With all the knitting that’s been going on, I’ve also been concocting pouches and cases to store and carry my knitting needles. This has involved measuring, sketching, paper prototyping, and sewing prototypes.

For double pointed needle storage, my main experimentation revolved around:

• Lining a thin pouch neatly with a sewing machine – although I enjoy hand stitching, I wanted to keep the hand stitching to a minimum.
• To top-stitch or not to top-stitch.
• The pouch closing mechanism – I played with ideas of buttons, snaps, velcro, elastic, envelope-style, and ribbons.

Here you can see some of my experiments. Often I take an idea to a certain stage before abandoning it and jumping on to the next idea.

The design I settled on for double-pointed needle storage has decorative top-stitching on the inside only, lining, and a ribbon closure.

I made two of the Scandinavian forest fabric 6 DPN pouches (one for me, one for the shop), and I’ve been carting my knitting needles around in the case. I recently took some very long train journeys where I was able to fold out the case on my lap, switch needles in the mittens I was knitting, and then fold up the case again. No flying knitting needles :) Very handy!

The zip pouch for straight needles is still in design stage but I’m sure they’ll be available soon in my give me a crown Etsy store along side the DPN / crochet hook cases which are available now.