The list of big tools that stay at home:
- Knitting Needles & Case
- Yarn bowl
- Knitting lamp
- Sock blockers
- Sock Ruler
- Ball winder
- Yarn Swift
- Blocking Mats & T-pins
- Yarn counter
- Project bags
I don’t typically carry all my needles everywhere with me – just the needles I need for the project at hand. So my knitting needles and the case all stay at home.
When I knit at home, I have a nice yarn bowl that I place my yarn in to keep it from rolling away while I knit. Next to my seat, I have a nice lamp for light while craft. It’s just a desk lamp, but it allows me to focus light on my hands instead of illuminating the whole room and putting glare on the TV.
Sock blockers are specially designed to help you block your socks. You’d block them the same way you would a gauge swatch, except instead of pinning it you’d put them on the sock blockers to dry. They’re also good for getting nice pictures of dry socks.
The Sock Ruler is a special tool for measuring socks as you knit them. Since US shoe measurements don’t mean anything by themselves, it’s handy to keep track of how many inches as “Women’s Size 8” actually is. The one I linked is the one I use personally because it actually has both men’s and women’s shoes sizes marked on it as well as having a ruler.
The ball winder and the swift work together. Yarn frequently comes in easy to store hanks that are impossible to knit from. So you need to get it into a ball, which is a tedious process. Instead, you can put the hank on a swift and then use the winder to make a cake in like 3 minutes. Everybody loves cake, and yarn cakes are easy to carry and knit from. You don’t want to store yarn long term in cakes because it can stretch out the yarn (it’s better to store it as a hank), so it’s nice to have this at home and not have the yarn wound while still at the yarn store. There are a lot of videos demonstrating how these work.
Blocking mats are useful for blocking your swatch and finished project. Any kind of foam mat will do as long as you can push the pins into it. Some of them (not the ones linked) have one inch grids on them, which I recommend. It’s not required though if you don’t mind measuring with your ruler.
My project bags are too numerous to mention. My favorites are from Jimmy Beans – I have the della Q Maker’s Mini Messenger bag and the Namaste Maker purse (Jimmy Beans no longer carries Namaste). I also have a small tote bag from my sister that reads “This is my ball sack” with pictures of yarn balls on it.
