tidy mind, tidy stitches

Knit and Crochet blogging week day three: 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.

In a previous blog post I mentioned organizing yarn in clear plastic shoe boxes from the dollar store - one for sock yarn, one for baby yarn, one for dishcloth cotton, one for sport weight yarn and one for notions and accessories. That takes care of about half my stash which lives in a cupboard in the spare bedroom upstairs. The rest is worsted weight or bulkier which is organized in baskets.

For the projects percolating in my head at any given moment there's usually a variety of yarn residing in the trifle bowl on a dining room shelf, along with ball bands, labels and knitting notions. What's in there now?

• At the bottom is my sunshine dishcloth; stalled after I couldn't figure out the instructions for the iCord edged triangles. I really need to get this sorted out! Being confounded by a dishcloth is making me feel dumb.
• There are also a couple of balls of Habu silk for a small purse or two. I have some ideas about what I'd like the design to look like, but first I want to get hold of a copy of Interweave Knits Winter 2010 to read an article about adding zippers to knitted fabric.
• Towards the back of the pile are a couple of balls of cream coloured acrylic yarn. This was amongst the pile of Lopi donated to me. I put these aside thinking they might be good for knitting a bulldog.
• Near the top are a couple of balls of cotton. If I rework my design for double-knitting, then I think a lighter weight cotton is called for. The usual worsted weight dishcloth cotton might be too thick when knit doubled.