Tuesday, 17 February 2015

Knitting needle roll

I came close to tearing my hair out yesterday - trying to finish off a moon bear and a little mammoth - so although it's hardly great timing, right before a show, I thought I'd take a break today and do something different.

My great aunt's birthday is tomorrow, and I wondered if I could make her something.  We have been watching the Great British Sewing Bee and it's getting me all enthusiastic about sewing other things.  On top of that, part of my order from the Townrow carpet-and-curtains shop in Frinton arrived recently.  It's wonderful stuff - a really soft, worn, heavy cotton - and despite being only a metre in length, it's very very wide so it comes on rolls taller than me.  Hopefully one day soon it will be mammoths (a few mammoths anyway), but today I tested it on another project.

My great aunt is a mad keen knitter, so I thought I'd try this tutorial from the lovely Stitch Parade blog.  It turned out quite well!  My fabric is heavier than that recommended, so it's a little bulky at the bottom (aren't we all), and it has the same flaw as my last attempt at a needle roll (for another aunt) - see here.  Namely, the bit that flaps down over the top of the needles gets pushed sideways when you roll the whole thing up - and ends up looking a little untidy.

But it has all the bells and whistles, this design - space for ordinary needles, dpns and circular needles - and the fabric is perfect, so on the whole it works really well.  

And it's quite hefty when it's full.  If you get mugged, you could really belt someone with this :-).  And if that didn't work, you could unroll it, grab a needle and stab your attacker with it.  That's at least triple-purpose!





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