My Yarn Hangup

Yarn is beautiful and soft and makes me want to form it into things that are beautiful and soft.  As many of us do, I have too much of it, and I can't seem to stop buying it!  Luckily for my budget, I'm a thrift shop hound, a garage sale fanatic, a half-price hunter, so I don't end up bankrupting myself with my habit.  Unfortunately I do find my office/craft space full of the stuff.

When you are in the habit of buying "used" yarn, it usually comes in less than whole skeins.  Of course, the best find is a bunch of full skeins in the same color and dye lot, but that's the jackpot!  Most of the time, I have bits and pieces from these kinds of purchases.  I have learned to hand roll them into balls (have yet to try a winder) and put a rubber band around them to keep them from unrolling.  It works very well for storing them in bags.

My original yarn "organization."

We could have a long discussion on the advisability and environmental and social impacts of shopping at the The Dollar Tree, but really there are some things you can only find at these stores for a halfway decent price.  One of those things is giant Ziploc bags from "The Home Store" which is a Dollar Tree brand and made in, you guessed it, China.  Let's put the social discussion aside for now and concentrate on how I was getting my yarn organized with these wonderfully cheap things. 

It worked fine for a while... until I got tired of moving them around on the floor of my office/craft space and having to dig through them to find that yarn I KNEW I had somewhere.  I wanted a system where I could see my yarn, it would add something to the style of the room, and it wouldn't look a mess.


I looked at a lot of storage systems, cruised Pinterest, and was very inspired.  The ones that display yarn in beautiful artwork-like wall systems blew me away, but I kept coming back to these issues:  "How do they keep it dust-free??  And what happens when you take one of those skeins out?"

Also, I wanted a solution for storing balls and WIPs (works in progress). Those just do not fit in nice framed storage systems. Of course, it had to be CHEAP AND EASY 'cause that's how I roll.



So I looked around and noticed I had this wall where I had just been sticking up artwork that was given to me, stuff created by my Children's Class or by me, and gifts from the past.  I had another wall I could move all that stuff to, and it gave me a chance to make it much more organized and pretty.  I also moved some of my many plastic storage drawers to under my worktable.  Now I had a blank wall with lots of space.  I also had a value pack of 3M Command Damage-Free Hanging hooks that could hold 5 pounds each.   I had purchased them for a project in the bathroom that didn't work out.  These are amazing things and wonderful for renters.  You stick them on, and they have a tag so you can remove them without scarring the wall or door or whatever you put them on.  It is important to follow the directions, especially about getting the wall clean before applying them.  I hung them in 2 lines of 3.

 To make sure that none of my yarn bags were over 5 pounds, I stepped on the scale with the bag and without the bag, and I was surprised to find none of them were over 3 pounds!  Then I hung them up.  This was much better than the bags on the floor, and all that yarn made me want to jump into new projects, but the bottom right is my current work in progress, and I need to whip myself into finishing it as it's a present for someone who is coming to visit soon!!

I loved the new system, but something just felt off.  Then I realized all that empty space above the yarn was too blank.  It needed something.  Another removable vinyl project is now in the works.  Check back to see where it's going!