"KNITTING FACTORY
Grey's star Katherine Heigl takes a break from shooting to hit a local knitting store in Santa Monica, CA. --Us magazine
For more insights about frugal crafts and kids, check out this post from the latest Festival of Frugality. It's a very thoughtful piece about how a father spends time with kids in a craft shop. He offers a very frugal & meaningful family activity. Also from FOF, I enjoyed this piece about 10 Smart Ways To Save Money On Your Hobbies. This post has practical and thoughtful suggestions for financing pleasures. Thanks to both authors for contributing to the Festival of Frugality, which has about 30 great posts on different topics.
The benefits of relaxation and down time are immense. And hobbies are good for businesses and careers. For instance, I work smarter when I take time out.
"Too little downtime may have life or-death consequences: A nine-year study of 12,338 men ages 35 to 57, all free of heart disease showed that those who took the most vacations were 29 percent less likely to be diagnosed later with heart disease -- and 17 percent less likely to die of it -- than those who skipped vacations."
--Make Time for Yourself by Dianne Hales, Parade magazine.
How important are hobbies to our long-term physical and fiscal health? Very. A friend of mine recovered from a personal tragedy with the help of knitting. She stitched her life together during the meditative silence of knitting. After enrolling in a knitting class, she made a woman's suit (looked like Chanel), children's clothes, sweaters and other garments. My friend now teaches small community classes on knitting.
My personal list of frugal hobbies includes:
- writing
- reading
- baking
- gardening.
I dabble in my little porch garden, but my sister in Orlando is the real gardener. She produces organic collard greens, peppers, tomatoes and other yummy vegetables. She grows enough to present neighbors, friends and family with gifts of plants and produce. The roots in her garden have a great home.
5 comments:
As an avid knitter I laughed a bit when you listed it as a frugal hobby. In most instances it is significantly less expensive for me to buy a knit sweater than to make it myself.
The therapeutic benefits are high, and well worth it to me, but yarn for clothing is anything but inexpensive.
LOL
Thanks for your comment!I appreciate the info.
Is it possible to get a good deal on yarn on eBay?
I will chat with my friend, the knitter and ask how she contains cost.
Great comment!
Ebay does make things more affordable, as do several online yarn stores. The price of the yarn will still, usually, surpass the purchase price of a sweater. Most knitters will say the satisfaction of completing a sweater is well worth the price.
Sharon, I've been known to buy up old hand-knit sweaters at the thrift store and ravel them out, wash the yarn, and use it to knit something new - not a sweater, except maybe for one of the dogs, but for craft knitting, pillow covers, afghans, that sort of thing.
How's that for so-frugal-it-squeaks?
:-) Jen
"Is it possible to get a good deal on yarn on eBay?"
Hi Sharon,
Not so sure that eBay would be a good idea for yarn. You want to make sure that all the yarn you get for a project is from the same dye lot. Plus, the yarn could come from the house of a smoker or someone with mildew (and smell really bad). You're better off going to a store.
You can get inexpensive acrylic yarn at hobby shops like AC Moore (for like $1.49 a skein). But natural fiber yarns cost upwards of $20-30 a skein.
Debbie
(non-knitter, from knitting family)
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