If you are on a budget, borrow pattern books, use scraps of yarn for interesting projects, and trade needles with fellow knitters.
If you knit, you know that you can spend a lot of money on knitting supplies – yarn, needles, pattern books, fancy stitch markers, organizers, or anything else that grabs your fancy at the yarn store. Here are a few tips I’ve learned for cheap knitting:
Borrow, don’t buy. Rather than buying pattern books, borrow them from the library or from your knitting friends. Return the favor later on when you’re in the money by donating your old pattern books to the library or to a friend in need of a new pattern.
Reuse. Rather than going out and buying all new yarn for a project, see what odds and ends you have lying around. You may have enough yarn for a project that you’ve been meaning to work on, and can avoid having to buy all new yarn. Or, go for a wacky look – use up all your scraps on a bag or a scarf and don’t worry about the way the colors work together, just let them all play.
Learn a new skill. If you want to work on a project but don’t have the right size needles, rather than going out and buying the right size, work on adjusting the gauge to work with a set you already have. You may have skipped the whole gauge lesson in Knitting 101 – this is an excellent time to go back and learn all about gauge, what it means, and how to adjust it. Or, if you’re impatient and don’t want to learn, see if a friend has the right sized needles.
You don’t have to break your budget to be an avid knitter; just remember to borrow, reuse, and expand your skills, and you can keep your money in your wallet and your needles churning out new and exciting things.
