Brooklyn Tweed, in Portland

Jared Flood announced on his blog that, after 10 years in New York City — and four and a half years producing yarn — Brooklyn Tweed (Jared and the company) is moving back to the Pacific Northwest. He wrote:

Calling the NYC area home for BT’s first four years has brought unique joys and challenges. Living and working in the concrete jungle has been an inspiration on so many levels, and it’s taught us how to survive and thrive in a city where most would say nothing comes easy. As my vision for Brooklyn Tweed has come into crisper focus this year, I’ve continued to examine the question of whether our current East Coast home is still the best place for us to do what we do, in the best way we are able; and I’ve decided the time has come to embark on a new adventure once again.

He says the change in scenery will be good for the company as they become inspired by the new sights and different creative vibe in Portland.

The post is great for its thoughts on creative entrepreneurship and taking chances, and we wish Jared and the whole team the best with the move and whatever is next for Brooklyn Tweed. In the meantime, if you’re in Portland, the company will be hiring when it gets there.

{Photo via Brooklyn Tweed.}

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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