Close to You Handknit Scarf/Shawl

I love knitting in the evenings while I watch a movie or two or a few episodes of a series on Netflix or Amazon. I usually knit 2-4 hours each evening. I didn't keep exact track of the time it took to knit this, but it did take me somewhere around 4-6 weeks to complete it. So I am guessing it was about 100-150 hours of knitting or more! Knitting is truly a labor of love! With bag making, the cost of the materials to a make a bag might be about the same as the cost of yarn to knit something like this scarf/shawl (or even more because good yarn isn't cheap), but it certainly takes a whole lot longer to knit anything than to make a bag.

I don't consider myself a slow knitter, but my friend knits so fast my head spins, lol!!! I sent my friend the link to this knit pattern and less than a week later she had it knit and blocked, and she works 12-14 hour shifts working with Covid positive patients! I asked her if she knit 20 hours a day on her off days and she thought I was joking, but really I don't know how she knits so fast and I knew she did, but I thought with working so much now that it would be quite a while before she finished this scarf/shawl.

It's hard to photograph scarves and shawls. So I tried showing this several ways.

Garter stitch and lace knitting with a picot bound off edge.

This is fingering weight yarn, which is the second lightest and narrowest yarn besides lace weight being the lightest yarn. So the lighter the yarn, the smaller the needles, the longer it takes to knit.

Tried taking a pic of me wearing it looking into a mirror, so not the greatest photo, but you can see how you can wear as a scarf.

I took this photo inside by a window, so the colors look washed out.

If you are a knitter this is a free pdf. If you aren't a knitter and want someone to knit this for you, expect to pay a lot! Even getting paid $1 an hour, labor alone would amount to $100-$150 or more (unless you can find someone like my fast knitting friend, lol, then maybe it would be less) and that doesn't include the approximately $30 for the cost of yarn. So if you paid someone just minimum wage to knit this, it would cost you thousands of dollars! I hope that gives you all an appreciation of knitters and those who crochet too. So when you buy something that is handknit, you know that you are getting something that is a labor of love and even if they use the cheapest yarn available, their labor is worth far more than they are charging for what they make.

Happy knitting!

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