I’m becoming quite the knitter.  I’ve bought books.  I’ve downloaded patterns.  And, I’ve bought yarn.  Lots of yarn.  Trellis.  Fun fur.  Super bulky.  Mohair.  I love the feel of soft yarns and the look of funky textured yarn.  The colors are beautiful and makes you want to knit everything.

Granted, most of the yarn I have, I inherited from the cousin of a friend of my mother (did you follow that?).  She was really into needle crafts and she had a yarn stash that could have filled a small yarn shop.  Since my mother crochets, she shared this huge stash with me.  Yayy!  This, folks, is how I’ve come to have lots o’yarn.

Add this new stashilious yarn to what I actually purchased and you now have a space & storage problem.  When you have lots of yarn, of course, you need to keep it organized.

Plan #1

I have tons of totes because I have a lot of stuff from crafting and making aromatherapy bath & body products for my small business.  I had two empty totes so I decided to store my yarn in the totes and tuck it in a corner in my bedroom.  Why my bedroom?  Because I wanted it to be close to me, that’s why.

This worked out great until I started going through patterns and learning about different yarn weights.  Apparently different weights work well with certain patterns.  Who would have thunk it?  I didn’t.  I thought you used worsted weight and added in the pretty stuff whenever you wanted.  Ok, those were my newbie days and I’ve gotten better since then.

Anywhoo, back to the yarn weight.  I was starting to buy yarn for certain patterns I wanted to try.  Yes, even with this huge stash I was still buying yarn (I said I was becoming obsessed didn’t I?).  One day I went through the totes and saw skeins of yarn in the weights I just bought.  Ah, that’s not cool.  After that, I sat down and sorted the yarn, bundled them in bags and put them back in the totes.  There!  That should keep me on the knitting straight and narrow.

The idea was good and worked, until it came time to look for certain colors in a certain weight.  I had to dig through both totes to find out I didn’t have what I needed.  Lucky for me, I’m not a speed knitter so it didn’t happen to often.

Plan #2

The totes worked well and it was out of the way.  Minx (my side kick cat) couldn’t bother it and it gave her a new object to climb.

No matter what store I’m in, if they sell yarn, I’m checking it out.  We were in Walmart one day picking up yarn for mom, who’s working on a Dallas Cowboys blanket for her bus driver, and I noticed how some of the yarn was stored in Jaffa blocks.  It was neat and you could readily see what was there.  You know, since I’ve been stuck on lazy these days, I’m all for making things work without the extra work on my part.

I had a wired rack set I purchased from Target when I was doing craft shows and it was just sitting in storage.  Over the weekend, I finally dug it out and decided to see if the Walmart storage idea would work for me.

As it turns out, it does work for me because (1) I can go to the rack and get what I want, (2) I can see what I have on hand and when my knit buddies come over, they can see what to they want to steal, and (c) I can use the bottom two compartments to hold books that I need to get to quickly.  After all, you always need to get to a book…quickly.

So, I’ll give this a try and see if it actually works.  I had some gold colored sheers I bought at a yarn sale over the summer and it works well to cover and keep the dust to a minimum.  I’m going to put a plant on top for a more decorative accent and viola (yes, I said viola)…she is done.

What do you think?  Do you have an out of control stash?  What do you do to keep your yarn organized?

Or in my case, knit! This week I went on a yarn shopping trip with two fellow crochet and knitters, Monique and Ciara. After looking up local yarn shops on Ravelry, we realized there was one right in our backyard. The Tanlged Web at 7900 Germantown Ave. It’s nice little shop filled to the brim with yarn of every kind. The sales people were as friendly and helpful (even when I asked a dumb question about the yarn winder thingey).

There will be moving to a new and larger location soon which promises to have a place to chat and create inside or outside. Sounds like we’ve found a new place to hang out this summer.

After leaving there we made our way to a thrift shop I used to frequent in Norristown. I went to find off to find yarn and needles and the ladies headed for the shoes and purses. By the time they made their way to the craft section, I’d found a $3 bundle of 9 sets of needles and a few bags of yarn that looked interesting. Can you believe that? Nine sets of needles for 3 bucks. I was a happy camper.

Then it was time to hit Michaels on the way to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. I found some yarn to break up a red blanket I’m working on (crocheting) and some chenille that was on sale. Of course, when I got to the register, it wasn’t on sale. The yarn was in the wrong bin. Fine. I put it back and we headed off the Factory.

Three lunch specials and a Coach bag later, we were on our way home with our goodies. Now we actually have to make something. Oh, and I did share my 9 pack with fellow knitter Ciara. She got 3 sets of needles out of the deal.