Tidy Mind, Tidy Stitches – 2KCBWDAY3
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 organized, blog about an aspect of that organization process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organized stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.
Ok, I know there are some crafters that are meticulously organized and have their workstations clean and tidy and everything has a home that it stays in. I applaud those people, and their workrooms are usually beautiful and I’m jealous of them. I am not one of those people. I can’t help it! I think it comes from the fact that I was an artist before I was a crafter, and artists are stereotypically chaotic. I fit that stereotype to. a. tee!
It’s not for a lack of trying, either. I bought these nice boxes from IKEA to organize my craft stuff. I have a box for “thin” yarn, a box for “thick” yarn, and a box for projects that are on needles that I haven’t worked on in a while. For the most part, the stuff inside those boxes is decently organized. It’s the stuff not in the boxes that’s a problem! For starters, I think I’ve out grown the boxes.
In the spirit o’ the topic, I took a quick tour of the apartment and snapped a photo of yarn everywhere I found it. I’m kind of embarrassed to post these pictures, but I’ll do it anyway, out of love for 2KCBWDAY3! I’m dedicated to the cause!
- Exhibit 1: The sock yarn keeping my envelopes company on my bookshelf. These are one shelf above the boxes that my yarn is actually supposed to live in.
- Exhibit 2: Sometimes the yarn doesn’t make it out of the bag it came home in until I start knitting with it.
- Exhibit 3: For some reason, the sweater for my Central Park Hoodie is hanging out on a crate in front of the closet, instead of being *in* the closet.
- Exhibit 4: There is a random ball of yarn sitting on an empty can of peanuts next to the phone that’s not even plugged in, on top of the file cabinet next to the couch. WHY??
- Exhibit 5: The box in the living room where I put whatever knitting notions are on the coffee table when company arrives.
- Exhibit 6: This bag has all my fiber. I think there’s a ball of yarn underneath it all.
I think my knitting is even less chaotic today than it was last week. I know it looks crazy. I know where everything is, though! Last time I organized my knitting stuff, The Sweater I No Longer Speak Of™ went missing for over a month. Surely you can see why I wouldn’t want to clean again!
Really though, as far as organization goes, the Stash feature on Ravelry has been a lifesaver. Once I know what yarn I’m looking for, I know where to find it, but there’s no way I could keep track of what yarn I have without my Stash. Every time I get new yarn, regardless of where it winds up in the house, I take a picture, make note of the color and dyelot, and immediately add it to my stash. It’s all a mystery from there!
10 COMMENTS
CraftyCripple
14 years agoI think without Ravelry most knitters wouldn’t have a clue what stash they had. I know I wouldn’t. It’s frightening how much yarn I have acquired in 3 short years. I dread to think what I’ll be like in 10 years if I don’t get a handle on my yarn addiction.
CraftyCripple
14 years agoBy the way the box on the top right hand side of the page with the four tabs on it: Latest, Popular, Comments and Tags, did you get the code for that from somewhere, if you did I’d love to know where as it cleans up the blog no end!
katili
14 years ago AUTHORThere might be a plugin for something similar, but this specific one came with my WooTheme.. it’s part of their framework or something.
naomi
14 years agoglad i’m not the only one!
Keri
14 years agoSee, I think you’re not only organized, but just plain artistic. That yarn ball next to the phone that isn’t plugged in? A genius bit of still life! Beautiful!
Misty
14 years agoI agree, the photo of the yarn with peanuts and phone is brilliant! I wish my randomly placed yarn had such an intriguing set up!
Tammy
14 years agoMe too! You should feel the shot of fear I get when someone asks a question about something in my stash…right now someone is waiting on an answer about a lot number…problem is, I have NO IDEA where that yarn is!
Alexandra
14 years agoI love looking at my stash on Ravelry! It’s so easy to find what I’m looking for!
rachel
14 years agoI really need to get my stash on Ravelry – that way I won’t forget about all the yarn that’s hiding away in the many baskets around my place.
Colleen
14 years agoWith two yarn-eating cats and a new puppy in the house, I have to keep my yarn stash at least *tidy* if not organized or it would be all over the house and likely ruined. I’ve got a little rubbermaid tower of drawers thing in my bedroom filled with needles, buttons, spare bits of yarn, rulers and the like in one drawer and sock yarn in the other two. The idea was that once I’d filled those with sock yarn, I would stop buying until I’d used some up. I bet you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I’ve got two medium-sized boxes on top of that filled with more sock yarn and two bags of Wollmeise on top of that.
I tend to only buy non-sock yarn when I’ve got a project in mind, so it usually doesn’t stay off the needles long enough to really be called stash, but I’ve got my older clear plastic snappy doodad in the back of my house with older bits of heavier yarn.
I’ve also got one tote bag in the living room that hangs next to the coats that I keep my WIPs in. Usually I’ve only got 1 or 2 projects going at once, so it perfectly holds two projects, yarn needles, stitch markers, a small ruler, some pens, and a few pairs of children’s scissors.