Tidy mind, tidy stitches

The third of seven topics:

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.

Organization, I think, is not exactly my forte. I'm sort of a clutter-accumulating-until-it-drives-me-crazy-or-company-is-coming-so-I-need-to-clean kind of person. I admire people who are organized and who derive enjoyment from the organizational process. This is one of the things that appeals to me about Chez Larsson. I doubt I'll ever be that organized mainly because overall organization falls low on my scale of Things That Are Important. Obvious things need organization - work files, financial/household/tax info. I'm not good at habitually organizing our household records. It's only the approaching tax time that forces me to get the prior year in order.

Shockingly, next to work items, my knitting accoutrements are probably the most organized set of items in the Haus. My library is listed on Ravelry, as is my stash. When we moved a couple of years ago, I needed to get the stash organized and ready to be put into storage while we showed the house and when we moved. I took the opportunity to photograph the yarn and place it on Ravelry. The hard part, of course, is keeping the system current.

The advantage to organizing my stash is that I have "shopped" from the stash much more than I had in the past. (About 90% of my current WIPS are from stash!) I'd often forget what I had acquired and, if I did remember the yarn, I couldn't remember where it was, or how much I had, or what the exact color was, and it was too much bother to spend a whole evening (or more) searching for it. When a knitter wants to cast on, they want to cast on now (or, at least, I do).

On Ravelry, not only is there a photo of the yarn, but I've noted where it is stored. (How nice to go right to the closet, open the door, and pull out the numbered bin that has the yarn in it!) I love that Ravelry shows the yardage I have. No more having to pull out all the yarn to see if I've got enough. As soon as I get a cell phone that has a data plan, I'll even be able to check my library or my stash while considering a purchase of a book, pattern, or yarn at my LYS.

While it took a couple of hours each night for a couple of weeks to organize the stash, it was well worth it. Yes, it took me awhile, but the time really wasn't that much when compared with the amount of time I was wasting due to the disorganization. And whatever leaves more time for knitting is a good thing.

And now - gratuitous cat photo.