And, while we're "counting the cost..."

Here's another post about hand knitting that just militates for the use of knitting machines if you're trying to charge for your knitting!

http://yarnfloozies.blogspot.com/2013/01/knitting-time-calculator.html

I have always shied away from knitting to order.  The deadlines freak me out; things always take far longer than I anticipate, and lots of things can happen to make the customer less than satisfied. 

But look at these numbers of hours!  I used to figure 40 hours for a hand knit sweater, a fairly plain one in a fairly bulky yarn.  Of course a more detailed sweater, or one in a thinner yarn, is going to take 100 hours to hand knit.  75 hours is a reasonable number for a lace shawl. 

I can knock out a very pretty lace shawl on a Saturday on my knitting machine.  I can do a complicated sweater in a weekend.  If I don't have all weekend, it might take a week of puttering in my evenings.  When I was hand knitting more, I figured a full month for a sweater, and that's serious knitting every day. 

What's more, machine knitting is easier for accurate fitting and predictable results, since we have charting devices and we can whip out big swatches to double- and triple-check our gauge, the look of our yarn, how it launders, and any other issue that we might need to solve.