Knitting and Crochet Blog Week: Day 3 - Tidy Mind, Tidy Stitches

As Hubby and I've crocheted along over the years since we became yarncrafters (I had my first lesson in Nov '06 and Hubby's was in March '07), our yarn stash has grown. Sometimes we buy yarn because a particular pattern calls for it, sometime we buy yarn to substitute into a pattern we have, sometimes we buy yarn because we like it and we'll figure out what to use it for later, and once in a blue moon someone gives us yarn for free (woo hoo!).

Keeping the yarn organized was a challenge as our stash grew. At first, we just shoved it into blue Rubbermaid bins, then into an empty bookcase, then added an empty shoe organizer. When we moved a year ago, we de-stashed and gave away all our partially-used skeins to our crochet group. Then we organized the yarn by weight and packed it.

Now, our guest room doubles as the yarn room. We have more worsted then anything else, so it is organized by brand/color in our little bookcase and in one-and-a-half metal CD stands. The bulky yarns are in the other half of a CD stand.

Worsted/bulky yarn stash in the hall

The rest of the worsted weight yarn stash

2 and a half skeins of Lamb's Pride Worsted waiting for a project to find it

Then the lighter-weight yarns are organized in the cubbyholes of the shoe organizer.

Lighter weight yarns in the shoe organizer

We have all our crochet books together on a built-in bookshelf in the living room, and all of our loose patterns are placed in page protectors, then organized by project type into 2 big binders.

Our crochet books and patterns

Hooks and other tools are in a desk drawer in the guest room. Hooks and stitch markers are organized by type into different color plastic pencil boxes. I keep my Crochet Lite hooks in their own custom-made hook roll.

Organized crochet hooks

Tunisian crochet hooks and other tools in the hook/tool desk drawer

Once projects are in-progress or complete, I list them on my Ravelry project page. I blog about completed projects here, and on my shared Crocheting Blind blog. Since I began this blog before I became a crocheter, keeping progress notes wasn't on my blogging radar, but we planned from the start to feature our projects when we started the Crocheting Blind blog.