The Cost of A Sweater
The main expense in your knitted projects is always going to be the yarn. Sure, needles can cost a pretty penny, but they can be used over and over again, making their per-garment cost minimal. Yarn can't be reused for a new item without unraveling the previous project.
The type of yarn and the project selected will determine how much your project will cost. A small scarf will require less yarn than a sweater, and acrylic yarn will be less expensive than vicuña wool. If you want to learn more about selecting the right type of yarn for your project, check out what I wrote here.
Usually, acrylic and cotton yarns are on the lower end of the price scale, and merino wool and silk are on the higher end. It's easy to compare the price of a ball of yarn to another, but it's also important to compare the sizes of the balls to get a true idea of the cost. Some balls have 100 grams of yarn in them, others only 50 grams. If they have the same price per ball, one is actually twice as expensive as the other.
Let's take a pattern and calculate how much the yarn for it would cost depending on what yarn you use:
Flax by Tin Can Knits is one of the most popular sweater patterns on Ravelry. It's free, it's an easy design with some interesting details, and it's extremely size-inclusive.
We'll use the yardage provided for the regular length sweater in the pattern. I looked up the prices for these yarns:
- Acrylic: Paintbox Yarns Simply Aran - 201 yards per ball, $3.99 ($0.02 per yard)
- Cotton: Yarn and Colors Epic - 82 yards per ball, $3.29 ($0.04 per yard)
- Alpaca: Cascade Eco Alpaca - 219 yards per skein, $19.00 ($0.09 per yard)
- Bulk-Dyed Wool: Cascade 220 - 220 yards per skein, $12.50 ($0.06 per yard)
- Hand-Dyed Wool: Madelinetosh Triple Twist - 130 yards per skein, $29.00 ($0.22 per yard)
- Our Yarn: Lankava Yarn from Finnished Knits - 284 yards per skein, $8.99 ($0.03 per yard)
|
Size
|
Acrylic
|
Cotton
|
Alpaca
|
Bulk-Dyed Wool
|
Hand-Dyed Wool
|
Our Yarn |
|
1-2 years, 310 yards
|
$7.98
|
$13.16
|
$38.00
|
$25.00
|
$87.00
|
$17.98 |
|
S/M, 1000 yards
|
$19.95
|
$42.77
|
$95.00
|
$62.50
|
$232.00
|
$35.96 |
|
XL, 1500 yards
|
$31.92
|
$62.51
|
$133.00
|
$87.50
|
$348.00
|
$53.94 |
|
6XL, 2100 yards
|
$43.89
|
$85.54
|
$190.00
|
$125.00
|
$493.00
|
$71.92 |
I used the regular price listed even if a yarn might have been on sale to keep it equal, and I rounded up to the quantity needed to the next full skein since stores don't sell partial skeins.
As you can see, making an adult-sized wool sweater gets expensive quickly. And that's just the yarn; that doesn't account for the hours of work that go into the actual knitting. I did pick yarns that are 100% wool. It is possible to buy wool blend yarns that are a bit less expensive.
And wool blend is exactly what I carry in my shop. This is actually the standard type of yarn used for most projects in Finland. Check out Lankava's Lysti, Mainio, and Sulo which are only $8.99 for a 100 g skein.