Knit Crochet Blog Week: Day 3 (2KCBWDAY3)

Day Three: 30th March. Tidy mind, tidy stitches.

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy  to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many  levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am  personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever  locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are  organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether  that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display  of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash  pages on Ravelry.

How do I keep my yarn organised? With great difficulty!

Really, what’s to say? I have some stacking boxes, none of which match or stack together properly. I have sock yarns in one, laceweight in another, and heavier yarns in a third. There is more yarn in boxes for weaving and felting and handspun has a box of its own.

I’m trying to get the stash under control — use it up, then buy no more and knit only handspun thereafter (I have a fleece problem to get under control.) I am not sure that life is long enough to achieve this. I must write a yarn will.

I’m better with needles: I recently blogged about my new interchangeable needle storage system and in that post there was small glimpse of how I store my straight needles — I use whisky tubes!

As of last weekend, the fixed circulars are in a very posh ( strong and rigid, with a magnetic clasp) chocolate box. If I could just sort out my DPNs, then I would be a happy (and organised) crafter.

DPNs are currently jumbled together in one of those posh soap boxes – you know, the long ones that hold three or four tablets of smelly soap? It stinks to high heaven and all my bamboo DPNs are now impregnated with the smell. I spend half my knitting time sneezing my head off.

Yes, this is what I really need to sort out!

Please leave suggestions in the comments… low cost ones. A needle roll would be lovely, but I’m not spending just now, and my sewing skills are… limited.

3 Comments

  1. March 30, 2011
    Reply

    Honestly, everything I try ends up looking like a mess as soon asI come to rummage for some needles, and swatch with multiple sizes. I think your storage solutions look just fine!

  2. March 30, 2011
    Reply

    What about cheap pencil boxes – cover them with fancy wrapping paper if you need. I just used a flower pot to put my longer needles in – and my mom bought me a cheaper needle storage case.

    Love your site – the name is terrific!

    Oh, and sincerely consider me for your yarn will!

    • March 31, 2011
      Reply

      Hi, Abigail – welcome to our little corner of the woolly world.

      I like pencil boxes, but I would want one large enough to take all my needles and have not found one yet. Of course, I’d need an internal system for keeping sizes together within the box.

      Small capacity (very) pencil boxes all-of-a-type would be excellent, if I could find a suitable way of keeping them all together.

      In a similar vein – spectacles cases of various types are really useful. I keep shawl pins in one, and cable needles in another for instance. These are the plastic tube kind, with pull off lid as one end, not the ordinary hinged ones.

      Oh, and sincerely consider me for your yarn will!

      Oh, nice try 🙂

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