Many months ago, in the before-time when we were able to go places and look at things and buy them in person, I bought the neatest handmade oak cabinet for my pen accessories. Perhaps it was originally a jewelry case, as the top drawer is sectioned off and lined with red felt. The other drawers are unlined though, and recently I thought it would be fun to knit drawer liners with leftover sock yarn. There weren’t any patterns in Ravelry that were similar to what I had in mind, but there was a table runner in fingering weight with a width close to what I wanted. That gave me a starting point for how many stitches to cast on and what needle to start with.

After a couple of tries, I landed on a cast-on of 92 stitches with size 2 needles. I did a garter border but then as I started thinking about the body, I decided I wanted some kind of ridge to create valleys for pens to rest in. I did a few rows of k6, p2 / p6, k2 but that wasn’t creating a ridge on the stockinette side, so I switched to a garter ridge instead of a purl ridge. Nope, that didn’t work either, so I went back to the purl ridge. Though it created a dip on the smooth “right” side, it made a nice ridge on the purled “wrong” side, and I decided I just needed to adjust my thinking and switch right and wrong.

I kept knitting until I ran out of yarn and after blocking I ended up with a rectangle about 13″ by 4″. It’s a good length for the drawers but I want it deeper to fill the whole drawer, so I need about 40 grams to get a piece 13″ x 9″.

However, what I discovered is that 4″ is the perfect length for my Kaweco pens, and I happened to have exactly enough spots for all of them!

This was a fun little weekend distraction, and I’m looking forward to making a full-size version soon!