The Essentials
Confession: I love lists. I love the feeling of relief that washes over you when you've got everything written down in a nice list and now you can relax and not worry about forgetting that one thing. I love the satisfying scratch the pen makes when you cross one more thing off the list. The world should have more lists. So here's one:
Needed for Knitting-
1. The perfect bag. It needs to be sturdy to hold up all the skeins, shallow enough that you won't lose everything you drop in, and slippery enough to let the yarn slide out as you stitch. Right now I'm using a big, plastic-y reusable grocery bag with handles big enough to carry over my shoulder and it's working out pretty well so far.
- And while you're at it, find the perfect little bag to keep inside your big bag to contain all your needles and other goodies. Take it from me, you do not want to be digging through 10lbs of yarn searching for the size C needle!
2. A folder to hold patterns and yarn wrappers and keep them out of messy little piles AKA cat beds. And YES, keep the yarn wrappers! Some have patterns inside, some have rulers printed on, and all of them will have the exact name of that yarn you loved so much and used up and want more but it's sold out at the store now and it'll be forever until they get another shipment and gosh they all look alike online!
3. Scissors. Yes, this seems obvious, but for some reason it took me forever to designate a set just for crochet and to keep them handy where I'm stitching. You can even crochet around the handles to make it official.
4. Pen. Yes, also obvious, but make sure it stays in the bag so you can scribble on your patterns and not forget that cool thing you figured out to do to make it wayyy better.
5. Measuring tape and/or ruler. I like measuring tape for measuring big things, and a ruler for checking guage(more like comparing guage, since my crochet only has one guage...)
6. Post-its. The long skinny kind with no lines and the sticky at the top not on the side. Everybody writes patterns differently and if you rewrite it and stick it to the original pattern you will have a much easier time flowing through to the end!
7. Stitch markers. Don't bother spending 3 bucks on the official kind, those little rubbery coated paper clips do a better job and are so much easier to use. Grab like, 6-10 now and throw 'em in your stash for later.
8. The best paper towel roll you can find. I don't know what kind mine is, but it is so thick and sturdy I'll never let it go! A sweet lady in cro-knit club gave it to me as she was teaching me how to use Starbella/Sashay yarns and I am so, so grateful. Of course a toilet paper roll will work too, but a paper towel roll can accommodate more than one yarn, and if you like to pull out stitches as much as I do, you'll need lots of yarn-winding capability.
9. Yarn needle. The big, chunky, plastic-y kind that hopefully came in your Learn To Crochet kit and you won't have to spend $5 on but if you do that's alright because when you need it, you NEED it. Just trust me on that one!
10. Lists. Always lists! I can never remember who said what or the name of that one stitch or which color what's her face said she liked. So get a cute notebook and write everything down and start scratchin' off as you stitch away!
