Knitting and Crocheting Blog Week - Day Three 2KCBWDAY3

So, today's assigned topic:

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.

And the answer is, in my case there's no good answer. Or, put another way, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Let's start with the easy way.

My yarn stash is arranged decoratively in crisp white cubes, sorted by weight, then by color. Individual planned projects are arranged in clear ziploc bags, each one labeled with a copy of the pattern (in its own acrylic protector, of course) inside the bag, but visible to aid in immediate identification.

(Are you buying this?)

Each yarn is assigned a personalized identification number (a PIN for short, if you're still believing this crap) that matches an entry in the Ravelry database where, if you're still believing any of this utter fabrication, a clear photo and description of yardage and colorway and dye lot are also contained.

(Okay, this isn't working, even for me. I know that friends lie to friends all the time but this one is really pushing the envelope. We're going to have to do this the hard way.)

First of all, what do you know about tectonic plates? All you really need to know is that, as portions of the earth expand and contract, bodies of land are shifted and moved onto each other, creating crevices and mountains. Every so often a really bad movement might result in things like dinosaurs being purged from the earth, but that's really a seldom thing. Here's something that may help you understand what all this means in terms of stash management.

Okay, are we clear? No? Okay, perhaps I need to explain further.

In the master bedroom, there's an area that we'll call "The Appalachians." This mountain range consists of bags (some project bags, some shop bags) each with yarn in them. Here, for instance, is the cobalt blue Miss Babs yarn I bought at Stitches last year to make a shawl.  And the (almost the same color blue) Malabrigo worsted, also from Stitches, that was going to be a Cheryl Oberle shawl. And there are some miscellaneous skeins of sock yarn. Come to think of it, probably everything in this range came from Stitches last year. This range could be considered the "OMG! I just bought this at Stitches and I'm going to work on it right away so I need it near to me!" pile. And, yes, I know Stitches was almost a year ago. Your point?

Upstairs, "The Rockies" used to be in the extra bedroom. but got moved to "The Shenandoahs" next door when grandson Cole was there. The Rockies mostly consisted of yarn bought in the 2004-2010 era (hereinafter called The Spenderiferous Era). Lots of impulse purchases that have never come to fruition. Storage in this area consisted of lots and lots of large straw beach bags with no organization whatsoever.

Earlier this year, The Rockies got combined with The Shenandoahs. The Rockies materials date from pre-history through our move to Atlanta. Meaning there's yarn in here older than my daughters. Now "The Rockendoahs" have experienced a number of landslides and even a few volcanic eruptions. When we first bought the house, The Rockies were beautifully organized in bins on shelving (Mr. Pug took care of that!). Now just walking around in The Rockendoah area is treacherous, and requires pinions and ropes.

Okay, see why there are no photos? I thought you'd see it my way.