That yarn I will not wear, but …
I’ve mentioned here before that I’m working for the past few years — slowly — on stash busting. Today I have more progress to update, with some of my brighter sock yarns that I decided I don’t want socks from because the colors are too bright, and I don’t want to make blankets from, including for my cats, for similar reasons. In recent years I like any new cat blankets to play nicely with other colors in my home, because cat blankets are part of the furnishings. Besides, I prefer thicker yarn for blanket knitting.
I have only a vague idea of what I was thinking when I purchased some of my stash yarns, many of them long ago. At one time I liked the idea of using some wild colors for socks, and I still have plans for one hot pink and black pair of slippers to wear at home, mainly for sentimental reasons. I’ve also sometimes bought yarn that looked a different color online than when it landed in my hands. But even personal tastes change over time, and I don’t need all these bright yarns, so I thought I might just donate them. That said, I do have this one use in mind: project bags.
That yellow…
One particular stash yarn I had difficulty finding uses for it is a brilliant neon yellow Knitpicks Stroll multi that I bought years ago, called City Lights (discontinued). It’s actually a popular color to wear right now, if some of the discount department stores are any indication, but it’s not a color I’d ever wear, and I swear it did not look that bright on Knitpicks’ website when I ordered it, and it doesn’t look that bright in interior lighting, which is what I used for the photos you see here. But outdoors, oh my, it’s rather blinding.
I avoid yellow, unless it’s a subtle, buttery autumn tone, and not much of that. I avoid wearing most brighter or flower-colored clothes at home, because bees. We have a lot of bees in the semi-rural, semi-agricultural place where I live, which is good, and while bees don’t normally alarm me, if I wear a flower color and they start paying excessive attention to me because of it, well, nope! So most of my around-home clothes are more neutral, muted, or non-flowery colors. That said, I do love me some brighter colors sometimes, for certain purposes. I get hungry for, or crave, certain colors now and then. I like to have certain purples, teals, many different greens, pinks, oranges, and reds in my wardrobe at all times, in limited amounts. There is a particular shade of fuchsia that I adore but have yet to find a way to wear. Someday … But I don’t wear most purples, pinks, and reds outdoors that much, around my bee neighbors. Most days it’s black or navy bottoms, and some muted or earthy shade of top.
This yellow multi is one of those yarns that I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. I bought three balls of it, rather than just one as I did the others, I don’t remember why. But it was being discontinued, and I must have had a particular use in mind. It looks more orange-yellow in photos (including those I’ll share here) when in fact it’s an almost greenish, fluorescent lemon yellow in sunlight, with runs of gray and gold-brown. It’s also one of those multi colorways that pool oddly in stitch count multiples of about 30 on a US 1 (2.25 mm) needle, which makes them unsuitable for socks, even if you want that bright color, unless you don’t mind the pooling either.
But I decided a while back that it looks okay indoors if used with other colors, and if I made it up into mitered squares, which would defeat the pooling. That was my first planned version of the bag, but it was a bit too fiddly a project, with the small squares I planned, and color changes (and decisions) came too quickly. I wanted something I could just sit and knit on for a while, stress-free, while watching a movie. My evening, movie-watching knitting needs to be fairly mindless.
Why project bags?
I don’t have the same objections to using less wearable colors for project bags, mainly because a project bag is out of sight until I use it, and I don’t mind if it’s brighter than what I wear or want to live with daily, in fact there’s a benefit to it being different, in that when I put it down somewhere in the house, it’s easy to spot where I left it. And sometimes you just want something cheerful, even though you wouldn’t wear it.
I can’t leave my project bags lying around for long unsecured, because I have one indoor cat who loves to eat yarn, and another who loves plastic, which includes knitting needle cables or plastic bags yarn might be kept in. And my plastic-eater cat is bold enough to stick his nose right into a project bag if he can, so all project bags need to be fairly secure, with a zipper or drawstring that he can’t easily open.
Why knitted bags?
Would it be faster to just sew them up with fabric on a sewing machine? Yes, of course, and I’ve been wanting to sew a few project bags from my fabric stash, along the lines of Erica Arndt’s drawstring bags (see video below). I still plan to, once I get my sewing space situated. But I’m having fun with this, and these days I prefer knitting to sewing, so I don’t mind the time involved, because I love knitting, and I can do it anywhere.
I don’t currently have a comfortable, reasonably situated and well-lit place in my house to use my sewing machine. So I’m avoiding using it at the moment, and I may even do these bag linings by hand. The better sewing workstation is a future project, one of those things I’ll get to when I can. For now, I need knitting as a part of my life, because it relaxes me. So does a little hand sewing now and then, so I’m good.
Log Cabin
About the time I realized mitered squares weren’t doing it for me, I came across a Very Pink Knits video in which Stacy Perry demonstrates her Log Cabin Scrap Blanket (the Ravelry page for this free pattern is here), and I decided to knit this yellow yarn, along with other colors of Stroll from my stash, into Log Cabin squares to make into a bag.
It turns out I really like it worked up this way, with blues and greens, and after the first few smaller strips, each one is maybe a half-hour to an hour’s work of relaxed knitting (again, I’m a slow knitter), so it moved along nicely. For a while I did one strip a night. The yellow turns out to be a bit of a novelty, on this project, where now and then there’s a multiple of 30 stitches and it does its pooling thing. But not always.
My process and modifications
Slow knitter that I am, with limited knitting time, and using a small needle, a US 1 (2.25 mm) and garter stitch, it’s taken me a few weeks. I had to take some breaks from the one process it entails of picking up a lot of stitches, which was doing a number on my arthritis in my shoulders. I adjusted the process to make it easier to do, by binding off the squares loosely, with a larger size needle, a US 2 (2.75 mm), and that eases the picking up process quite a lot. Now I have two approximately 11 x 11 inch squares that I’m about to start assembling into a bag outer, which will be lined with fabric to make it practical as a knitting bag, with maybe some inner pockets added, and then closed with drawstring cords, probably i-cord thick enough to not appeal to a string-eating cat.
I’m at the point of knitting the squares into an outer bag. The small gauge of the knitting makes a fabric thin enough to be comfortable for a project bag, which I wouldn’t want too thick. The woven lining will keep it from stretching too much, and needle points from sticking through. This first one looks summery, in yellow with greens and blues, and I have some stash fabric with a watermelon pattern that I might use to line it.
To complete the bag, first I’ve picked up stitches around 3 sides of a square, and I’ll knit that the same width as a strip, 20 rows or 10 garter ridges. Once both sides are done this way, with them still on the needles, I’ll join them with a 3-needle bind-off on the inside. Then I’ll add a drawstring casing at the top of the bag. I’ll line only the bag itself, below that casing, with woven cotton fabric from my stash. I may add some inner pockets to the lining before I sew it to the bag.
Another stash, of squares
In the mean time I searched further through my stash and found some already knitted squares I’d made following stitch patterns in Barbara G. Walker’s Learn to Knit Afghan Book, out of lightweight acrylic baby yarns in various colors. I chose some solid color patterns, and some mosaic patterns. I made those squares years ago, just to have something on hand to put together for a baby gift if needed, but I don’t know anyone who is in that stage of life right now, and I no longer work in an office where there are baby showers from time to time, so I don’t need a baby gift on hand, haven’t in a while.
I’m going to assemble those squares into another bag. There are 12 squares, each about 6 x 6 inches, so that will make a nice sized project bag. Then I’m going to use up some other bright sock yarns colors the same way I’m making the first Log Cabin one. I’ve been wanting more project bags for a while now. This should provide me at least three, one sized for a large project, and maybe more when I’m done. I hope to finish them this summer.
Regrets?
Will I regret the bright colors, when using the bag? Well, I’m not someone who knits much away from home, or even outdoors, and I like cheery colors, so these bags and the colors will work great for me for project bags. Another knitter might want something entirely different for more public or outdoor knitting. I would too. But for indoor knitting I think I’ll love these. I’m only slightly more of a process than a product knitter, so both sides of me are happy taking the time to knit a couple of bags. I’m even having fun with the current planning of construction and assembly, and I like the slow nature of the project.
More summer knitting
I may try to get some socks back on my needles soon, because socks are my favorite portable hot-weather knitting, and I fell in love with one of the blues I included in these squares, which I have enough of for socks. I love socks for summer knitting, and I don’t mind that I have to wait until cool weather to wear them. We’ve had an unusually cool spring here, though, and I’ve been wearing my handknit wool socks a lot this spring. I even have some on now, in the first week of June, which is a bit of a shock. But the sweater projects, and any blankets may be on hold until the autumn. We’ll see.