Another knitting post brought to you by being wide awake three hours earlier than I have to be.
So I enjoy making things useful far past its primary function. More than the current trend for repurposing, I've been doing this since I was a child and turning my furniture upside-down and sideways to make habitats for my dolls and action figures that I liked just as well as any commercial bought dollhouse, if not more. I just like seeing how I can use things. It's sort of a mental game I play. It helps that I work in theatre, a field where it is encouraged and sometimes downright necessary to improvise wildly when the perfect object is unobtainable. So many props are made from gluing bottle caps on things, it's amazing. If I worked in any other field, it would be props, just because I enjoy that part of it so much.
Anyway, I was tired and irritated by the fact that my yarn kept falling out of my lap and rolling away and getting dirty on the floor, and I had neither the money nor the inclination to buy one of those fancy-schmancy 'yarn-tainers', so I made my own. Now, don't get me wrong, I have since then received one of the fancy ones as a gift, and it's great; it's clear and it has a very nice, smooth lid and a handle, but there is one problem that makes me like mine sort of better. The fancy ones have a very nice, smooth edged hole in the top of the lid with a little rubbery pad around the inside so that your yarn won't snag or get all roughed up, which is again, great, but once you've put your yarn in your jar, and poked the yarn through the hole and cast on your project, you're stuck using that one container until either you're done, or you break your yarn. This might encourage some people to finish their projects faster, but I'm not one to succumb to peer-pressure from inanimate objects.
So I made my own.
It's one of those cardboard tube style containers for chow-mein noodles that I like to put on salad. The plastic lid is thin enough to punch a hole in, (I used the large-size hole punch at work), and then cut a slit from the edge to the hole, and voila, you can change your projects at will. The diameter of this one fits a 100g center-pull cake of sock-weight very comfortably. I've also heard that oatmeal containers work very well. And you can decorate the outside, if you wish!
What other notions can be made with house-hold stuff? I'm curious to what you all think...
Also, go check out the podcast at Here's to Ewe!
(X-posted at 20sknitters
Anyway, I was tired and irritated by the fact that my yarn kept falling out of my lap and rolling away and getting dirty on the floor, and I had neither the money nor the inclination to buy one of those fancy-schmancy 'yarn-tainers', so I made my own. Now, don't get me wrong, I have since then received one of the fancy ones as a gift, and it's great; it's clear and it has a very nice, smooth lid and a handle, but there is one problem that makes me like mine sort of better. The fancy ones have a very nice, smooth edged hole in the top of the lid with a little rubbery pad around the inside so that your yarn won't snag or get all roughed up, which is again, great, but once you've put your yarn in your jar, and poked the yarn through the hole and cast on your project, you're stuck using that one container until either you're done, or you break your yarn. This might encourage some people to finish their projects faster, but I'm not one to succumb to peer-pressure from inanimate objects.
So I made my own.
It's one of those cardboard tube style containers for chow-mein noodles that I like to put on salad. The plastic lid is thin enough to punch a hole in, (I used the large-size hole punch at work), and then cut a slit from the edge to the hole, and voila, you can change your projects at will. The diameter of this one fits a 100g center-pull cake of sock-weight very comfortably. I've also heard that oatmeal containers work very well. And you can decorate the outside, if you wish!
What other notions can be made with house-hold stuff? I'm curious to what you all think...
Also, go check out the podcast at Here's to Ewe!
(X-posted at 20sknitters