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The Cost of a Knitting Pattern, Annotated

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what's a knitting pattern worthI love this post from Thread & Ladle breaking down the potential time and monetary costs of producing a quality knitting pattern.

People sometimes complain when I share patterns that cost money, and I do try to stick with mostly free patterns most of the time, but I like to support designers who charge for their work because it’s worth it to pay for a well-done pattern, and it’s important to support people who are trying to produce the very best designs and patterns that they can.

The post breaks it all down, but the quick version is that, between knitting, writing the pattern, grading the pattern (that’s coming up with the stitch counts and instructions for different sizes), taking pictures, designing the pattern itself and getting the pattern into the system wherever you want to sell it can easily take 100 hours or more.

And that doesn’t factor in the cost of materials, any photo editing and layout programs used, technical editing, test knitters and more things that actually cost money beyond thinking about paying a designer for her time and expertise.

If you think about all that goes into it, and that a designer would have to sell many hundreds of patterns to make up the cost and pay themselves some kind of wage for their labor, paying $5 or $7 for a sweater pattern doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you pay for knitting patterns or only use ones you can get for free? Do you think paid patterns are better quality? What is a knitting pattern worth to you?

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Comments

  1. I am almost always able to take an idea or photo of a knitted item, and then make my own pattern. It isn’t that hard.

  2. I am more than willing to support knitting designers. I am most appreciative of their creativity, and the time spent bringing their patterns to us. For a modest, initial fee, the pattern can be used repeatedly. It’s a win-win for me.

Have you read?

Knit a Fish Pouch, for Reasons

I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]