Tag Archives: q for you

Q for You: How do you store your yarn?

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Q for You: How do you store your yarn?

I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, but we’re talking about moving again. (Insert see-no-evil emoji.) Not cross-country — just across town. But still! It means I’m giving every single thing in the house the hairy eyeball and asking whether I really mean to own it and if it deserves to be packed up and moved. As well as imagining what our new space might look like and how this time, surely, I’ll finally get everything perfectly organized. And of course you know what I’m really talking about here is yarn.

We’ve talked around the notion of yarn storage before, and I know it’s everyone’s favorite subject. Cabinets or drawers, specialized furniture or industrial bins. All of which I love to hear about. But I also want to get to the real nitty gritty here in today’s Q, which is: How do you store your yarn? The underlying question being: What is the safest way to store yarn?

I know it should be stored in loose skeins and only wound when it’s time to use it. But like everyone I’ve got assorted yarn cakes that were wound for something that wound up not happening right away. I love seeing beautiful shelves full of full of skeins (I mean) but I can’t help wondering about dust and moths and other hazards. My stash started out in four little rubbermaid-like bins that were supposed to be my limit, but then came this giant basket (from my wedding) stuffed with various loose skeins, a few tucked into muslin bags, and multiple sweater quantities in ziploc bags. Keeping the yarn safe from pests? Or keeping the yarn from breathing? I’d love to do what’s prettiest, but I really want to do what’s best for the yarn.

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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: What tests your love of knitting?

Q for You: What tests your love of knitting?

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Q for You: What tests your love of knitting?

Last time in Q for You, I asked what aspect of knitting thrills you most — and I loved the variety of answers to that question. This time I’m pondering the opposite. I’m using my grandmother’s shawl up there to illustrate this Q, but let me perfectly clear up front: I am very happy to be knitting this shawl for my grandma and I can’t wait to give it to her (belatedly, at this point). But honestly? I also can’t wait to be done with it. I always think I like shawl knitting, and I do like it well enough at the beginning when the rows are short and you make fast progress from three little stitches to an ever-expanding wedge. But as time marches on, I’m reminded that the sort of project that tests my love of knitting is that which involves long rows of back and forth. The longer the rows get, the harder it is for me to remember that I like to knit.

I like to make things — three-dimensional things. I love to see a hat or mitt or sweater form on my needles as if out of thin air. For whatever reason, I don’t enjoy just knitting a flat piece of fabric. A flat piece of fabric meant to hang around your neck doesn’t make it any more interesting for me. I’ve been thinking of this as I’ve been knitting all these cardigans and pieced sweaters the past couple of years — how I used to say I hated to knit back and forth, and then here I am doing it routinely. But over time I’ve realized it’s the combination of flatness and long rows that wears me down. Flat is ok as long as a) the rows are short enough that progress is felt, and b) the flatness is a temporary state on the way to three dimensions.

So that’s my Q for You today: What variety or aspect of knitting bores you most? And bonus question: Do you do it anyway, and toward what end? (I wouldn’t let my reluctance to knit long and flat keep me from knitting my granny this beautiful shawl.)

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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: What thrills you?

Q for You: What thrills you?

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Q for You: What's your favorite little knitting thrill?

The three pieces of my Spiral-Spun Waistcoat mod are on the blocking board as I type, drying in the freakishly summer-like breeze blowing through the windows. There’s a lot of finishing yet to do, but it’s been a joy of a project — from the dreamy yarn to the challenges I inadvertently set for myself with my modifications, to the chance to knit my first inset pockets. You know I love to do something new with every project, if at all possible, and I don’t know how I made it this long without knitting an inset pocket, but it’s now officially my favorite thing to do. Just like cables: so simple and yet so magical!

Knitting affords a world of cheap thrills — for some people it’s the magic of mattress stitch, for others turning a heel, for me right now it is knitting an inset pocket. So that’s my Q for You today: What’s your favorite little knitting thrill?

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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: How do you close out a project?

Q for You: How do you close out a project?

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Q for You: How do you close out a project?

This might be a bizarre question, and it’s something I never really thought about until I started knitting sweaters more routinely/seriously. You knit (or crochet, or sew) a thing, and then you’re left with a certain number of parts. The pattern, your notes, the remnant yarn or fabric. I keep every knitting project in its own project bag, and it always comes down to this little puddle of stuff in the bottom of the bag (needles, waste yarn, ball bands …). I always sort of dread putting it all back wherever it goes. I’ve had it ingrained in me that you should always buy more yarn than you need for a sweater because you never know when you might want or need to replace a button band or a cuff, or to patch an elbow, or who knows what. That’s been especially on my mind lately as I unpack the detritus of completed sweaters that I love enough to really imagine having for a long time. I’ve found myself making these little packets for each finished sweater: the last wound skein, my swatch, the tag or ball band with the sweater name written on it and, in the case of my Bellows (the first time I’ve been quite this thorough) a spare button. I’ve been packing them away in ziploc bags — for lack of a similarly protective, less aesthetically offensive solution — and they’re like little souvenirs, or time capsules. Each time I’ve wondered if this is odd or perfectly normal, so that’s my Q for You: How do you close out a project?

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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: What’s the knit you couldn’t live without?

Q for You: What’s the knit you couldn’t live without?

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Q for You: What's the knit you couldn't live without?

This cardigan has really surprised me. I’ll be honest with you: When we finished that whole Tag Team Sweater Project, I was thrilled to have completed the sweater and beamingly proud of the knitting, as always. But I wondered how much I’d really wear it. There was that whole dissatisfaction along the way with the dimensions being different than the sample I’d tried on and adored. It being May in CA at the time, the Shelter seemed prohibitively hot. (Hotter than the intrinsically ventilated Acer I’d just finished in the same yarn.) Plus I almost never wear color, and here was this big purple thing! It just seemed too big, too long, too bright, the neck too high — there seemed to be a tiny bit too much of it, in every regard.

Flash forward to this winter in Tennessee, and I can’t imagine life without it. I unapologetically wear it two or three times a week, and every morning when I’m getting dressed, I think, “Would it be wrong to just put on my Trillium again?” It is freakishly cozy for how light and airy it is. (Go, woolen-spun!) Not hot at all. And whereas it seemed too long and big at first, now maybe the other cardigans are just too short and small! I completely love the proportion of it. But most of all, it’s that factor I first fell in love with when I tried on the sample: It sits beautifully around my shoulders, like no other sweater I’ve ever owned. I love having it on.

It’s not the flashiest thing I’ve ever knitted. Unlike other sweaters in my closet (both hand-knit and store-bought), nobody has ever asked me if I knitted it, that I recall. It’s just such a basic, perfect wardrobe staple, that I guess nobody ever thinks to question it. Which is exactly what I love about it.

So here’s today’s Q for You: What’s the knit you wouldn’t want to be without?

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PREVIOUSLY  in Q for You: How many needles/hooks do you own?

Q for You: How many needles/hooks do you own?

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Q for You: How many needles/hooks do you own?

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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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: What are your odd habits?

Q for You: What are your odd habits?

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Q for You: What are your odd habits?

Do you do stuff like this? When Lauren (aka @suskandbanoo) sent me this photo for her Our Tools, Ourselves feature last winter, I laughed out loud. This is so me. Anytime I’m knitting with DPNs or a cable needle, I inevitably stick whatever I’m not using in my bun. The other night I was knitting with my hair down (this apparently never happens) and I was at a total loss as to what to do with my cable needle when it was not in use. It’s a handy trick; the problem is I often forget I’ve done it and go wandering out into the world. Like when knitting in airports, or the other morning in a busy waiting room. I had a double-point in my hair all day on Tuesday without realizing it.

Likewise, I used to keep one of those white rubber stitch markers on my ring finger at all times. You never know when you’re going to need a stitch marker, right? But while it was invisible to me (unless I needed it and was happy to have it), I got asked about it so often I had to stop doing it.

So here’s my Q for You: Do you have weird fibersmithy habits like this? Do you leave a trail of yarn wherever you go. Have your houseguests found skeins hanging in your shower, or a pair of embroidery scissors on every surface? You’re safe here, you can tell us.

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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: How do you store your patterns?

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Photo © Lauren of Süsk and Banoo, used with permission