Morning!
It’s a glorious day!
I’m getting ready for my knitting machine to get here. Usually, I crochet my items. I did begin by learning how to knit years ago, but then I began crocheting all the time after becoming a mom. It’s difficult to find time even to crochet around a child, but it’s a little easier than knitting with a child.
However, crocheting machines aren’t a thing at this moment in time. But knitting machines are. And they’re fast!
I have an order for 20 pokeballs, but instead of crocheting the main ball, I’m going to zip them out on my knitting machine. I can’t use the machine to make the details though, so I spent much of today just making pokeball details to sew on when my machine comes in the mail.
I think this is a great use of my time instead of crocheting big balls when I can make them so much faster with machinery.
I’m excited to do this same thing with some gigantic amigarumi plushies. Before getting married and having children, I really enjoyed making life-sized amigarumi. I made a 2-foot tall minion toy for my nephew, and I made a dragon with a 5-foot wingspan. That dragon has so many details (because it’s epic) that it took 3 months to complete. However, much of that time was spent on the dragon body, and the same thing goes for the minion. Large amigarumi bodies are huge and plain. Now that I have a family to take care of, the idea of spending months on a single project is crazy to me. Especially if I hope to sell those amigarumi. Once I get the knitting machine, I’ll be able to bust out those huge bodies in a day or two. And the details, even if there are a lot, might take me a few more days. Even a really intense project will be able to be accomplished in a week.
With that length of project time, I could actually bring in a significant amount of income from this. Even if I charged $300 for something like that dragon, making it in 3 months would only give me $100/mo. And that’s nothing. But by being able to make 4 dragons/something similar in a month would make over $1000. And that’s a number I can live with.
And also, when I see a cute knitted holiday hat on Pinterest the night before a party. I could actually make myself one. But hand-knitting/crocheting wouldn’t allow me to do that. With a machine, I could make a hat just for fun in a hour or less. Without a machine, the same hat would take all day to make.
I don’t know why I didn’t decide to invest in a knitting machine earlier. I think I was just fight against it. Honestly, the sale of a single project would pay for the machine.
I haven’t even gotten this machine yet, and I already feel as that this is such a great idea. I wish I’d thought of this sooner.
Frugal Treehugger 