Continued from Part 1:
Next up are some armwarmers! I got this tutorial from Melli’s Mish Mash via Pinterest. They are also not perfect (I miscounted my rows on one), but they’re cute and comfy and will come in handy (hah!) next winter. I only used one strand of bulky yarn instead of two (there are modifications in the tutorial for this), and they still came out great:
I found myself in need of a row counter after the armwarmers. I bought this Clover knitting register (row counter, made to slide onto knitting needles) and blinged it out to use on my looms:
And there you can see my first attempt at modifying a project! I wanted to make a little drawstring bag, but I didn’t want to have to seam the bottom. Enter the ingenious Kitchener cast-on. I mean, really, look at this shit:
NO SEAMS. That is fucking majestic.
So I made a zillion little bags (ok, four — so far):
This first one was a simple 35-row knit with eyelets and a 2-strand I-cord drawstring. I tossed some dichroic glass beads on there for some pizzazz. It’s soft and stretchy, and I love the way the stripes formed as I knitted. Here, it’s holding my ~60 dice.
Here’s bag number two. It’s 20-ish rows worked in moss stitch. It’s holding a 7-piece dice set, but there’s still room for plenty more. This is another one of those yarns that just need a simple stitch. The color pattern obscures anything fancy you try to do.
Bag number three is a 30-ish row ribbed stitch. I love this charcoal color. There’s some very subtle striping in there, but mostly it just looks heathered.
Because all three of these bags were worked in “true knit” stitches, they’re all smooshy and have some “give,” so they will stretch out to accommodate their contents.
This last bag is different, though. I worked it in U-wrap flat/twisted/single knit stitch, so the result is a much firmer, tighter material that holds its shape well. You can see in the pic that the flat stitch bag (left) is more compact than the knit stitch bag (right). Because of the tighter work, the striping effect is more dense and the top edge wants to curl over (which might be your thing, I dunno).
Here are some more pics showing the inside stitches and finer details:
