Yarn Along

Ezra has been cheerfully wearing the Sucky Thumb Mitts that Silas has long outgrown, prompting me to finally get a new pair on the needles for Silas. This time I'm using the Adorable Kids Fingerless Gloves pattern, modifying it as I go to make it more like Sucky Thumb.

I'm rereading The Goblet of Fire for maybe the second or third time, but since the version I'm reading on my Kindle has the original British text, it's a bit like reading for the first time. It's also entirely delightful.

A Flurry of FOs

Every morning heralds the approach of November with a grey, gloomy sky and a chill that keeps me huddled under the flannel sheets and extra quilt for as long as possible (not long with two small children clamoring for the day to start).

This is the weather to make things quickly.

Things like sheepy hats with high wool content and giant Baa-bles.

And wee baby mittens in delicious shades of autumn morning grey (though the pattern is called (delightfully) Bleak Midwinter).

And of course, little cowls that look like bandanas.  I used the same pattern and the same modifications as when I made this in red for Silas.

There have also been a couple of dishcloths.  With all this winter knitting I have made the executive decision to leap from the dishcloth bandwagon (unless Knit Picks puts out a pattern that I can't resist), so these may be the last couple this year.

Weeks Irrelevant

Pumpking Dishcloth by Teresa Gregorio
Knit Picks Cotlin DK, Clementine and Peapod

I'm a sucker for all things pumpkin. If it says pumpkin spice on it, you already have my money.

Campfire, by Marjorie Dussaud
Peaches & Creme, Rosemary

This was the first Dussaud dishcloth that I have enjoyed in a while. It was fast, fun, easy to memorize, and the drape is delicious.

I'd like to be the kind of person who makes my kids' Halloween costumes, but not yet.  I have always been the kind of person with really good luck at thrift stores, however.

Ezra is sporting a dragon coat and a sparkly jumpsuit found at the bargain shoppe.  Silas wore it for his two first Halloweens.

This year Silas is Thomas the Tank Engine, courtesy of Once Upon a Child.  This should fit him for many Halloweens if he's agreeable, because it's completely open-sided, which also means that he can wear it no matter the weather - even a bulky winter coat will fit under it without disrupting the effect of the costume.  This year wasn't too bad, he's just wearing his Thomas rain slicker (and his new rain boots, which he was one hundred times more excited about than the costume, and which he is still wearing).

Ryan reprised last year's cowboy costume.

Everything out of his own wardrobe, basically.  I'm a fan of men owning cowboy hats - it makes for very easy costumes for Pioneer Day when you're in school if you can just raid your dad's closet.

I should have gotten a picture of my entire outfit, but you'll get the gist.  I went for fall spirit/Mother Nature/wood Elf, etc.

Sparkly green dress courtesy of Goodwill, 2006.  Fall garland courtesy of Wal-Mart clearance sale, 2014.  I was going to wear this last year, but it turns out that dresses you could wear when you were 19 will not fit you when you are 9 months pregnant, no matter how forgiving you think that A-line is.

Here's a pic from 2013, the second time Silas wore the dragon costume, where you can see a bit more of the dress (generic princess that year):

Now just imagine it with 12 feet of fall foliage draped around it, and you'll get the idea.

YarnAlong: With Time Travel

Silas calls this book LlamaLlamaLlama!  We read it a lot.  It goes back to the library on Saturday, and I think it's going to end up under the Christmas tree this year.

I started another Cedar Shakes hat, this time for Ezra.  The Paton's Kroy is considerably thinner than the yarn that I used for Silas' hat, so even though I cast on for the same size (toddler), it's turning out rather smaller and with a slightly open fabric.  I'm debating whether or not to start over with smaller needles and working the child size instead.  The outcome might be the same.  Ezra at 10 months already has a head the circumference of the average child's, an issue we ran into with Silas as well.  There are some baby clothes that we literally cannot get over these babies' mammoth heads, and their little caps fit for about fifteen minutes.

Silas hat, made with a heavy fingering yarn that still had a substantial fabric on the 4's, still fits him two years later.

Assuming this kid IS actually the child in question.  Where did my little chubby-faced baby go?

Two years ago. Never mind where the cheeks went, where did the time go?

Loose ends

I've been in a finishing mood lately, though I would have thought I'd had enough of endings.  There's something to be said for closure, at any rate.

I finished the twined mittens I started back in February.  I need to take a better picture so I can upload it to the pattern page.  The technique was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it.

I made myself a hat:

It's the Star-Crossed Slouchy Beret that's so popular on Ravelry (13000+ projects - so viral I would have avoided it except I saw one in person and fell hard in love).  I had to make some mods to get it to fit my head, mostly just adding stitches and then adjusting for the increases and decreases so the cables still worked.  I love the colors in this yarn (Knit Picks Chroma in Hollyhock).  Purple and grey may be my new grey and pink.

I've also caught up on a few dishcloths.

Zig Zag dishcloth by Faith Schmidt

Simple Lines by Chelsea Berkompas

Orbital Dishcloth by Stacey Winklepleck

And my showstopper:

Petticoat Dishcloth, by Kendra Nitta

This dishcloth is just a little crazy.  You start at the outside edge and cast on 200+ stitches, knit a bit, and then on a separate needle cast on another ridiculous number of stitches and knit a bit and then join the two pieces together, cast on a third piece, knit, join, and finally knit down to the center.  Were I designing this I would have started from the center, worked out, and then picked up the stiches for the second and third ruffles so everything was worked in one piece, but perhaps that isn't as simple or neat as it sounds in my head.

The yarn is Cotlin DK.  I started this thing in April, all that ruffling in light yarn took this long to finally finish.  As long as it took, and as frustrating as it was to try and join so many stitches on a 16" cable without twisting, it was really a lot of fun to knit.  I can't even imagine using it as a dishcloth.  Right now it's sitting on my bathroom counter collecting bobby pins and hair-ties, kind of a fiber-happy take on the those catch-all bathroom trays that I've noticed we're selling in the Domestics dept. recently.

In other news, it's officially footie pajama weather.

Yarn Along

I haven't been reading much for myself lately; when I reach for my Kindle it's usually to play Candy Crush. My attention span when grieving is basically nonexistent. I still read to Silas, though.

Silas will have outgrown the last sweater I made him by this Christmas, so I've started a Sherwood for him. In fact, I've started it about six times now. The irregular rib and the odd charts threw me for several loops, and then I managed to twist the cast-on when I joined. Oy vey. The yarn (Plymouth Yarns Encore) is a wool/acrylic blend similar to Wool-Ease. The book is Harry the Dirty Dog. I wasn't familiar with it before Silas got it for Christmas, but my sister-in-law implied it was a favorite in my husband's family.

This post is linked up with Ginny Sheller's Yarn Along

Weekly (whatever) Dishcloth

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I am still managing to output some washcloths.  "Weekly" may be a gross misnomer at this point, but they are still trickling in.  It's just that I'm very slow to do things like weaving in ends, taking pictures, blogging . . .


Week 24
Square Check by Marjorie Dussaud
Peaches & Creme, Hippi

This was what I'm beginning to think of as a very typical Marjorie Dussaud dishcloth - disproportionate garter stitch edging around a needlessly complicated stitch pattern.  They're nice enough, but the repeats are often too large; I hate having to keep referring to the pattern to find my place.  A chart would be incredibly helpful.  I left off one repeat because I got bored of it, and 3x3 seemed like a nice route to go.  I made several mistakes while I was at it.

Week 25
Pinwheel Dishcloth by Allison Griffith
Sugar'n Cream, Red, Hot Green; Peaches & Creme, Ecru, Bright Blue, Bright Pink

This dishcloth was a lot of fun to knit, I loved the swinging rhythm of the short-rows and the resulting drape of the garter stitch.  I hated weaving in the ends.  So many ends.  I'd like to try this one again in a variegated yarn to see the effect (with fewer ends).

Week 26
Angkor Wat by Allyson Dykhuizen
Knit Picks Cotlin, Canary, Surf

This is a typical Allyson Dykhuizen dishcloth pattern; dk weight yarn, applied-icord edging, difficult-to-pronounce name derived from architecture that has nothing to do with the stitch pattern but leads to interesting Wikipedia searches.  I ditched the icord edging after several aborted attempts and went with a (poorly executed) single crochet border instead.  It was so much faster, if not quite as pretty.  I think the icord would have worked better if I had slipped the edge stitches to make them easier to pick up, though it's the first time I've ever seen directions for an icord edge that first required you to pick up stitches all the way around the border instead of picking them up as you go.  The end result is on the small side; I'm thinking it's going to be a baby washcloth instead of a dishcloth after all.

Not enough time in the day

Drive-by Yarn Along post . . .

Good news: finally got around to starting the Star-Crossed Slouchy Hat that I have been desiring to make for ages. (Yarn is Knit Picks Chroma Worsted, Hollyhock)

Bad news: Can't get dpns big enough to get proper gauge.

Good news: I can do math, cast on more stitches, go on my merry way.

Bad news: Didn't figure this all out until well into the hat, had to frog and start over.

Bad news: Stepped on reading kindle, totaled it.

Good news: Kindle Fire working again!

Bad news: Carrying tablet kindle around at work much more nerve-wracking than carrying the reading Kindle, as the former seems more likely to be stolen than the clunky old one.

Good news: Reading "Villette" by Charlotte Bronte

Bad news: Bit dry so far.

Good news: It's Charlotte Bronte, I have no doubt of things getting interesting.

Good news: Took a picture of knitting!

Bad news: Terrible picture.

A Workhorse Washcloth

It was near midnight, the house was dark and muggy, and I was zoning out watching YouTube videos.  I tried knitting on an acrylic afghan block, but in the high humidity it felt like my fingers had a light coating of pancake syrup.  I needed something mindless, something breathable.  There was some dishcloth cotton yarn and straight needles at hand, so I picked them up with a notion of knitting a basic corner-to-corner Grandmother's Favorite Dishcloth.  Somehow I cast on 46 stitches instead of 4.  It was late, and sometimes when you get going with a long-tail cast on you just forget yourself and keep cranking out loops until something draws your attention back to your hands, like remembering what it was you were trying to make.  I thought about it for a minute, then dropped a stitch back off for a more easily divisible 45 stitches and took off with a vague shape of pattern in mind.

This is as simple as it gets.  Knit a few stitches, purl a few stitches, lather, rinse, repeat, stop when it's big enough (or in my case, when your remnant of a skein runs out).

Yarn: Lily Sugar'n Cream, yellow, 54 yds
Needles: US 9
Gauge: 4.5 sts/in

CO 45 sts

Row 1: (K5, P5) 4x, K5
Row 2: (P5, K5) 4x, P5
Repeat these two rows once.  This creates the first row of blocks.  The next rows will reverse the directions, to alternate the purl and knit blocks from the first row.

Row 5: (P5, K5) 4x, P5
Row 6: (K5, P5) 4x, K5
Repeat once.

Start again from the beginning, and repeat this sequence of 8 rows 5 times or until washcloth reaches desired size.  BO all stitches and weave in ends.

Weekly Dishcloth, loosely defined

I know I've been afk for a good several weeks; I developed a thrush infection that has made nursing a nightmare, and when the thing you're doing every two or three hours around the clock is excruciatingly painful, it kind of takes over your life.  I seem to have it mostly licked now, though, so I'm getting back to some kind of normal.

I counted, and I'm actually on schedule dishcloth-wise, thanks to the extras that I made for swaps and holidays and whatnot, despite my month-long hiatus.  I'm hoping to crank out a couple more this week ('cause I'm nothing if not full of delusions of productivity).

Week 18-21 (Knit Picks Week 19)

Fishbones, by Marjorie Dussaud
Lily Sugar'n Cream, Daisy Ombre

I love this happy yellow and white colorway.  The dishcloth pattern is easy to memorize and mindless without being too boring.  It made for great knitting in the car.  I don't know how practical the floats will be with use and washing, but I'll let you know.

Week 22

Gingham Dishcloth
Peaches & Creme, Forest Green, Rosemary, Ecru

More tapestry crochet, oy vey, the single crochet . . . I do like how the gingham is translated.  I fell in love with gingham in my tweens, because instead of the Spice Girls and Britney Spears, my idols were Laura Ingalls Wilder and Anne of Green Gables.  I lived a sheltered life, what can I say?

Z is for...

Zodiac.

I don't believe in astrology. I blame it on being a Leo.

However, my favorite manga draws its central conceit from the Chinese zodiac. (We're in the year of the Sheep, by the way, may the fleece be with you)

Fruits Basket.

The story of how an exceptionally ordinary girl helps the most dysfunctional family in the world stop turning into animals. It's about love, forgiveness, acceptance, and onigiri.

Patterns I love that start with Z:

Zeb the Zebra
Zip Off Color Block Yoke Sweater
Zelda Cloche

Y is for...

Yarn Along.

It's a rare thing for me to actually get a Yarn Along entry out on the actual Yarn Along day, but I have Wednesday off for a change, and it feels like kismet that it's Y day as well. It may also be cheating.



Ginny of the blog "Small Things" hosts a Yarn Along every Wednesday for like-minded bloggers to show off what they're making and what they're reading. It's a great way to find new blogs, pattern and yarn inspiration, and things to add to your Goodreads want-to-read shelf.

Pence Jug, as interpreted by Franklin Habit from a vintage pattern by Frances Lambert, in Lana Cervina, Plum Jacquard Forever.

I've been voraciously reading No Idle Hands: the Social History of American Knitting. It's a bit like a Ken Burns documentary, heavily relying on letters, diaries, and anecdotes. I've already found a dozen ideas for a YA historical fiction novel, though I bought the ebook originally to see if it had any useful notes on Victorian era and pioneer knitting for my new blog, Ma's Needles, in which I will be knitting and crafting my way through the Little House books. Because I have so much free time.

Patterns I love that start with Y:

Yub Nub Scoodie - celebrate your inner ewok (free!)
Yarn Basket ornament  (free!)
Yggdrasil Afghan (free!)

X is for...

Christmas.

Do you know anyone who gets worked up about the abbreviation Xmas? Their fears are unfounded. Its use isn't an attempt to take Christ out of Christmas, it's more like when my mom writes bday on the calendar. In Greek, Jehovah starts with an I, and Christ starts with an X.

Χριστός

Personally, I'm not even a fan of bday, but sometimes needs must.

Xmas-y patterns I love:

Bitty Beady Christmas Tree
Holiday Mice (free!)
Good Grief! - an iconic little tree
Julevotter Adventscalendar - advent calendar of tiny numbered mittens (free!)
The Nativity Collection - no one does knit amigurumi like Alan Dart
Stjärna - star-shaped ornament with nifty construction (free!)
Praying Angel Ornaments - crochet (free!)

My Christmas board on Pinterest has a few yarn-unrelated ideas as well

W is for . . .

Weekly Dishcloth.

Well, really, what were you expecting?

Week 16 (or something like that)

King Charles, by Marjorie Dussaud
Lily Sugarn' Cream, Red

I feel like this pattern could have benefited from a chart.  It's a 12-row repeat, and I didn't find it at all intuitive.  There was a lot of ripping back as I lost my place in the written directions.

Those keeping track will note that this is technically last week's dishcloth, as I missed one two weeks ago.  I'm absurdly optimistic about getting another dishcloth out this week, despite being unable to decide on a color scheme.

Patterns I love that start with W:

Watermelon Purse (free!)
Welcome to the Flock - baby sweater with wee sheep around the yoke
Weeping Angel Statue - before I knew what a Weeping Angel was I thought this would be a nice memorial ornament for Gabriel.  I still might go that route  (pattern is free!)
Westering Home - beautiful cabled jacket
Winter Twilight Mitts (free when you sign up for the Knitting Daily newsletter)
Well-Dressed Bunny
Wingspan - insanely popular shawlette

V is for...

Vehicular knitting.

Don't knit and drive

More and more I'm appreciating the value of keeping a knitting project in my car. Just in the last week I've gotten a lot done while waiting for the line to move in a drive-through, waiting for the pilot car at a stretch of road construction, and while waiting for my husband to bring me a jug of coolant when my car overheated just outside of town. I wished my friend had some knitting in her car while we were stuck in the parking lot for an hour at work waiting for the all-clear from the fire department, but she isn't a knitter (yet). If our purses weren't locked in the building with the gas leak, we might have gone to the lys and I could have remedied that pretty quickly, but then, if I would have had my purse I would have had some knitting.

Of course, if I'm not the driver, I can get prodigious amounts of knitting done in the car, so I almost always bring two projects if my husband is driving, just in case I finish the first one, as I did this weekend when we were driving all over creation to celebrate two birthdays on opposite sides of the family. Of course, I forgot to bring scissors or a darning needle, so I still haven't officially finished the first project, but the knitting at least is done, so it will be my W post today or tomorrow.

Patterns I love that start with V:

Vauvan Sukka - textured baby socks (free!)
Verde - reusable shopping bag (free!)
Viburnum - lacy moebius cowl (free!)
Viceroy Butterfly Shawl - crochet
Victorian Lace Scarf
Vintage Hankie Washcloth - knit washcloth with lacy crocheted edging (free!)
Violet Beauregard - crochet skirt
Vivian - stunning cabled jacket with hood

T is for..

Time Warp.

Wherein I blog about something I missed the first time around, or finished before the blog existed. Such entries are usually made on Tuesday, but whatever, I need to catch up.

I always have such grand plans to make stuff for my dolls, but it's frustratingly rare that I ever do. I was stuck home sick one day, though, and the AG group on Ravelry was having a contest, so I whipped out my crochet hook and actually made something!

The pattern is called Off to Bath, and it's to match a girl-sized capelet of the same name. Both are from "Austentatious Crochet".

The shells are made up of elongated double crochet stitches that are a bit of a nuisance, but it's just three rows and then the collar and ties and you're done. I used Red Heart Soft, which is a decent acrylic, more substantial than Caron Simply Soft.

There isn't much to the piece, but I like how it goes with the red velvet dress.

Patterns I love that start with T:

TARDIS Tissue Box Cover (free!)
Tea Time Colonial Dress for American Girl - speaking of doll clothes...
The Teddy Bear that Saved Me - the designer knit these to sell while he was homeless
Theodóra - Icelandic doll knit from Icelandic yarn
Through the Woods... - cabled neckwarmer with hood
Travelling Gnome (free!)
Tudor Rose - ruffled, beaded cuffs
Twinkle Twinkle Baby Blanket

S is for...

Steampunk shawlette, star-shaped stitch markers, and Silver Skates.

I just finished reading the unabridged "Hans Brinker" for the first time, though I've read the pictured Great Illustrated Classic copy many times since my grandmother sent it to me when I was nine, and I have to say . . . I almost prefer the abridged version. It captures the essence of the story and the setting very succinctly by dropping most of the purple prose and cutting long chapters worth of material that, while educational and interesting, almost derails the plot. Imagine if the Hogsmeade visit in The Prisoner of Azkaban consisted of several chapters of the Weasley twins, Cedric Diggory, Neville Longbottom, and Draco Malfoy visiting museums and discussing the culture and history of the Wizarding world. I grant you, that would be amazing, but I think JRR Tolkien did it better by putting that kind of thing in the appendices. On the other hand, if I hadn't read the abridged version first, would the detour into the art, architecture, and history of the Netherlands have been as distracting?

Brass Needles has been doing monthly knit-alongs this year on the Ravelry board, and I absurdly optimistically cast on the Age of Brass and Steam for April's Steampunk Shawlette theme. I'm not going to finish by the end of the month, obviously.

The yarn is Debbie Bliss Rialto DK, one of the victims of the month (carpet beetle?) attack, so there will be many slippery ends to weave in.

The origami lucky star stitch markers are from TheSexyKnitter.

Patterns I love that start with S:

Sally the Eco Fairy - simple knitted doll that would be easy to modify to look like anyone (free!)
Saxon the City - cabled thigh-high stockings
Slipstream - cabled normal length socks (free!)
Southern Skies - circular shawl that uses beads and eyelets to create an accurate star map of the constellations as seen from the Southern hemisphere
Sourwood Mountain - leaf-motif fingerless gloves (free!)
Sylvi - gorgeous cabled coat
Susie Rogers Reading Mitts - (free!)

R is for...

Read to me.

They tell me reading to your kids helps them develop reading and language skills. They also say it's important for your kids to see you reading.

E-readers count, right?

I grew up in a house full of books, watching my dad read in every free moment. My mom isn't as voracious a reader as he, but she too loves books, especially biographies and of course the Bible. She read to us often and loved taking us to the library. She also taught us to look for words everywhere, on signs and the sides of vehicles and the backs of cereal boxes.  I'm trying to do the same with Silas, and even Ezra looks very intently at the pictures while I'm reading to Silas.  I would show you a picture of this, but there's no good way to juggle a camera along with a three year old and a nearly five month old and a book.

Ezra devouring a good book

I still like to be read to, as my love of literary podcasts and audiobooks will attest.  I hope my kids will let me read to them for a long, long time.

Books that Silas loves for me to read to him:

This Train
The Little Red Caboose
Moonpowder
Go, Dog, Go!
What Do You Say when a Monkey Acts this Way?
The Foot Book

M is for . . .

May Mitered Mittens in Modewerk.

May is the month that patron saint of knitters Elizabeth Zimmermann recommends for making mittens in her Knitter's Almanac, so that you don't have to scramble when the weather turns cold. I'm starting mine in April, because I have the yarn and I needed a letter M project. Of course, M would fall on a day that I had to work until 11, so here I am on Sunday trying to catch up.

I won the yellow yarn in a giveaway at the Modeknit blog. It's Modewerk Worsted in Braziliantine. I was expecting the yarn to be more golden with some orange tones, but we all know how accurate colors are on a computer screen. In person it's a soft buttery yellow. I was a little disappointed at first, but now I really like how it pairs with my deep-stash Light Coral Knit Picks Swish. If there's enough of each leftover I want to use it to make the Anthropologie Inspired Bohemian Slouch hat, along with some more deep-stash plum colored wool and maybe a charcoal accent.

The mittens are shaped by miters, paired increases and decreases that shape the knitting to a point. I started with an i-cord cast-on and I'll be trying my first afterthought thumb. I'm working at a relatively loose gauge (needs of the moment), so I may have to line them.

Mitten patterns that I love:

Cloisonèe
Basic Children's Mittens (free!)
Grove
Dulaan Easy-on Mittens (free!)
Blooming Lattice
Freja (free!)

P is for...

Podcasts.

I have a fair trek to work, I knit, and I like to have something to listen to while I'm cooking or cleaning, so podcasts fit into my daily routines and help keep my sanity. I like audio books and music for the same purposes, but until I finally break down and sign up for an Audible membership, podcasts are more readily available (and free!).

I've raved about Craftlit here many a time, because it's awesome. Heather Ordover is a former English teacher/professor who figured out that people whose hands are busy knitting or quilting or otherwise crafting could really use someone to read to them. To keep it free, it's exclusively public domain audio of classic literature, which is my jam, yo. Right now she's hooking us up with Sense and Sensibility, and along the way she helps explain a little historical context, definitions of obscure words and practices, and a bit about the author, and a bit of modern context as references show up in pop culture.

I also listen to Forgotten Classics, which focuses on books that you probably haven't heard of, either from authors who have slipped out of the limelight, or less familiar titles by familiar authors. She mixes the public domain stories with small samples of copyrighted material, so there's a huge variety, from Victorian adventure novels to nonfiction travel memoirs and even a recent translation of the book of Genesis. Most recently she read a few chapters of "One Hundred and One Dalmatians," which you may not have known was a charming children's book before Disney discovered it and made a charming movie.

On the less lit, more knit side, I listen to:

The Knitmore Girls, a mother and daughter who talk about knitting, spinning, yarn, patterns, books, fiber events, and occasionally Shakespeare.

Brass Needles, which divides its episodes between discussion of knitting and spinning and discussion of sci-fi and Steampunk culture, tropes, and media.

Cast On, the original knitting podcast, featuring essays, music, advice, reviews, and a bit of snark from Brenda Dayne.

Patterns from my favorite podcasters:

Taming of the Shrug and Hexaflexagon by Heather Ordover
Mrs. Beeton and Now in a Minute by Brenda Dayne (both free!)
The Knitmore Girls Vanilla Sock by Jasmin Canty (free!)
Steampunk Arm Warmers by Erin Kalendar

O is for...

Organization

If there were a D in my name, it would be for Disorganized. As it is, my acrostic looks like this:

Messy
In over my head
Cluttered
Heaps of laundry
Every dish we own is in the sink
Losing my keys in a purse full of receipts, tissues, and pens
Losing my mind
Eh, I'll clean tomorrow

One corner where I've managed to get my stuff sorted is my closet, because it was necessary in order to get ready for Ezra. All of my yarn is organized into bins, milk crates, and a set of plastic drawers in there. All of my straight needles are in a holder my in-laws got me years ago, all of my DPNs are in a purple tin pencil box, my crochet hooks are in empty mini M&M's tubes, and my circular needles are in a Ziploc until I come up with a less tangled way to manage them. I keep my small notions in Altoid tins.

Someday, I'd like to have a cozy little room just for knitting, sewing, and crafting, but for now things are working out in my closet.

How do you organize your hobby equipment?

Patterns I love that start with O:

Oink - flying piggy (free!)
Onodrim - fingerless gloves with a lace and cable leaf-motif
Old Shale Shawl - (free!)
Owlings - I never jumped on the owl-motif or Fetching bandwagon, but together...
Olivia's Butterfly - child-sized crochet cloche, easy to size up or down (free!)