September leethal quick knits club!

Ok most September club members should have their packages by now, so it’s time to share the contents with everyone!  I’ll copy bits from the note that was sent along with the kits…

This month I went for a back to school theme, thinking about classic school aesthetics when dyeing, recycling, and designing.  When I started brainstorming about colors, I thought of primaries, bright and bold.  The bulky wool yarn, recycled from a sweater, is dyed in random order stripes of yellow, green, and blue, with a little purple, separated by shorter stripes of red.  It’s kind of a lower elementary school theme, colors I imagine being in a first grade classroom; I named it Picture Book.

The spun yarn is made from a cotton scarf I came across, knit in stripes of red, blue, green, and a yellowish off-white – more of a collegiate version of the school theme colors.  I spun the cotton threads, keeping the color changes as they were knit, then I navajo plied (chain plied) it with a variegated rainbowy thread, wrapping extra around the color changes, like granny stacks in handspun yarn.  This one is called Wrapped Up in Books.

Because of the way both these yarns were made, with random order striping, every mini-skein is unique, so each member’s knits will be one-of-a-kind!  Each wool mini-skein was wrapped in a piece of ribbon or rick rack (which all came from Knittn’ Kitten, so they are secondhand or vintage) for the pattern…

So the patterns are of course back to school themed as well, but they are useful for home, office, whatever.  The 4-page pattern sheet includes the Laced-Up Pencil Case and Stiffened Chevron Bookmark designs, plus a bonus pen cover.  (ravelry links)

The pencil case can hold around 5-6 pens/pencils, or crochet hooks, or double pointed needles, etc, and is a perfect compact size for keeping in your go-everywhere bag.  Here’s my case shown with rick rack and ribbon, for different looks:

The bookmarks can be made as long as you want, so if you stop before the mini-skein runs out, the leftover yarn can be made into a pen/pencil cover (or multiples) – the pictured bookmark/cover sets each came from a single 10 yarn mini-skein:

Also, if you’re not into the bookmark, the piece can be turned into a cuff instead!  If any twitter followers were wondering about my weird right-slanting decrease inquiries a couple weeks ago, that decrease is used in this bookmark design.  (Note: as always with my club patterns, these patterns as exclusive to September members for at least 3 months, after which they’ll be sold in some form at some point in time.)

Then each package got a notebook to go with the little school set, with a recycled beer case cardboard cover.  I like the colors, imagery, and variation that comes from the beer cases, and I stuck a couple of hand-carved stamps on the backs, to give the books a touch of knittyness.

I also stamped leethal on the inside cover of each, in orange of course!  The basic blue notebooks came from Dollar Tree (I tried to find recycled notebooks somewhere, but couldn’t), and the stamps were all carved from a single eraser!  (Oh yeah, if you’re into making notebooks, check out my most recent Threadbanger roundup!)

And each package was finished off with a leethal.net button, made with a recycled Willamette Week (Portland weekly magazine) image, for a little piece of Portland!

So each package’s contents looked something like this:

And here’s a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what my worktable looked like a week ago:

So that was September – I’m really excited about what’s coming in October!  As I hinted at in the leethal ravelry group, October has a built in theme, and as you may know from this blog, I’ve always been a huge fan of Halloween creativity…  That’s as far as my hinting goes; you can tell from September’s club that I’m into giving the kits themes, so there will continue to be some kind of theme in each month’s club.

If you want to know more about the club in general, details are on the quick knits club page, and you can sign up for Oct alone, or a 3 month subscription.  Future club packages are always a mystery, which is part of the fun!  But if you like what you see here from September, I’ll bet you’ll like what’s to come in future months!