Review: 3 Skeins or Less

I love knitting ebooks because they keep me from having quite so many books on my shelf, but I do tend to forget they exist, which is a shame when it comes to reviewing books, because I often miss ones I wish I’d looked at earlier.

So it is with 3 Skeins or Less by Tanis Gray. I’m glad I’ve given it a look now. It’s full of accessories that use a relatively small amount of yarn, from a bunch of great designers so there’s a lot of variety to be found.

There’s an entrelac lace stole designed by Heather Zoppetti, mitts with a ton of Latvian braiding by Ann Weaver, a mesh-stitch mobeius cowl from Åsa Tricosa, a buttoned cowl bedecked with stripes and an open dot pattern from Kirsten Kapur, even a lace camisole designed by Sauniell Connally.

Some of these skeins are obviously bigger than others, such that three can get you a top, a shrug or a shawl, but there are lots of little projects here, too, including hats, mitts and socks. Check out all the patterns on Ravelry. About half of the patterns are accessories like hats, mitts and socks, while the rest are larger projects.

If you’re the sort of person who buys yarn a skein to two (or three!) at a time without much of an idea of what you want to make with it, this book has a lot of lovely ideas to make for yourself or to knit as gifts.

If you’ve looked at this book or made any of the patterns from it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

About the book: 144 pages, paperback, 25 patterns. Published October 2014 by Interweave/F+W. Retail price $24.99.

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.

Have you read?