My Knitting Bag

I'm struggling with sewing the eyes on my Penguin Quilt. I probably should have chose something easier to try applique with than little circles the size of buttons. (Once again I'm questioning my decision to put 52 fish on this quilt instead of just doing 13 big ones.) Since there's nothing new to show you with that quilt I've decided to show you my new knitting bag.

One of my co-workers was throwing a Thirty-One party and I got this nice tote bag. (It doesn't show up very well but the middle panel says "Got Yarn?") I love all of the pockets on this bag. The back has three more pockets and there are two mesh pockets on the side. It's so nice to have all of my stitch markers, tape measures, scissors, etc. in the outside pockets rather than buried at the bottom of my bag.

They also carried this set of drawstring bags. The fabric is a little flimsy so I'm a slightly worried about my DPNs poking holes, but I figured they'd be a good way to try using project bags and see if I liked it. I'm really enjoying having things contained inside of the bag. It's also really handy to just grab the big bag when I want to work on my sweater and not having to go digging through my whole knitting bag for the cable needle that slipped out again. 

I've gotten a lot of great comments on my green sweater, and wanted to talk about my chart keeper. I'm not sure I could do this sweater without it. (Probably I'd find a way because I really love the  look of cables, but I'm glad I don't have to.)

Knitting charts look complicated, but this keeper makes it easy to take things one line at a time. I prefer to put my magnet above the line I'm working on. For me it's much easier to see where I've been instead of where I'm going. (This pattern will occasionally switch when a stitch is knit or purled and it's nice to know if the pattern is making a change or if I'm reading further ahead in the line than I actually am.) 

One of the comments talked about the magnets getting moved which has happened when I close the chart. I have a row counter on my ipod (Knit Counter) that I'm using to keep track of where I am in the pattern. This pattern has increases for the sleeve at the logical increments of 6 and 13. Math has never been my strong suit and I didn't want to think about what the multiples of six and thirteen are. Knit Counter lets me have more than one counter going at once and I can even link counters so I only have to advance the row counter and the second counter that's keeping track of where I am in the increase sequence also moves forward. Since I have trouble remembering how many increases I've done I have a third counter doing that, and because three counters just isn't enough I've got a fourth counter keeping track of the number of times I've repeated the chart. (I tend to only have one project going at a time so I don't use this feature very often, but Knit Counter also lets you have multiple projects going at the same time, each with as many counters as you want.)

I've just re-read this post and it sounds like I should be making a ton of money with all of the advertising I'm doing. Sadly for my yarn budget that's not the case. I really love these products and are finding them very helpful in pursuing my love of knitting.