UFOs

Ravelry has the delightful category for projects known as "hibernating." We all have them. I know I have plenty of them...the projects that somehow lost their allure for me. Typically, they're the ones that have became difficult or annoying to knit. Or the season changed and the project became inappropriate. (Somehow, working on a wool sweater in July in St. Louis just isn't attractive.)

So what becomes of these Unfinished Objects? For me, it depends. If a project has become so unpalatable that I know I'll never get back it, I'll frog it. That decision might be sped up if I want to use the yarn for something else. 

But if I think I'm going to actually start knitting a project again, it goes into one of two places.  For the ones just taking a nap, they'll languish in their project bags, waiting for me to pick them up again. The ones that are truly hibernating are moved into my Kangaroom purse/yarn organizer, which hangs in the closet. (Note that the picture is from Kangaroom's website, it's not a picture of my own organizer, which is difficult for me to photograph in the depths of the closet). Occasionally, but not very often, I dig around in there and see what's waiting for me. It's cheaper than satisfying my itch for something different by going to the yarn store!

How about you? How do you store your UFOs? At what point do you retire them?

Destashing

The Organized Knitting Club is all about organizing our knitting stuff...and I specifically concern myself with yarn. I'm a professional organizer, and the first thing clients and I usually do together is declutter.  It's a rare client indeed who doesn't have extra stuff she's willing to part with to make life a little more organized. 

So I challenge you to take a critical look at your stash. Do you have some balls of yarn that have been languishing? Do you ever pick up some yarn and put it right back down because you don't like the way it feels? Is there a color or two in there you just can't figure out what to do with? Perhaps you've started knitting with a certain yarn, then frogged it because you didn't like the way it knitted up. There's no reason you should keep this yarn. Lighten the load and donate it. (Incidentally, this is the same advice I give clients when it comes to clearing out their closets...if a garment doesn't make you feel fabulous, consider parting with it.) In an earlier post, I mentioned a worthy group, Interim House, who will gratefully accept your yarn donations.

Weeding out is one way to destash. Another is to make a commitment to using your stash, rather than buying new yarn. Personally, I think this is easier said than done (I get really excited by patterns sometimes), but it's a worthy endeavor. It helps your pocketbook, saves you space, helps you keep things neat and organized. For advice and encouragement on this journey, there are several Ravelry groups that can help (and I'm sure this is just a small sampling of what's out there):

Stash Knit Down 2008

Stash Busters!

Stash for Cash

Sock Stash Elimination Campaign

A third option is to swap yarn. If you have a yarn you no longer love (or perhaps never did), you might lucky enough to swap it for something you'd adore. It's a "one woman's trash is another woman's treasure" kind of thing. There are many swap groups on Ravelry. Just search the groups using the term "swap" and you'll see all the kinds of swaps available.

Flylady, the homespun guru of decluttering and creating habits, says "You can't organize clutter." If your stash is cluttered with yarn you'll never use, declutter it and then you can organize the stuff that deserves a place in your home.

Measuring the oddball yarns

One of the benefits of having an organized stash is that you can find (and use) yarn that's leftover from other projects. But what do you do if part of the ball has been used? How can you tell how much is left in the ball?

One higher-tech answer is to use some sort of meter that you'd thread the yarn on the way to a ball winder. By the time you finished re-winding the yarn, you'd know just how much yarn you had to work with.

Such a meter is sold through some knitting catalogs and I was tempted to buy one, though I balked at the $50 price tag. I mentioned it to Rachel, a wonderful employee of my local LYS, Knitorious, and she told me that she had purchased one, but that she learned that it was actually designed to measure fishing wire. That's okay, except that it actually damaged the yarn. She even offered to give me hers, but I declined, for obvious reasons. I don't want to damage my yarn.

But there's hope. Rachel told me about a website for a DIY yardage counter. Check it out. It doesn't look too hard to do. When I have some time and the help of my handy friend Sally, I'm going to make one. And I'll report back here.

I was mentioning this to a knitting friend, who pointed out another solution, one much more low-tech and apparently something people who sew know all about. Just measure the distance from the tip of your nose to the tip of your outstretched fingers when your arm is held all the way out to your side. Then, hold your yarn between your thumb and forefinger on your right hand and hold it at your nose with your other hand. Stretch out your right hand (as you did when you made the initial measurement), letting the yarn glide through the fingers of your left hand. Repeat. See how many times you can do that with your ball of yarn and add it all together.

Organizing the WiPs

When I look at my stash -- which I wish I could say was beautifully organized, but that would be a bit of a lie -- I realize that one of my obstacles is dealing with the works in progress (WiPs). Recently I finished a project (Quant, from Knitty) and realized I didn't know what I was going to work on next. Now, I have no shortage of WiPs, but most are what I would call abandoned projects. And they're tucked away in the Kangaroom purse organizer that I mentioned in last week's post. It's going to be awhile before I feel like working on those projects again.

So when I ran out of things I wanted to knit, I went through my pattern notebook and found a sweater and a poncho that I wanted to make. I then started on the delicious process of deciding on yarn and color and actually finding and purchasing the yarn. So now I've started the projects and the yarn's just sitting in shopping bags on top of my stash cubes. I'm all about form over function, but that' just plain ugly.


When I started looking at things, I realized that I have some other WiPs that I wouldn't consider abandoned. And they're basically cluttering up my stash cubes as well. So what's the solution? One method that's worked well for a long, long-term project (Barbara Walker's Learn-to-Knit Afghan, for which I'll eventually knit 63 eight-by-eight squares in 63 different stitch patterns) is to store the completed squares in a large pop-up cube and the square-in-progress in a bag. I use a cosmetics case for this project, one that I purchased from Target. It holds a ball or two of yarn, the square in progress on the needles, the pattern book, and stitch markers. Here it is.



So I thought I'd adapt that idea by storing my WiPs that I'm actually working on (or might be working on soon) in knitting bags. That way, I can just grab the bag for the project I want to work on. So I emptied the unsightly plastic grocery bags and put the projects into the various and sundry bags I had on hand. I added hand-written tags to identify the project contained in each bag. Then I lined them up for a photo. It's sort of a motley looking group of bags, but it's organized and not too ugly!


It occurs to me that I nice coat tree might store the WiP bags nicely. A sweater organizer would do the trick, too, if I had rod space in my closet for it. Or a book shelf would work. Right now, floor space is what I have, so there the bags rest.

What about you? How do you store your works in progress?

Where to store that stash

Last week, I talked about the steps involved in sorting out your stash (figuring out how you use it and therefore how you should organize it), then sorting and purging. Once you've accomplished that, you're ready to make some decisions about how to store all the yarn you saved. In last week's post, I cautioned you not to buy storage until after you've sorted and purged, so that you'll buy appropriate containers.

But once you've decided how you want to organize your yarn, you've sorted and purged your stash, and you know the sizes of containers you need for each category of yarn, you can move on to the fun part: buying containers. (At least that's my idea of a good time.)

What containers should you buy? It depends on your aestethic, on your space, and, of course, on what you're trying to store. So I'll run through some options here.

Personally, at the moment I use pop-up cloth storage cubes. I got them at Home Goods for $10 for a package of six (two each of three different sizes). They're not gorgeous, but they're functional. Here's a photo of one of the cubes, the one that contains my worsted weight yarn. Since I have so much Cascade 220, I put all it on the bottom of the cube and put a file folder on top of the Cascade 220 to separate it from the rest of the worsted.


To label the cubes, I use old-fashioned wooden clothespins with labels attached. (I use my handy Brother PTouch labelmaker for the labels.) I like this method because I can easily move the clothespin if I put that category of yarn in another container. Here's a close-up of the labels for the worsted container. There are two clothespins on the cube because there are two categories in it.


I also have small categories of yarn in my stash that are types, rather than weights, of yarn. I store them in plastic kitchen canisters on a bookshelf in my craft room.


So that's how I do it. You can probably tell that I value function over form. And that I don't have a gigantic stash. If you're more into things looking great, there are still lots of options. Here are a few favorites.

I happen to own this purse organizer from Kangaroom. I use it for works in progress and for other random things, but it could definitely be used to hold stash. In fact, Kangaroom now markets it that way. They're calling it a "hanging yarn organizer." You can find the description here:



Sweater organizers are great, too. Like the Kangaroom yarn organizer, these organizers typically are made to hang over the rod of a closet. So if you have a spare closet with some rod space, you can set up a nice system. Here's one from the Container Store that I like. It's translucent, so you can see the colors from all sides.


If closet space is at a premium, you could even buy a rolling garment rack to hang these organizers on. If dust is an issue, get one with a cover, like Shae shared with us in the OKC discussion boards at Ravelry. Over at Lowe's, they call this a "portable closet".




Getting away from organizers, there's the wire cube option, which Dulcedosa recommended in the OKC discussion boards on Ravelry.

Then there's furniture. Any type of chest or drawers or dresser or cabinet can be converted into a fabulous yarn-storage system. In my opinion, labels are crucial to keep items stored out of sight straight. If you can't stand the look on the label on the outside of a drawer, consider putting in on the top edge of the drawer, visible only when you open the drawer. You can repurpose a piece of furniture or find one cheaply at a flea market or yard sale.

Of course, plastic bins work well and many people store their yarn in zip-top plastic bags. Those tend to not stack very easily, so may not be space efficient. But they're a great way to separate categories within another type of container.

These are just a few ideas. I'll share more later. If you store your yarn in different ways, please feel free to share your stash storage solutions in the comments!

Getting started organizing your stash

Depending on how big your stash is, the prospect of organizing it can be daunting. But you acquired all that yarn because you love yarn, right? Isn't the thought of cleaning out and organizing your stash more appealing than, say, cleaning out and organizing your garage?

The first step in the process is to plan. Think about how you use your yarn. Do you select a pattern, then go to your stash to see if you have any yarn to use for it? If so, it might make most sense to organize it by weight. Put all your worsted-weight yarn together, your bulky, etc.

Or do you go to your stash looking for a specific color to work with? Then maybe you should organize it by color.

Perhaps you think about new projects by type. You think to yourself, "I want to knit a pair of socks." Or, "I feel like making a lace shawl." In that case, perhaps you would want to group your stash by type of yarn.

Think about your favorite LYS. How do they organize their yarn? There's a yarn store in the town I grew up in, Walla Walla, Washington, called Knitochet. The owner organizes the yarn by color. It's gorgeous. When I was there over Christmas, I wanted to make a pink scarf for my mother. So a store organized by color was perfect. But I would never organize my stash that way -- I go shopping in my stash for yarn for specific patterns. So I organize by weight, with a few special categories for types of yarn thrown in for good measure.

If you can identify how you use your stash, you can figure out how to organize it. Once you've come up with categories, it's time to sort it. Just dive in. You have your categories set up, so assign a box or bin (or bins) for each category. Labels can be helpful. An index card, Post-it, or piece of paper attached with a binder clip is easy to make, doesn't fall off, but is movable if the size of your bin needs to change. Pick up each ball or skein, fondle it, then put it in the appropriate bin.

If you come across yarn that you hated working with, or that turned out to be scratchy, or was just a bad idea in the first place, consider letting it go. Your stash should be populated by yarn you love. Your local knitting guild might accept yarn for charity knitting. You might be able to swap it with knitting friends. Or you could consider donating it to Interim House in Philadelphia, a residential alcohol and drug rehab center for women that has a terrific knitting program. I blogged about my knitting group's donation to Interim House here.

Once you've sorted everything out and let go of what you don't love -- and I realize this might take some time, depending on the size of your stash -- you can figure out how you want to store your stash. Here's a dire warning: Don't go shopping for containers until you've completed the sorting and purging. You won't know what you need before you've accomplished that. You could waste money on inappropriate containers. This is money you could have used for yarn.

Watch this space: Next Tuesday I'll talk about some storage options for your stash. In the meantime, figure out how you want to organize your yarn and start that sorting!

Intro from Janine

Jenean asked me to introduce myself. I'm Janine Adams, owner of Peace of Mind Organizing in St. Louis, Missouri, and an enthusiastic knitter. I'll be contributing weekly posts on organizing your yarn stash.

I began knitting in January 2005, six months before I started my organizing business. (I was a freelance writer for ten years before that.) I knit almost every day and while I'm by no means an advanced knitter, I'm sure enjoying the learning process. Right now I'm learning entrelac by making the Quant headband from Knitty. I love making felted items. The resulting fabric seems like magic to me, and it hides all sorts of mistakes. I think one of my favorite FOs is the felted intarsia Wobbly Circles tote I made last year. I blogged about it on my organizing (and sometimes knitting) blog here.

As a professional organizer, I love organizing stuff, naturally. One of the things I love organizing in my own house is my knitting stuff, including my stash, needles, notions, and patterns. It's a constant, if enjoyable, challenge.

I'm always interested in the ways people store their stashes and even more interested in how they organize them. (Sort yarn by weight? Color? Fiber? The possibilities seem virtually limitless.) I look forward to presenting some cool ideas on this blog!