Knitter Stitching a Line to the Sea

Bellingham knitter and artist Christen Mattix says the idea to knit a stream to the sea came to her years ago and she toyed with it for a couple of years before it began to form in reality. She would sit on a bench with a view of the sea six blocks away, and since 2012 she’s been sitting on that same bench daily for at least an hour during her knitting season, which runs from May through November.

The strand runs across a street, so it’s length is hard to judge because it gets stretched and twisted by passing cars. It’s worked in a dark blue acrylic yarn that stands up to the wear and tear and is just the same color as the sea on its best days, Mattix says.

She says the project has brought her out of her shell because she talks to people about it as they see her knitting. It has also taught her patience and the fact that things take the amount of time they take. She says she’d like to make it all the way to the sea in another season, but it’s as much about the “process and poetry of it” as anything else.

What do you think about this project? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[Photo via Whatcom Talk.]

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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