Have What it Takes to Be a Knitting Superstar?

Have you heard about the Fiber Factor yet? It’s a knitwear design competition that will pit 12 designers against each other in six challenges spanning in length from two to five weeks. Finalists will take part in a seventh challenge that will last several months, all leading up to the grand prize, which is a five-day fiber lover’s trip to Germany. (Winners of individual challenges will get $500.)

This sounds like an incredible experience for someone with a lot of creativity and stamina (I’d love to do it but honestly I have enough work right now, which is a nice problem to have). If you’re up for the challenge you can apply now through March 24. Participants must be American (because the sponsor of the contest, skacel, will be sending yarn and people have to ship their finished projects back) and at least 21 years old. You also need to be comfortable taking video of yourself and talking about your design process.

The application process is lengthy and includes filling out a form, sending in photos of yourself and your original designs, and shooting a video about your background and why you want to take part in the contest.

It sounds like a lot of work but also a lot of fun. Would you try out for a challenge like this? Are you applying? I’d love to hear about it!

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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