Knit a Simple Pocket Scarf on a Circular Knitting Machine

As much as I love knitting by hand, and it will always by my favorite way to use yarn, sometimes it is fun to do something different. I have gotten into crochet more in the past couple of years, and also using circular knitting machines.

These machines are great for making quick work of big projects. I actually love doing scarves on them because you get a scarf that’s double thick, and you can keep it as a scarf or easily turn it into a loop, and it’s 100 times faster than knitting the same project by hand. This is my current favorite charity knitting project: using stash yarn and leftovers to make scarves to donate.

It might seem like this kind of project would get boring, but it hasn’t yet, because every scarf is a little different. I recently decided to change it up (and use even more yarn, which is pretty much always a goal of mine) by making a machine knit pocket scarf.

This project was made with yarn left over from a baby blanket, and while I still didn’t quite use all of it I made a nice dent in my stash. It’s worked in three colors, though you can use as many or as few as you like.

Finish off the edges then fold up the ends to make pockets as deep as you like. Mine are deep. Holding a phone would be no problem. I think holding a paperback book would be no problem, though I haven’t tried it yet!

Don’t have a circular knitting machine? No problem! Just make a long tube of knitting by hand and you can do exactly the same thing.

Get all the details on this one over at my blog, Our Daily Craft.

Do you use a circular knitting machine? I’d love to know what kinds of projects you make and what you’d like to learn about them!

[Photo: Our Daily Craft]

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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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