was well received as a gift, so in the end, it was good.
So, quickly from the archives...
This is a Taina shawl, a nice, free, simple pattern that I have made before.
This time it was made for a co-worker's mother, after he went "ooh, my mum would like that shawl" at my Nudibranch Madness shawl.
After some "I have no idea" confusion, we settled on a pattern, a yarn, and a price, and I scurried off to knit. It had to be finished by May 1st, which, due to life, I was slightly late on (knitting in a field full of mud, especially on a commission piece, is not a good idea, so he had to wait a couple of days)
There's really not a lot to say about this. The pattern is simple and pleasing TV knitting, and the yarn, "Starlight Express" from AllsWoolThatEndsWool was soft and lovely to knit with; it didn't split and the stellina didn't annoy me like it often does!
I ended up with about 15g left after I'd done 3 repeats of the pattern, which I used up last week on another shawl!
It blocked out to about twice it's unblocked size (blocking. It matters!) and has a lovely drape.
Apparently it was well received as a gift, so in the end, it was good.
And now I'm going to have a wee bit of a whinge. Originally, when I was asked about doing this, I quoted £80 including materials. The person made a pained face and asked £50. I'm not going to lie, my finances are a bit wonky this year due to cat and my car needing a bunch of repair work, so I took it up to £60 and he agreed.
£20 of that was the yarn, which is pretty normal for a high end hand dyed yarn in the UK, so £40 was labour. At minimum wage, that pays for 5 hours of work. This was a MONTH of evening and lunchtime knitting, so way more than 5 hours.
Look, I know I can't charge £300 for a handknit shawl of this size, no one would buy it, and I'd be laughed off of Etsy, but it sucks that I can't charge anywhere near my actual labour times on things like this.
Sewing is easier; it's faster, and because I'm sat at my sewing machine, I probably have a better grasp of how long I'm working on something, and I can batch process stuff which lowers production times.
I'm just grumpy. And I have another shawl I've made that I don't want to keep (it's not quite my colours) and someone has expressed an interest in it, but I now have no idea what to charge for it.
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