Monday, October 02, 2006

Tools I use

I'm going to start posting about some of the tools that I use for knitting. Tools can make a project or turn it into a struggle and the final outcome can be a mess. Many years ago somebody told me the "you are as good as your tools" and I never forgot that.

I like gadgets anyway so for me it's kind of easy to "tool up" for a project. My mother used to say "you always have such elegant tools". She meant that whenever I was making anything I would try and gather the proper tools that I thought I needed.

One of the newer things/gadgets I got was this thing:



What is it you ask? Well you mount it on a table and thread the yarn through the little slot and it counts the yardage. Sometimes I just can not tell how many yards I have when I look at a ball of yarn and it does not have a label or it comes in a hank etc. Weight is good and the ladies at my local yarn store swear by the scale in managing how much yarn you have but that is just illogical to me.


I have this kitchen scale but I only use it for food.



My theory is the old "what weighs more a ton of led or a ton of feathers?" So for me it's the yardage that makes the difference. So I was happy as can be with my KnitPicks yarn meter that I bought for $49.99 plus tax and shipping and was very smug with the whole system.

Then somebody pointed out that fisherman use that very same meter and you can buy it for $12 dollars in a fishing supply store. Well another lesson learned indeed it is the exact same meter that I paid 50 bucks for but it did have a kind of primitive wooden mounting stand, but I'm sure the fishing one I could have mounted it somewhere especially with my dear husband is so handy with this sort of things.




Oh well if I ever need another I know now where to go to get it. The tool is very useful it does measure things in feet and I do have to convert it to yards but I have my handy dandy calculator for that. So now when I have a ball of yarn and I don't know how many yards there is I have my meter to measure with. As Martha Stewart would say "It's a good thing!"

Links:
Knit Picks http://www.knitpicks.com/
Bass Pro http://www.basspro.com

5 comments:

KnittenKnots said...

That's a very handy tip re: the fisherman's tool. Thanks!! Great blog BTW - the dogs are too cute.

Anonymous said...

You know I find that great tools are far worth having, sometimes even better then great yarn.

But I have learned the lesson of investigation too, for instance I like row counters, I like a lot of row counters, and I like the ones you click. You can buy them at the LYS or online ranging from $7 and way up, my LYS sells one for $9.99. Then I looked at walmart, got a double clicker in the golf department so I can keep track of two different things, like rows and pattern repeats, for $1.47. I have about 15 of those.

It always pays to shop around.

Great thing to discuss is our tools.

Ana Petrova said...

Wow that sounds real good, I'll have to check out the golf department.

Thanks rebekah!

Anonymous said...

Could you please tell me what that fishing meter tool is called? I went to the site you mentioned but couldn't find it on the site because I didn't know what to search for.

Thanks

Ana Petrova said...

Search for Shakespeare® Line Counter