Unspooled
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So sometimes? Sometimes I knit something just to see if I can, with absolutely no thought to whether I should. Luckily, I design knitting patterns (not, say, rockets or bridges or viruses), so the consequences of this rather haphazard approach are fairly low. But that's totally what happened here.
You see, I was having a little dalliance with sewing. And I was at that awkward stage of learning a new thing where you're sort of surrounded by tools and supplies and practice projects and everything feels more than a bit overwhelming. I needed to take a little break from being terrible at sewing and do something I actually knew how to do. But sewing was apparently still very much on my mind, and these where what happened when I switched to knitting needles instead of sewing needles!
Oddly enough, thanks to the inclusion of a few strategically placed magnets, the big ones actually make a really useful pin tray and pattern weight. So I did find a way to use them to do something more than just soothe my ego (those first few sewing projects are a humbling experience). And I have a feeling I'll use the tiny ones to show off my treasured collection of gorgeous silk embroidery thread.
But really, I suspect most of you are going to knit these just because you can!
Bookmarked
Ok so you were undoubtedly a much cooler kid than I was. But I, utter weirdo that I was, was absolutely convinced that adulthood would involve a significant number of important things tucked away in secret hiding places. What can I say, I was a credulous child, and I read a lot of really bad spy novels. But for a while there, the idea of a book with a secret compartment was just about the coolest thing I could imagine.
My actual adulthood has, alas, turned out to be rather lacking in the sorts of intrigue and adventure my eight year old self was anticipating. But somehow a tiny little knitted book, complete with handy storage compartment, still holds a certain appeal (or, possibly, it’s that I’m just utterly unable to resist the charms of a good tin or a little slide out box).
Now it's true, I'll be using mine to hold stitch markers and darning needles and scissors and a tape measure, rather than cash and jewels and forged documents and some sort of clever device that will let me foil a dastardly plot at the last possible second. But really, I suspect that's probably for the best.
Binding
Look, I probably shouldn’t love these as much as I do. I fully acknowledge that they’re a modest amusement at best, a scandalous waste of time at worst. But somehow I find them unspeakably charming and am completely unable to resist.
They just hit all my sweet spots.
They turn a very modest collection of supplies (a single sheet of material, a few feet of ribbon or tape measure, a bit of sewing thread, a scrap of yarn) into something both adorable and useful using only the most basic of knitting and sewing skills (a bit of knitting too small to be a respectable swatch, a handful of straight lines of stitching). They offers the faint hope that I will maybe, just maybe, finally be the sort of person who always knows where their scissors and darning needle and tape measure are. And they let me go ‘ooooh, tiny book!’ which is clearly just one of the things my brain likes to do!
Now, will they be enough to finally turn me into a truly organized person? I mean I assume not. But I’m willing to find out!
Dispatch
There’s something magical about letters. I don’t know why. I’m not in charge of these things. There just is. The idea taking a tiny handful of the thoughts swirling around in your head, turning them on to words, putting those words on paper, and sending them off on an adventure to land on someone else’s doorstep and brighten their day is just kind of special.
My hope is to capture a tiny sliver of that magic with this knitted envelope!
Discretion dictates you not actually try and send it through the mail (though goodness knows I understand the temptation). But you can absolutely tuck a note (or a gift card, or some candy, or some other tiny treasure) inside and slip it under your sweetheart’s pillow or into a friend’s coat pocket or into your kid’s lunch box. Or perhaps you want to help the tooth fairy on her appointed rounds or make a post office play set (how cute would it be to make a little snap on stamp?) or knit a whole bunch and have the coolest advent calendar ever. I suspect that, as with most magical things, something delightful will occur to you if you just think about it for a little while!
Lather
There are folks out there who make their money by teaching you to hate your body then selling you something to fix or hide what they say is wrong with you. And oh, oh they’re good at their jobs. They’re so good at it that you probably don’t even notice how often they subtly suggest that you you’re too fat or have too much cellulite or too many stretch marks, or that you’re too old or have too many wrinkles or too many gray hairs, or that your pores are too big or your eyebrows too sparse or your teeth too crooked.
But once you start to notice, you’ll see those messages everywhere. Which is infuriating! But it’s also the first step to making yourself less susceptible to that garbage. Because once you notice, you can ask why you’re being made to feel bad, who benefits from those bad feelings. And once you start to do that, a lot of those bad feelings just go away. And then? Well then you can start to experiment with what it’s like to have nice feelings about your body. To be kind to it. To treat it gently.
That process will look different for everyone, but for me, a big part of being kind to my body is taking delightfully extravagant showers. The kind where you tidy up the bathroom and light your favorite candle and put on some good music and deep condition your hair and use the yummy smelling soap and the very fancy washcloth and whatever else makes the process feel good.
And I swear it helps. It helps so much. Because it’s hard to hate something you treat kindly and gently. And it’s so much nicer to live in a body you’ve come to care for rather than one you’ve been taught to hate.
Clasped
I have reached a certain age. An age where I both remember being fascinated by the magical change purse my grandmother carried in her handbag...and finally understand why she had at least three different little pouches on hand at all times. Because if you live long enough, you’ll eventually find you need a certain amount of stuff with you to get through the day, and it’s easier if it’s organized.
So when I stumbled across the spiffy little clasps that made those long-remembered pouches so magical, I knew I needed to make a knitted version. Make that several knitted versions. Because really, if you’re in the ‘lots of little containers for all your stuff’ stage of life, it’s going to be easier if you can tell them apart at a glance. I went with a plain one (that I made stripey with some nifty helix stripes because I couldn’t just have it be plain), a zig zag one, and one that has that deeply satisfying offset shape that is technically a tetrahedron, but which I always think of as the sour cream packet shape.
I suspect you’ll end up making all three. Actually, I suspect you’ll end up making all three many times. Because every time a non-knitter sees one of these, they are absolutely gobsmacked at the cleverness. But the pouches are actually shockingly simple to knit, and they make great use of yarn scraps. So you can make a whole pile of them with yarn from your scraps bin, give them away with abandon, and look like an absolute magician. Which is something I’m pretty sure both your grandmother and mine would heartily approve of!
Shaped
This pattern exists because the folks on Patreon give me the time I need to experiment with all sorts of things. So it seems fair to give it to the folks who support me there! This pattern is only available through Patreon through the end of 2024. Anyone with an Utter Nonsense ($6/month) or Rampant Nonsense ($12/month) membership gets the pattern. (Yes, you can keep it forever. Yes, you can put it in your ravelry library. Yes, it's fine to join and then change or cancel your membership later.)
So I was knitting some slippers. No really, stay with me here, this is how these came to be. I was knitting some slippers, and they started at the back of your heel then swooped forward and opened out to make room for your foot. And there was always a moment, right after that, where my brain said ‘ok, now close it back up right away, you’ll get a cool shape.’ So one day, I did. And yeah, it did make a cool shape. And then that same part of my brain said ‘ok, now do that again, but work in the round this time.’ And I, having learned to mostly just listen to my brain when it gets like this, once again did what I was told. And yeah, yeah that shape, once subjected to one little fold and vigorous block, was indeed even cooler. Cooler, and ever so delightfully adjustable. And so now we find ourselves here. With a piece of fabric that started as the heel of a slipper, then flipped and mirrored itself until it turned into a little ball, and which you can fold and primp into a delightful little vessel. The pattern proper includes four versions, a flat version and one with curved edges, each in two sizes (those are the solid blue ones in the pictures). But it also runs you through several options for modifying and adorning these, like changing the size and the shape and the depth, putting something inside them to give them a bit of structure, and even embroidering on them if you’re so inclined (the gray one includes several mods all in one piece). Because really, once you’ve made one and seen how they magic themselves into shape at the end, I suspect you’re going to want to make more. Lots and lots more. And I want you to have options!Mailing List
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