A more organized knitter

In the past week, I haven't been doing as much knitting as I normally do. I have the back of Arisaig completed, which I'll show in my next post, but I have kinda gotten on a little sewing kick. It all started when I read a post on Elliphantom.com that showed a lovely dpn case she had made. At the time, my needles and other notions lived in a mess in a basket that I had to dig through everytime I needed a tapestry needle or crochet hook or size 4 needles. You get the idea. So, this inspired me to do a little more Googling on needle cases. I'm not a good sewer, but the cases didn't look *too* hard. Straight lines to sew and straight lines to cut. I Googled away and found some helpful links for sewing your own needle case. I also found some cases other knitters had made, like Grumperina's and splityarn's. I also found The Organized Knitter with beautiful photos of cases.

So, I went to the fabric store and found some nice coordinating fabrics, got some ribbon and thread and got to work. My first case, which was for straight needles, was a disaster. I didn't even take a photo for you because I already cut away the fabric that could be re-used. I guess it was my learning experience. Basically, I sewed the front and inside flaps together first before sewing all the pockets for the needles. So when I made the pockets for the needles, the underside stitch (this probably has a technical name, but I'm not a real sewer to know) showed up on the outside fabric. So when it was rolled up, there were lines of stitches half-way up the roll. Gross. I thought the process through a little better and also rounded the corners so the edges were cleaner. Here are the finished products:

Straight needle case rolled up.

Unrolled. It holds all of my straight needles and even the big size 35s I bought for fun.

Circular needle case. This one folds in half twice like a book.

Circular needle case opened up. I kept these in their original cases, so I didn't have to measure to tell the 24" ones from the 29" ones!

dpn / crochet hook case. I still need to attach the ribbon and button....

dpn case opened up. I don't have a lot of dpn, but it holds crochet hooks, stitch holders and scissors.

I also made a straight needle case for my friend Jen (non-blogger) who knits. She's a big crochet person too, so I'm making a dpn like case for her crochet needles.

The last item on my to-sew list is a mini case for all those little notions, like the tapestry needles, cable needles, row counters, point protectors...have a great weekend!