Tidying Yarn Stash

As my knee is feeling quite a bit better I decided that I should give myself a prod and do some housework that has been skimmed over a lot lately. After cleaning the bedrooms and bathroom I decided that I really should venture into the box/junk room. I keep all things yarny in there and it had disintegrated into a plastic bag nightmare pile of oddments. I decide that in order to use the odd balls up then I needed to at least put them into some sort of order.

It is so easy to keep the newer larger amounts tidy. I use a small bookcase for that but the oddments look untidy no matter how you sort them. I have been using storage boxes with lids and bags but as every bag contained multiple colours it was hard to sort colours out when I wanted to make something. Now I have a bag with all shades of purple, one with white based, creams and lemons, shades of blue, shades of green and blacks. I have gone with colours rather than thickness.

I can see a lot of multi coloured All Shawls, Granny squares and striped baby blankets in my future. Now they are more organised it makes me more determined to make things with them. The box room still looks messy but at least now I have a better idea of what colours and amounts that I have now.

The pink baby coat is being made with some wool that I bought from Abakhan. It is Baby Shimmer DK by James C Brett and has a silky thread running through it. The pattern is one that I got from Purplelinda the other week and is Sirdar 1798. The puff stitch fairly eats the yarn and I have almost used 100 grams and have yet to finish the body before making the sleeves.

Break over so it is time to finish off hoovering the stairs. I think that I will leave the downstairs cleaning until tomorrow.

Organising my Stash and Sundries

The photo today is two more bookmarks that I made last night. I think I have finished making them now. On to something else now.

As some of you already know I used to have wool shops. When the last of these closed I was left with lots of bits and bats. Ribbons, elastic and buttons that didn't sell in my closing down sale. These usually reside in my loft but since I have been making bits for the raffles I have needed to go up into the loft to find lace and ribbons so I have decided to use my tiny box bedroom as a stock room. Trips to my loft are fraught with danger at the moment due to my dodgy knee and an unwieldy loft ladder. I think therefore that I will be safer with everything to hand. Last night I wanted a piece of elastic and knew that I had some in the loft so this prompted my decision to bring everything downstairs.

I have wrangled the single divan bed against the wall to make more room.I need to keep it for visitors. Why do mattresses not have handles any more? The mattress had a life of it's own when I tried to wrestle it into position. The full packs of wool in my stash are easy to store. I have a bookcase that I am using for those but it is so hard to store the part balls of stash wool that tangle themselves together at the slightest movement. I tidy them up and put them into storage boxes and then go back later to find that the unravelling fairy has been into the box and tangled the ends together again.

I want my dining room back. I am not the tidiest of people at the best of times but having balls of wool, ribbons and lace all over the lounge and the dining room whilst I make the raffle projects are starting to get on my nerves so it must be bad! Normally I don't notice.

I haven't as yet brought the boxes down from the loft so wish me luck and pray that I don't fall down the loft ladder carrying a box. I will let you know if I managed to get everything down tomorrow. The room is very small so it will be a really tight squash in there.