So the title pretty much says it all, handmade gifts aren't cheap. I can see why people would think that way and i myself thought similarly when i was younger but it's a flawed way of thinking. Most people look at the value of gifts in terms of money, so if they get you a $40 gift they expect something equal or of greater value in return, or will settle for maybe $10 less. So in that thought lets look at a knit hat. Most hats use about a third to half of a skein of yarn depending on the hat. So if someone bought a really nice skein of yarn for $10 and used half that's $5. So a person getting a hat might look at yarn in the store after you give them the hat and scoff because you only used $5 of yarn on them. Now when people go to work lots of people get paid by the hour. If we apply that to knitting, the price drastically goes up. Now i'm not a fast knitter but i'm no sloth and a basic one color knit hat takes me about 4 hours in total. So if we use the minimum wage of $7.50 per hour that makes just the labor for a basic one color hat alone $30. So add the $30 for labor and $5 for yarn and that basic hat is worth $35.
When i make a knit gift for people it's typically for people that i am really fond of because my time is precious to me. People like to look over that fact when they receive handmade gifts. The only way i can think of measuring the emotional value is to show the amount of stitches. When i make an adult hat i typically cast on 80 stitches. So with 80 stitches per row a basic hat has at least 20 solid rows without decreases which is 1,600 stitches. When i decrease for the crown i like to do it by tens so for every decrease row i take away ten and then do a knit row.
So the hats crown with the decrease row stitches, starting at 80, would be
1- 70
2-70 (knit only rows for every even)
3-60
4-60
5-50
6-50
7-40
8-40
9-30
10-30
11-20
12-20
13-10
14-10
And this is where i close off the hat. So that is 560 more stitches.
Adding the 1,600 stitches to the crown stitches means that a basic hat consists of 2,160 stitches that who ever made it did by hand. They made every stitch in that hat so that they can give it to you.
So the next time someone gives you something hand knit remember this post. Everybody's time is precious and they chose to spend their time making something for you. So even if you hate the color, don't wear hats, or it's just not something you would use still thank them anyway for their time and never call them cheap. Thank you from all the handmade gifters out there in advance.
