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.
HA!
Ok, so you want to see pictures of my organized side? Just click on the "YB PICTURES" link up there on the left. You see? I have potential.
However, that would be my public side. At home, it's a whole 'nother story...
I know a lady who used to work at a make-up counter in a department store. When I first met her (in 1994, to be exact) she asked to see my lipstick. She said she could tell me a little something about my personality based upon how I wear down the point.
The student of human nature in me could not resist.
She told me a number of things, as well as I remember, and we had some hearty giggles...but there is one thing she told me that I will never forget: "You like the idea of being organized, but can't seem to stay that way."
HA!
So anyway, I have bags. Lots of bags.
There is a rotating supply of handled bags of various shapes and sizes that call the floor under my kitchen table home base during most of the school year. These bags contain the individual Ziploc bags for the work of each after school student in two different schools, extra skeins so that they may switch colors as they see fit, and the completed squares waiting to either have ends sewn in or borders sewn on before the blanket is assembled.
Then, there is my main knitting bag. It's the one my parents bought me for Christmas right after I learned how to knit. I love this bag and it goes with me everywhere, but it's home base is on the floor in front of my nightstand so that I can work while watching tv after the kids go to bed. Inside this bag are several clear plastic bags with zippers, the kind new sheets and "Learn to Knit" kits come in, to hold all of my supplies and individual projects.
Then, there are the big bags. The kind tablecloths and comforters come in. I have...oh...I don't know...four of them, maybe? Filled with my stash. They used to hide out shamefully in my closet, but when I started Yellowbird I found I needed the stash more accessible. So now they're piled up proudly in a corner of my studio (aka my dining room).
We won't get into the baskets and boxes that have found themselves home for the hastily set-aside projects that got old, or balls of yarn from the tasting, or skeins that had been studied for the promise of particular pattern.
Someday, I will tame my wild sewing machine and whip up the needle case of my dreams. And I will have that studio/office with the stash proudly displayed in a vintage glass-front cabinet, not only allowing me to see all I have but also keeping it dust-free.
And who knows. I might even start wearing lipstick again.
