I recently discovered an inspiring knitting-related blog and handmade shop called Small Things, written by Ginny. I’m new to the party, I know, but I hopped onto Small Things yesterday and found her post on her Yarn Along initiative, which seems to be quite a thing that I’ve been oblivious to. Knitters and crocheters share what they’re knitting and what they’re reading. So often a knitting fan is also a reading fan, don’t you find? It’s a shame the two hobbies are hard to do simultaneously! Well, I find it hard to do both at the same time. Does anyone out there read and knit together happily?

What I’m Knitting

So here’s my contribution. At the moment knitting-wise, I’m working my way through an edging stitch dictionary called Knitting on the Edge by Nicky Epstein, swatching whatever stitch takes my fancy. I’m finding the book quite delicious – I want to try them all! Actually I’m planning to do a book review for you of this book once I’ve explored it some more, so be on the lookout for that. The edging I’m working on right now is called Blooming Flower which creates cute, large flowers using bobbles as petals.

What I’m Reading

 

My evening read at the moment is called The Happiness Trap Pocketbook by Dr Russ Harris and Bev Aisbett. It is also marketed as The Illustrated Happiness Trap, and you can get a copy here. This book and the therapy approach underlying it is big Big BIG in psychologist land (for those of you who are new here, I’m a psychologist taking some time out to be a stay-at-home mum), and is pretty popular for the general public too. Very briefly, the principle behind it is that instead of doing what we always get told, to “be happy”, and to “think positive”, we can learn to accept negative emotions and thoughts and not spend all our energy trying to suppress them, and in doing so have the time and energy to do what we value. The Happiness Trap Pocketbook summarises the principles behind the theory using easy-to-read comic strips. It’s a companion to a book called The Happiness Trap (which I also own) which is similar but with more detail and no pictures. Both books are worth a read, whether you’re feeling good or not. There are some useful skills in there that more people could benefit from knowing.

 

Please join in Ginny’s Yarn Along! Check it out here. It looks like fun and I’m going to try to do it every month.

 

Peace,

Kat

Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means I will receive a commission if you click on the affiliate link and purchase the item.

Before you read the title of this post and judge me as a person who has it all together and can teach you disorganised people how it’s done, let me make things clear: I’m not that organised, and nothing highlights how much of an adulting amateur you are when you become a parent. I mean, I’ll sometimes leave my own clothes on the floor, and now I have to teach someone else to put their clothes away neatly! It’s hard.  However, I’m not totally hopeless, and one thing I do keep sufficiently organised is my knitting needles (straight, circular, and double-pointed) and crochet hooks. My system is not demanding at all, and yet it works. I’ve been organising my needles like this for nearly five years and it hasn’t failed me yet. Here’s how I do it.

 

My Low-Effort Needle Organising System

I have four cardboard tubes where I keep my needles. They’re travel tissue boxes with beautiful designs on them. You could use Pringles tubes covered in nice wrapping paper or scrapbooking paper, or anything that’s roughly the diameter and height of a standard drinking glass (if you’re putting crochet hooks in there, make sure the tubes aren’t too tall to reach in and pick up a hook. Cut down the tubes if they are too big). The tissue boxes I used were called Kleenex Tubes and I’m not sure if they’re still available, but these tissue boxes are very similar in dimension and look like they have beautiful designs. Remember you can always cover them if you don’t like the design on the tubes you’ve chosen.

The Particulars

They are organised by size, but maybe not how you’d expect. That is, they’re not organised in small, medium, large, giant, or something like that.

Instead, I have one tube which contains needles whose size (in mm) ends in 0, for example 3.0mm, 4.0mm, etc. I have one tube for needle sizes ending in 0.25, one for those ending in 0.5, and one for those ending in 0.75. Each tube is labelled (simply with a marker or a basic label, but you could make a pretty label if you like), and needles are simply popped in there.

 

Why Organise Needles This Way?

It’s actually really easy to find the needles you’re looking for when they’re organised this way, simply by eyeballing them. Why? Because all the needles which are lumped in together are noticeably different in size. Say you have your .0mm tube, and you’re looking for a 3mm needle. The closest size to 3mm in the same tube is going to be a full mm or more different in size, so it’s easy to pick out the right size. I don’t know about you, but my needle collection includes quite a lot of needles which don’t have any indication of what size they are, so organising my needles in this way helps for quick identification. I’ll usually verify quickly with my gauge if I need to. If you’re interested, the gauge I use is Birch brand and available at Spotlight stores in Australia. This one made by Ladaidra is not the gauge I use but it is very similar.

Had you instead organised your needles by putting similar-sized needles in the same container, it’d be hard to tell apart the sizes just by looking at them. That would lead you to use your needle gauge excessively as you try to find exactly the size you need.

 

But What About Crochet Hooks, Double-Pointed Needles, and Circular Needles?

Well, just chuck them all in the tubes with your straight needles. Secure your sets of dpns with a rubber band to keep them together. Stick your circular needles in point-first with the nylon string hanging over the edge or tucked neatly into the tube. Or keep circulars in the little plastic sleeves they came in if you feel like it. I used to keep my circular needles in a pocket-book-sized expanding file, but I found the tubes to be better for them. This way they’re more easily accessible and they’re still sufficiently organised.

So there you go: my lazy organiser’s needle organising system. Not too fancy, not too picky, but organised enough to make my life a little more efficient. What do you think? Do you organise your knitting needles differently?

One thing I haven’t mastered (like, at all), is how to organise my yarn! How do you do it in a way that works? By weight? Colour? Material? I would love to know how others organise their yarn so that I can try out something that will work for my not-too-organised self. Leave me a comment!

 

Peace,

Kat

Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means I will receive a commission if you click on the affiliate link and purchase the item.

 

Hello Friends,

Welcome to Knitkatpaddywhack! Let me tell you a little bit about it, and about myself. This is sort of a new blog, but also, my posts go back as far as 2011! Knitkatpaddywhack is the second generation of my first blog, which was called The Knitted Kitten, and my old posts from The Knitted Kitten have migrated with me to Knitkatpaddywhack.

 

What This Blog is About

This blog is a place for me to share knitting information, techniques, tutorials, and patterns, with all of you. There are also the odd posts about spinning (like this one and this one), crochet, and other yarn crafts (like dyeing yarn). And there are a few posts (like this one from Paris and this one from England) about when I travelled around Europe chancing upon knitting stuff everywhere, and miscellany like that. I actually have another post which you can read here which outlines in more detail what you can expect from Knitkatpaddywhack.

I want to start a conversation with you about knitting and other fibre arts. Fibre artists could easily become a dying breed, lost in a techy world. Yet, there is vibrancy in the handcrafts, and I want in. Do you? Well actually, I am in, and have been since 2010 when I picked up a few how-to-knit books from my local library. My needles have scarcely stopped moving since, and now I design patterns too and would be honoured to have others knit and enjoy them. Please check out a few of my patterns which I posted previously, like the Angelfish Beanie, the Lily Earflap Hat, and the Knitted Sphere Tutorial. I have many more waiting in the wings to be edited and published for you to enjoy.

Please also join me on Ravelry, Pinterest, and Facebook.

What would you like to see on this blog? Let me know in the comments below!

That’s all from me. Peace,

Kat

Hej,
Just quickly, I wanted to share a picture of a dress I recently finished for my baby niece. The pattern I used was this one, and I’m super pleased with how it turned out. As I write this, my niece is just under two months old, but the dress will be her first Birthday present from me. I’ll hopefully be able to present it to her personally. If you’re playing at home, the mummy of this baby is my sister, whom I have done some collaborative projects with and whom I mentioned in a recent post because she has her own blog. I have another niece, and also a nephew, whom I’ve mentioned on this blog too. They are equally as excellent as their little cousin.

Kat

Hello,
I’ve finished the first semester of my Masters and have spent the last couple of weeks doing very little psychologing (technical term), back home in South Australia. Apart from epic DVD marathons and epic naps, I’ve been doing lots of spinning. This is great because I don’t have any of my spinning gear in Hobart and I have HEAPS of fibre to spin and spinning is just awesome. And, it’s time consuming so it takes a long time to get very far with it, so it’s good I got plenty done. The most wicked and awesome bit of spinning I did was finishing spinning the yarn from my rabbit, Coal.

We’ve had Coal for about six years I’d reckon, and he was an adult when we got him, which means he is getting on in years. I love him. He’s one of the friendliest rabbits I’ve ever met and he’s also extremely cute. Here he is on a hot day when we put his hutch inside:

Also, funny story about that hutch. It broke (he has a bigger one now) and he was hopping around, and my Mum, Dad and brother (who is afraid of rabbits. He does have a good reason for it though, trust me) were all running around trying to get him out of some bushes. I came up and was like, “hey, what’s going on?” and they were like “the rabbit got out”, and then Coal hopped out of a bush and came up to us like “hey, you guys here to give me a carrot or something?”. Ok, maybe you had to be there. Point is, he’s cute.

Coal grows a thick Winter coat every year, which he for some reason sheds towards the end of Summer, leaving him with a pretty short coat in Autumn. Now that we’re a third of the way into Winter, his coat is recognisably thick again. Anyway, for the past two years (although not as conscientiously in the second year), I’ve been collecting his Winter coat as he shed it in order to turn it into yarn. As you can see, he doesn’t have very long fur. At first I tried carding the fibre, but it was too wispy. It wasn’t matted and barely contained any vegetable matter, so I just spun it with high twist, with a worsted draw, without any fibre preparation. After spinning it and setting the twist, I knitted the yarn into…a rabbit! Now I have a meta-rabbit or a double-rabbit, whichever you prefer. It is made from a knitted square from this tutorial. It was so easy! It’d be a good first pattern for a young knitter. Although when I was sewing it up, the rabbit yarn did snap every now and then, but it was all good. After I had knitted the initial square and tail (using my sphere formula), I fulled/felted the pieces a little, because, even after setting the twist in the yarn (which felts it somewhat), it still shed a bit. Overall, I am extremely happy with the meta-rabbit. Although it’ll never replace the one and only Coal, it is nice to know I’ll have something special to remember him by when he leaves us. Here is my handsome bunny rabbit with his meta-rabbit:

As you can see, the meta-rabbit is significantly lighter than Coal. This is because Coal is a smoke, meaning his fur is dark on the outside but closer to the skin it is grey. Our cats are the same. I believe the term for an animal with the same colour fur down to the skin is “self-coloured”.

When I’ve told people about the meta-rabbit, I’ve had reactions ranging from “cool!” to a bit of shock and weirdness combined with “cool!”. I totally get the weirdness of spinning your pet’s fur into a smaller version of your pet. It’s less weird than this, though. Also, a fibre-producing animal is a fibre-producing animal, whether you consider him family or not. Sometimes I think people forget that wool comes from sheep. My loved ones should remember this mini-rant when I attempt to spin human hair. It’ll probably happen eventually.

Peace,

The Knitted Kitten