New Knitting Calculator - How Long Will This Take To Knit?

Wow! I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted here. Life has become pretty interesting and much more time consuming lately, plus i did some pattern testing so the few things I've sewn I am not able to show yet. In the meantime while I work on pieces to show here, I have a neat little tool to help us get a jump on our Christmas gift making (also how on earth is it already time to be talking about Christmas?!)

The folks over at Love Knitting have created a fun website to help in our planning. It's a Knitting Calculator designed to estimate how long it will take you to make what you want to. Neat, right? Go here to try it out for yourself, or read through this post to learn how it works.

The nice thing about this calculator is that it is adjustable depending not only on the type of project you want to make (meaning a hat, blanket, sweater, etc) but also your personal level of knitting ability. You choose if you are an eager beginner, a pretty knifty knitter, or a knitting whizz first, then you input how many hours per week you will be able to knit, then you choose the type of project. The site suggests their own free patterns, but most projects in each category will be similar in how long they take so it will give you a good idea even if you choose a different pattern.

Once you click that project, the site will pop up a conclusion for you :) For example, I said I was a "Pretty knifty knitter" (I consider myself intermediate) and said I had 3 hours a week to make a pair of booties and the site told me it would take just over 1 week to make the pair. That really does sound about right :) I love the added fun of it taking 100 listens of Abba's Waterloo on repeat, lol.

So while this is a simple idea, it really can come in handy for making gifts in particular. For the past several years, I've made at least 80% off my family's Christmas gifts. It's not very hard if you're making things for, say, you mom, dad, and brother. But I have my parents, my 4 siblings, their 3 spouses, my nephew, my in-laws, my husband, and then whoever else I want to make something for every single year. That adds up to a ton of knitting and sewing time and it can be hard to plan out when to start to avoid making myself crazy. With this calculator, I can just plug in what I want to make and get a quick idea of how long it will take, and if I do that with all my items I can set up a workable plan that will prevent me from stitching into the wee hours of Christmas Eve.

Anyway, I thought this was a useful site that others could benefit from, so I hope you are able to use it for this year's planning. Head over here to try this out for yourself, and may none of us have to give IOUs this year!

*I was asked by LoveKnitting to post about this calculator, but I was not compensated or obligated in anyway for this post. These are my own opinions about a tool that I plan to use myself.