Knitting Sidekicks

Today I am mourning the demise of my old reliable washing machine, well, I have to admit it wasn't too reliable in its old age, and cost us lots of repair bills, but I was still sad to see it go. I was used to it, after all. Yesterday it was hauled out of my life and a new machine was installed in its place. Now I have to figure out how to work this new one.

Here is a picture of the Must Have Cardigan in progress. I was having a lot of annoyance at flipping from the instructions for one cable to another, so one day I typed in all the instructions and made a spread sheet for rows 1 through 184. I love cut and paste! I mark every 20 rows with a safety pin so I always know exactly where I am in the instructions. This is a hangover from machine knitting where there is a row counter on the machine and instructions are written with reference to row number. You can see the pins in the picture.








I made a holder for the needles I am currently using out of some upholstery fabric samples. It originally had ties but they were too short, so I cut them off and use the circle of black elastic instead. The pink contraption is a small carrier for sock needles and other implements. I crocheted it out of scap yarn, then lined it with a cotton upholstery sample fabric and attached some teeny scissors to it with a length of crocheted chain. The front is stuck full of yarn needles and safety pins and whatever else I am using at the moment. I bought a lot of those canvas shopping bags at Trader Joe's and use one for each current project. That way, I can grab whichever project I want to work on at a moments notice, and everything I need is in the bag.