30 March 2011

Day three: Tidy Mind, tidy stitches

Thank you once again for the comments on yesterday's post, I saw some very useful hints and tips to improve my knitting!


(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 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.


Well, the answer truly was 'it's really not organised at all'! So I took the dare. I will show you where my yarn and needles are stashed away. Prepare to be horrified! (I apologise in advance for the horrribly lit pictures, the weather today is truly depressing so I couldn't get any light on most of these spots)

Spot #1. Here's where I stash larger projects that would be in the way on my desk. Usually, these are knitting projects that are on the needles or old things that I haven't frogged yet. The bag is one of the first things I crocheted that wasn't an amigurumi and is made from the stiff acrylic yarn that I got from a friend once (and complained heavily about on this blog before) as a very specific stashbust-project. Or rather, a project to bust the stash of that particular yarn. I was getting rather sick of finding little sprigs of red-blue-yellow plastic throughout my good (or at least, better) stash because holymotherofwhoa was that yarn horrific! I ended up with strands of hard plastic cutting my fingers so often that I think there's still a bloodstain on this bag from it.



Spot #2. There is actually only one little spool of yarn on my desk at the moment, and it's rather neatly tucked away in a spot that I wasn't using anyway. But this picture was not to show you my yarn stash. Or to shock you with my terribly messy desk (which, I admit, really needs a reorganisation. Pronto.) This, ladies and gentlemen, is where most of my hooks are usually kept. Somewhere.

I do a lot of crocheting at this desk because it's truly a form of stress release for me, so I grab hook and yarn in breaks from school work or when I'm sick of doing things behind the computer but still want to listen to music, or when I'm not in the mood for computer-things but want to keep my boyfriend company (whose desk is facing mine, so he's behind that big screen to the left).
I'm just terrible at keeping hooks and needles in one place, though, so as I type this I can spot three crochet hooks and one sewing needle within an arms length.

Spot #3. This is behind the chair in the previous picture. See the pencil case with the frogs in the back? That is where my hooks, needles, loose buttons, pieces of felt and other crafty things are when they're not strewn across my desk. Here, there are three balls of yarn that I've recently used: the orange-ey, skin-coloured one to the left was from making my Mini-Me, the blue and red one is one of the first balls of sock yarn I've ever bought because I liked the colours (they remind me of bricks) and still hadn't used yet so I thought I'd try my hand at a simple knitted project: the Lacy Baktus. After ripping it out so often I lost count, I just rammed the needles into the ball and threw it aside. The purple ball of merino in the back is one I got in a swap last year and still haven't used because I haven't found the right project for it!

Spot #4. Ah, here we go. Finally, a stash that looks somewhat organised. Here is where I keep most of my yarn, tucked away in plastic bins or bags (or cardboard box, because I couldn't fit that in the bins or bags anymore). It's slowly starting to take over what little space i had left for books, so I'm afraid we'll have to move soon for lack of shelfspace.
I haven't really organised this in any way other than 'this fits in this space, right there...' 'and this can go here...' 'and if I put this here, then the box can still close.'

Spot #5. I think if I kept looking, I could find more little hideouts where there's yarn (I think there's still a ball of green and grey somewhere from when my vacuum tried to eat it and got it tangled up into eachother so badly I could call it variegated bulky yarn and be done with it which I haven't had the time or heart to try and untangle or throw away). This little bag is worth noting though, because it's the first yarn-related gift I have gotten from my friends. It's a knitting kit: 2 balls of bright green yarn, one set of 5.5 mm bamboo needles, a set of lucky charms and needles and thread, and a pattern for a little bag! I've still not gotten round to either making the thing or putting this away.


And there you have it! That's where I keep all my stuff!

4 comments:

  1. I am loving looking at everyones stuff - a big thanks for your pics, love it.

    Forgot - I have 3 tops that need to be frogged at the bottom of my wash basket!

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  2. Looking at other people's posts makes me feel less horrified about my own crazy craft locations. I may have sorted my stash but I have sewing, quilting and projects EVERYWHERE. I was too ashamed so share pictures of THOSE!

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  3. That's not so bad.. I love reading other people's blogs about today's topic XD

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  4. Basically, where ever you are in your house, there's yarn nearby. That doesn't seem like a problem to me! :)

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