Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating today, and happy peaceful quiet day to everyone else! I thought this would be a good day to ask a question for which the answer might well be changing for many of you at this very moment. It’s a pretty simple but meaty one, so anyone who misses it today can weigh in over the long weekend, and I hope everyone will enjoy checking back to see all of the answers. The Q is: How many needles and/or hooks do you own, and more so, how do you store them?
To be perfectly clear: I totally have an ulterior motive in asking this one. It’s a problem I’m personally always trying to solve — and am at it again while setting up my new workroom — but it’s also something I get asked constantly with regard to Fringe Supply Co. We’re all looking for the perfect needle storage product, and I have multiple ideas of things I want to develop, but is there even such a thing as perfect needle storage? There are just SO MANY variables, as I’m sure will be evident in the answers to this one. It’s a true conundrum.
Me, for instance, I own all of two pairs of straight needles — one size 50, which have been used once, and one size 17 which were just recently sent to me by Wool and Gang. What I have loads of are circular needles and DPNs. I own two sets of Dreamz interchangeable circular needles, along with a booster set of the big tips. I love love love them, and those are what I use almost exclusively, but they’re spilling out of the plastic zip pouch they came in, which also won’t last forever. I keep that in my knitting bag with my works-in-progress.
Then there are all of the circs I had accumulated before my sister gave me the Dreamz, which have become my gap fillers and loaners. I found the old metal card-catalog drawers pictured above at the Nashville flea a few months ago and recently sorted this particular motley crew into it. They’re all still in their original packages, so I know what the gauges and lengths are, and are sorted into the drawers by size. (I still need to label the drawers.) There are 39 of them that I can locate at the moment. (Not counting whatever might currently be in use or tossed in various project bags.)
Then there are the DPNs. I own at least 32 sets (same caveat), of just about every type known to man. I also keep them in their original packages, again so I can see the sizes at a glance. I love seeing pics of people’s needles all plopped down in a jar together, but it seems like it would be a nightmare to find four of the same size when you need them, no? I’m toying with the idea of rubber banding them all together and putting them in this Mexican candleholder also seen in the photo up top, so at least they’re in sets. But even then, knowing how the numbers wear off the shafts, I dread the idea of getting out a needle gauge every time I’m trying to locate a size. I’ve toyed with various means of tagging them, but always resort to putting them back in their packages and keeping them all together in a box. But I love the idea of having them out where I can admire them! Along with all of my crochet hooks and Tunisian hooks. So I’m hoping one of you has some brilliant solution for this.
So that’s my two-part question: How many needles/hooks? And are they in a box, a jar, a tool roll, their store packaging, what? What works (or doesn’t) for you? If you’ve posted pictures on the interwebs somewhere, be sure to include a link, please!
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