Net Bags for Knitting

A couple of weeks ago, while I was working on my sweater, I got very frustrated. Because the cable pattern is simple and appears once on each sleeve and once on each front and not at all on the back, I decided to try knitting all five sections at one time, from five different balls of yarn on one long circular needle. It was simple until the balls of yarn got tangled. I tried hard to keep the threads straight, but it was not working well.

As I was sitting working on the sweater, I found myself wishing I could run the knitting needle through each ball of yarn to keep it close to the section of the sweater it belonged to, even though I knew that would not work since the needle would interfere with the way the yarn was pulling from the skein.

Then it hit me. A net bag could hold the yarn and slide along the knitting needle right next to the section of the sweater that needed that skein of yarn.




So I took some brown waxed 1 mm cord I had been trying to find a use for and made a plain mesh bag.

When I saw that the idea seemed to work I made a second bag to check my pattern. I placed the yarn for the left front in one bag and the yarn for the right front in the other bag.














I decided that I wanted to try something a bit different for the sleeves.

So I chose some green 1 mm hemp cord I had recently purchased and made another bag. This time I used the eyelet or rose stitch.

Again I made a second bag to check out my pattern. Then I put the yarn for each sleeve into a bag and put the two bags on the circular knitting needle.








Now that I had a bag for the sleeves and the fronts, I thought I needed one to hold the yarn for the back.

For this bag I decided to use some #3 crochet thread. I thought I would try out a new stitch and chose ivy.

When the bag was finished, I placed the yarn for the back into the new bag. Since there is no need for a second bag I guess checking the pattern will have to wait.








So now I have all five skeins of yarn hanging onto my needle.


It may look strange, but it works just fine. No more tangled yarn!


Oh, yes. I have almost net the shawl back to the place where I had to cut off nine rows. I am currently three rows from the end.