Felted Knitting Needle Roll

Lots of knitting needles but nowhere to put 'em? What about endless crochet hooks poking out of your yarn bag?  This may be the project for you!  I'm going to show you how to create a knitted, felted roll to contain many long, slim objects (knitting needles, crochet hooks, paint brushes, whatever you think up).  You do not have to be an experienced knitter or felter, as I'm a beginner at both!  This is not, however, a quickie project.  It does take some time, both for the felting and for the knitting (you will be knitting a rather large object).  

This instructable is designed to take you through the whole process from start to finish - we'll make a gauge swatch, felt it, do the math to figure out how big our piece needs to be, make that, felt it, and then finish it up!  The great part about this tutorial is that it embraces my love of free-style knitting and pattern creation.  You don't have to use the exact wool, needles or pattern that I used, I'll give you the tools to figure out how to make your own pattern guide for your own needles/hooks/whatever you're going to store in this roll.

Don't be worried about the felting!  There are lots of online directions for felting in a washing machine, but we will be felting by hand, as a favour to all of my fellow front-loader-washing-machine folks.  It's not difficult, it's not scary, and it's really rewarding!

If you can knit, you can do this, I promise!

Step 1 Materials and Skills, both required and optional

Required skills:
-Knitting, purling, casting on, binding off. If you don't know how to do these, there are MANY instructables to help you out, and I particularly like the instructions that you can find at Carleyy's page: http://www.instructables.com/member/Carleyy/
-Basic math skills (percentages, counting...)
-A willingness to try something that may be new!

Required materials:
-Measuring tape
-Knitting needles (I used US size 10.5/6.5mm ones, but any needles that are a couple sizes larger than the 'recommended' ones on your yarn band will work)
-Yarn (I used Paton's Classic Wool in Too Teal, but any yarn will work provided it is from an animal source. No cottons, acrylics, bamboos etc, as they won't felt!  Start with a relatively reasonably priced yarn - pricey fibres are lovely, but for a first project it's better to feel confident that making a mistake won't break the bank).
-A clean sink with hot water
-Dish soap
-A bamboo mat (the sushi ones work beautifully, but don't use one that you can't live without as some might not handle being agitated in hot water very well)
-Tapestry needle.
-Old, lint-free towels.
-A whiteboard or notebook for doing some calculations

Optional skills that make the whole process a bit nicer:
-Rubber gloves (felting likes hot water, your skin may not...)
-A counting device (you will knit many rows, it's good to keep track of them)
-Calculator (unless you want to do math in your head....)
-A crochet hook (to weave in the ends).

A note about dye transfer: I didn't have this problem, but I've read about dye leaching out of fabric when it's wet.  When you're blotting water out of your felted projects, use old towels that are lint free and dye-fast themselves; essentially you want a towel that you don't care too much about in case the project transfers some dye, but you also want to make sure it's a towel that isn't heavily dyed itself, as the dye could transfer to your project.  So an old, white towel is best.  

Also note that there could be dye transfer to the bamboo mat.  This didn't happen in my case, but if you have an antique family heirloom bamboo mat, maybe don't use it?