Knitting: what it costs and who it fits

Knitting fits people who want something for their hands during television, commutes and conversations. It is quiet, portable, needs no dedicated space, and stops cleanly mid-row. The catch is that it is slow by design: a scarf is several thousand near-identical stitches, and the pleasure has to come from the doing rather than the finishing.

What it actually costs

The cost table on this page shows $25 to $80 to start, and unusually, the low end is the honest one.

The cheap entry path is one skein and one pair of needles. Lion Brand Wool-Ease is $5.99 for 197 yards, which is a worsted-weight acrylic and wool blend that forgives uneven tension and survives a washing machine. A pair of straight needles adds a few dollars. Under $25 total, and that is a genuine start rather than a stunt.

The mid-path is a matched kit, which removes the two decisions beginners get wrong: yarn weight and needle size. Knit Picks sells a Learn to Knit Shaping Kit for slippers at $34.99 and a Learn to Knit & Purl scarf kit at $59.99, both with yarn, needles and pattern chosen to work together. A beginner blanket bundle is $89.99.

The purchase to delay is needles. A Mosaic Options interchangeable needle set at Knit Picks is $76.99 and covers essentially every project you will ever knit. It is also the classic month-one mistake. Buy it at month three, once you know you are still knitting.

Ongoing cost is yarn, and it scales with taste rather than need. At $5.99 a skein, the $15 to $60 monthly range in the table is one small project to one ambitious one. Hand-dyed wool will multiply that by five whenever you decide to let it.

Time to your first win

Three days for a recognisable swatch, three weeks for a wearable scarf at a few evenings a week.

The honest part is the middle. After the first evening you can knit, and after that nothing new happens for a while. Rows two hundred through six hundred of a scarf are exactly like row one. People who quit knitting quit there, having concluded it is boring. People who stay have discovered that the sameness is the point, and that a podcast plus a row count is the actual activity.

Even tension takes two to three months. Your first scarf will be tighter at the start and looser at the end. Everyone's is. Finish it anyway, because an unfinished first project is the strongest predictor of quitting.

You'll enjoy this if

• You want your hands busy while watching, listening or talking.
• You travel or commute and want a hobby that fits in a tote bag.
• You want to make clothing that fits you, which knitting does better than any other craft here.
• Repetition settles you rather than bores you.
• You like a hobby with an active local community, because yarn shops still hold sessions.

Skip it if

• You need to see visible progress every session. A scarf grows about an inch an evening.
• Fiddly small-motor work irritates your hands or your patience.
• You would be knitting mainly to save money on sweaters. Yarn for a sweater costs more than a sweater.
• Dropped stitches would end the hobby for you. Try crochet instead, where mistakes undo easily.
• You want a hobby that gets you out of the house or moving.

Your first month

1. Buy one skein of worsted acrylic or acrylic blend at $5.99 and one pair of needles in the size printed on the label. Nothing else.
2. Learn the knit stitch only. Make a 20-stitch swatch and keep going until the edges stop wobbling, usually two or three evenings.
3. Make a scarf, not a hat. Flat rows and no shaping, so the only variable is tension.
4. Finish the scarf even after it stops being interesting. The finished-object habit is what carries you into project two.
5. At month three, if you are still knitting, buy the interchangeable needle set and pick a real pattern.

If dropped stitches are what stops you, crochet is more forgiving and faster to see results. For handwork with a picture at the end rather than a garment, embroidery starts even cheaper. Both sit alongside knitting on our list of cheap hobbies.