I organized my yarn stash this past week. James helped.
Organizing your yarn stash is sort of like going yarn shopping, but better (!) because you find all this yarn that you really love and realize, "it's already mine!"
I'm not a serious crocheter ("serious" meaning "I shop at real yarn stores.") If you know a little about "good" yarn, you probably know that to acquire a sizable stash of "good" yarn you must work seven full time jobs. With overtime.
I am content to shop at ("serious" knitters and crocheters, please skip this part...) JoAnn's. Well, I'm at least resigned to shopping there. I mean, could you really be content with this...
if you could afford this...
But until a mysterious long lost great, great aunt leaves me her fortune (or her vintage yarn stash), I will have to make do with JoAnn's. In JoAnn's defense, I've gotten some lovely yarn there, and have made some very lovely things with that yarn. And they take unlimited coupons. I repeat, unlimited coupons. So thanks to JoAnn's, numerous coupons, and my severely disproportionate creative ambition vs. time to actually create, I've managed to build myself a nice little yarn stash. I've seen some pretty mammoth size yarn stashes, and thanks to photos of aforementioned towering stashes on Pinterest, I have gratefully put my own mini-stash in perspective.
My yarn stash is organized in a very efficient, very non-classy way. I've used two sets of Sterilite plastic drawers (not classy, but still a huge improvement over the cardboard boxes and crumpled old shopping bags I had previously been using) One set of drawers is just unimpressive acrylic yarns in varying weights. The other, which I show you here, has my cotton, cotton blends, and wool blends, as well as my patterns and supplies. I used fancy paper and scotch tape to label the drawers.
While sorting through my stash, I realized it might be helpful to also label various yarns with the projects I had intended them for. Smart, right? I thought so.
The top drawer holds my binder of patterns and ideas, hooks, and other various supplies (scissors, stitch markers, needles, etc...).
On top of the drawers I'm keeping a few of my favorite baskets (read more about how much I love them here. Oh, and they're from JoAnn's!). They're for storing (and transporting around the house) my current small projects/works in progress.
There are still bits and pieces of my creative self scattered around the house. It will take me a while to get it all under control, but at least the yarn has a place and it's not on the floor :)
Do you have a yarn stash that you love? Every crafter knows there is no such thing as too much yarn, so there's no need to fret over that. But if you're wondering how you measure up to other yarn lovers, you can take this quiz from allfreecrochet.com:
Organizing your yarn stash is sort of like going yarn shopping, but better (!) because you find all this yarn that you really love and realize, "it's already mine!"
I'm not a serious crocheter ("serious" meaning "I shop at real yarn stores.") If you know a little about "good" yarn, you probably know that to acquire a sizable stash of "good" yarn you must work seven full time jobs. With overtime.
I am content to shop at ("serious" knitters and crocheters, please skip this part...) JoAnn's. Well, I'm at least resigned to shopping there. I mean, could you really be content with this...
if you could afford this...
But until a mysterious long lost great, great aunt leaves me her fortune (or her vintage yarn stash), I will have to make do with JoAnn's. In JoAnn's defense, I've gotten some lovely yarn there, and have made some very lovely things with that yarn. And they take unlimited coupons. I repeat, unlimited coupons. So thanks to JoAnn's, numerous coupons, and my severely disproportionate creative ambition vs. time to actually create, I've managed to build myself a nice little yarn stash. I've seen some pretty mammoth size yarn stashes, and thanks to photos of aforementioned towering stashes on Pinterest, I have gratefully put my own mini-stash in perspective.
My yarn stash is organized in a very efficient, very non-classy way. I've used two sets of Sterilite plastic drawers (not classy, but still a huge improvement over the cardboard boxes and crumpled old shopping bags I had previously been using) One set of drawers is just unimpressive acrylic yarns in varying weights. The other, which I show you here, has my cotton, cotton blends, and wool blends, as well as my patterns and supplies. I used fancy paper and scotch tape to label the drawers.
While sorting through my stash, I realized it might be helpful to also label various yarns with the projects I had intended them for. Smart, right? I thought so.
The top drawer holds my binder of patterns and ideas, hooks, and other various supplies (scissors, stitch markers, needles, etc...).
On top of the drawers I'm keeping a few of my favorite baskets (read more about how much I love them here. Oh, and they're from JoAnn's!). They're for storing (and transporting around the house) my current small projects/works in progress.
There are still bits and pieces of my creative self scattered around the house. It will take me a while to get it all under control, but at least the yarn has a place and it's not on the floor :)
Do you have a yarn stash that you love? Every crafter knows there is no such thing as too much yarn, so there's no need to fret over that. But if you're wondering how you measure up to other yarn lovers, you can take this quiz from allfreecrochet.com:
Let me know how you fair! (I scored an 11)
I'm not a knitter but I love creating order out of chaos, categorising and labeling, yup I really get your joy over this:)
ReplyDeleteHousehold "order" tends to elude me, but at least my yarn does what I tell it to!
DeleteMy new mission is to introduce you the joys of Hobby Lobby. There may be a tad less selection of yarn but I can't not love them now with how they've stood up to Obamacare and the rest of the store...oh my, you will love it. I've been trying to use up some of my stash and I have to tell you, it's been making knitting less fun. I don't love the yarn I'm using so I just don't get excited to work with it. I've been in the fancy yarn shops locally. One is hysterical (and not that expensive!). The owner keeps her pet parrot there and he'll talk to the kids :) The other is a little more foo-foo.
ReplyDeleteI've been saying for quite a while now that I'd like to switch my allegiances to Hobby Lobby, but I keep putting it off b/c it's just not in a convenient location for me. You've persuaded me to give it a go. I've read some great reviews of their "I love this wool" brand of yarn. :)
DeleteLove the organizer - but your little peanut stole the show! So cute!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Annery! I like him a lot too!
DeleteI love that you posted this (I linked to it from Facebook) because I can totally get on board with a yarn post about a yarn stash on Friday night!!! I have a ridiculous stash of yarn...I even have a yarn dresser...mostly filled (ok..stuffed) with yarn I can no longer afford. I try to work only out of the dresser but sometimes yarn still calls to me from the store. Have you looked at Knit Picks? I love their yarn and I find it affordable and just as nice as some of the fancy stuff and it comes in the mail :)
ReplyDelete