This is Nashua handknits in "Snowbird" in hot pink and spring leaf. It's a wool/alpaca blend, chunky (=quick!) and soft.
I'd didn't have a lot of time to plan my knitting, or a lot of details. The person requesting the hand knits provided me with very little info- a little girl who's ten. When pressed with 9 zillion other questions, (what's her favorite color, what color is her jacket, what does she like... etc) he didn't know. All he could tell me is that she's 10.
Um. Thanks?
So, with that information- and quick day polling on Ravelry about what 10 year old girls like, I figured out the patterns I wanted to knit and I decided to go from there.
That hat will be Robin's Egg Blue - with a green brim and pink top. I cast this project on last night and zipped right through it!
And today- I cast it off and sewed in the ends! (YAY! Fast!) All the hat needs is a funky button- which might end up turning out to be the most difficult part of the project! (Where does one procure funky buttons in Calgary?)
Tonight I cast on the Malibrigo Waffles Scarf with bit of green on the bottoms and pink in the long middle. (Sorry no pics yet!) If I can eek that out and save a little left over yarn, I'd really love to knit the Chatty Bulky Mitts also to match. (I can see the requester questioning the purpose of fingerless mittens- but all I can say is from what I've seen, little girls love 'em.)
I'm fairly positive that I can eek out most, if not all this project over the weekend. It's been fun to play with yarn, (which is really nice to knit with by the way), and experiment with quick and easy projects.
I'm also fairly apprehensive. I'm working off very little information. I have never met this little girl- I know nothing about her. What if she hates pink? (Thanks to the sister by the way who helped me pick out the yarn and colors. I know being in a yarn shop is her idea of purgatory- but she was actually very helpful with color observations.) What if HE hates the whole thing? The hat, which is already finished, has a weird uneven decrease. (Although it's still cute) What if it's too big? What if it's too small?
And bigger questions abound... What do I charge? I know I will fully charge for the wool- but I'm worried the $37 price tag I give him, (I kept the receipt as proof), is going to be considered high. (For four skeins it's actually not by the way... it's very reasonable.) While I know that in hand knitting you will never be fully reimbursed for the time you invest in projects, it feels a touch wasteful to charge only for the wool and nothing for the 4 days of continuous knitting I've committed myself to. **I'd like to note this is me filled with self doubt- not self pity, I would not have committed had I not wanted to. I wanted to do this project. It was flattering to be asked.** I just am struggling right now with what to charge for the whole thing.
Complicating things further- my Loopy Ewe package arrived today and I'm essentially vibrating with desperation to a) share it with you and b) KNIT MITTENS WITH THE YARN!
And so I must head off to knit the project up some more-- stay tuned for hopefully finished photos on Monday!
2 comments:
One rule of thumb is to charge twice what the yarn cost you, yarn = $10, project = $20. But of course, whatever your market will bear! But don't short change yourself, that hat is cute.
It's funny, but the only place I've found for buttons here is Pudding.
I really want to open a button store, because as far as I know, there isn't one in Calgary! Victoria has a couple, and half the population. This is why most of my projects don't have buttons: I wait till I visit my parents in Victoria to buy buttons.
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