Persistent Knitter

It seems I’ve acquired a few knitting needles over the past year.

Now how could that happen?

All of them are circular needles, with the exception of my DPNs. I had my grandmother’s whole collection of aluminum straight needles at one point, but I decided I didn’t want to use them, ever, so gave them back to my mom. (Is that needle snobbery?)

I had/have one of those fancy circular needle holders that I bought at my LYS (for the tune of $30. Yikes), and it just doesn’t do the job. First, it doesn’t have enough pockets. Second, they all face one direction so you get a huge bulky lump in the middle. Third, you can’t tell what size the needles are unless you label the pouches, and then you end up with a bunch of needles in one pouch, and only one in another pouch. And you can’t tell the lengths either without pulling out the whole bunch and then you’ve got a mess on your hands. Here is what it looks like with no needles (I forgot to take a pic before I took all the needles out):

Being the overly-organized person that I am. I kept the ziploc pouches that my needles came in. (most of which are Addi Turbos or Addi Naturas, a few Crystal Palace circs here and there.) Why? Probably because I realized that I would someday want to put the needles back in their little pouches.

Before the fancy needle holder, I tried one of those fly-tackle fishing bait bags, but it really wasn’t adequate for what I wanted to do. Plus it just wasn’t "pretty":

Yesterday at Target, I picked up a cool expando-flexy thingy for a whole $7. It’s designed to hold paper and organize household information, so it’s big enough to hold 8×10 pieces of paper, and has half the pockets are half height. It’s semi-see through, so you can see what you’re getting at (in theory). It’s just plastic, so maybe it won’t stand up in the long run, but it’ll work for now. If I really like how it works, maybe I’ll make a fabric version of the same thing (although then I lose the see-through-ability, unless I can find some plastic-type substitute, like maybe some screen grid material stuff? Hmm.. the wheels are churning).

Now, I can put my needles back in their (labeled) ziploc baggies they came in, then organize them according to sizes. Smaller needles can go in the front pockets and larger ones in the back. I can easily open the whole thing up and dig through my needles. It closes securely (something the fancy one I bought doesn’t do) so I can take it with me places without fear of loosing a needle if it shifts.

And here is what it looks like open:

I still have about 10 more needles to put into this container (currently in projects, or in the basket for the project. I’ve got 5 or 6 in the Hardangervidda basket by itself), and I should make an inventory of size, length and type. I assume I might outgrow this container someday. In that case I might look into doing a fabric version of the same thing. Or just get a second expando-file. Or something else.

And just for fun, this is what I have my DPNs in:

And opened: