Treat Yourself to a New Bag in the New Year

I have a lot of bags, and a good number of knitting bags, but it seems like I’m always throwing my knitting into any old shopping bag that is handy when I leave the house.

But when the thing inside is so nice, shouldn’t it be carried in a nice bag, too?

Maybe we should all resolve to use real knitting bags when we carry our projects, to give them the respect they deserve.

I was recently sent a Knit Hobo Bag from Great Useful Stuff, and its a nice basic starter bag if you’re looking for something to try. It looks like a mom purse, and is big enough to hold your project if it’s not too big and all your other stuff, too.

It has a large interior and an outside pocket that has a sort of rubbery mesh panel that’s intended to help keep your yarn from getting tangled if you knit with your ball in the bag.

There’s a small interior pocket with a zipper for holding your phone and keys, or knitting tools if it’s a knitting-exclusive bag. It has a single short strap and a removable, adjustable shoulder strap so you can carry it however you like. The full dimensions are 13.5″ x 12″ x 3.75″ (main body). The fastened handle has a 7″ drop, and the removable and adjustable shoulder strap drops up to 21″.

I love the little yarn cutter charm that’s attached to the loop that holds the straps but is also removable so you can add it to your keychain or wherever else you’d like to keep it handy.

The Knit Hobo bag retails for $20 and is a good investment in keeping your knitting in good order in the new year. Thanks to Great Useful Stuff for sending a bag for review.

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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