Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Making it Portable

She obtains wool and flax and makes cloth with skillful hands.
Proverbs 31:13
Church Ladies appreciate those quiet evenings at home, quietly doing needlework while someone else reads aloud from an edifying book. (The fireplace is lit, I have a hot cup of mint tea, a cozy chair ... sigh!) The reality, however, is I'm more often doing my needlework on the go while riding in a car, waiting for appointments, or for a child's activity to get done, even while sitting in a meeting. I always have at least one project in process that can be classified as "portable" and few things are more frustrating than facing a long car ride with nothing to do because I've dropped a stitch and can't maneuver everything back into place with the stuff I have in my glove compartment, and why can't I find that paper clip I know I saw on the back seat floor last week? But I digress.

I've found the following to be useful for yarn projects and it all snaps securely into an eyeglass case. The case easily lives in a project bag and doesn't snag yarn because the edges are all rounded.
  • retractable tape measure (88 cents at Wal-Mart)
  • folding scissors (also 88 cents at Wal-Mart)
  • a small pencil or pen (I'm always making notes on my patterns)
  • stitch markers
  • row counter
  • crochet hook (for picking up dropped stitches, etc.)
  • paper clip (to mark my place in a pattern sheet)
  • needle and safety pins (poked through a ribbon to keep them together)

2 comments:

Lucy said...

Another thing I do to expedite portable projects is keep each project, its needle(s), and its pattern in their own bag (either a freezer bag or the zippered ones sheets come in)within my larger knitting bag, so I can easily grab it on the way out the door.

Thérèse said...

Also in my kit: a bobby pin or two to use as a small stitch holder, and a hairpin (the more U-shaped kind) to use as a cable needle.