Yarn Organization, Part 1

I’ve talked about it forever and it was one of my goals for the year: organize my yarn scraps.  You know how it is….  You finish a project and just toss the leftover yarn into a bag or closet and forget about it.  Well, I’ve been doing that for years and I’m tired of looking at all those bags of scraps of yarn.  So I’m doing something about it.

Before I can organize all this yarn the way I want to, I must weight it and tag it.  Here’s my process….

Materials Needed

• Ravelry (if you use it)
• Scale (I used a food scale)
• Tags – fancy or scraps of paper
• Safety pins or these
• Calculator
• Pen
• Scratch paper for math

Weighing

This step was a lot easier because I have all of my stash in Ravelry.  I grabbed my kitchen scale and got to work weighing my scraps in grams.  

Now that I’ve got grams, what do I do?  A simple math equation to figure out yardage, because I have no idea what a gram is.  Ha!  You know – or Ravelry knows  – the original weight of a  skein of yarn.  So, I have a 100g skein which is 400 yards.  Now I have only 10 grams left.  Use this equation:

100 x  10
400      x       

4000 = 100x

When you solve for x, you get 40 yards.  Yes, this is simple but I usually end up with 29 grams or something not simple.  If you use Ravelry, you can plug in how many grams you have left, and it gives you the yardage – without maths.  

Documenting

I found some adorable tags that I used to use for scrapbooking.  So, I write down all the information about the yarn, including the ever-so-important yardage.  Yes, I’ve now also put this into Ravelry, but when I’m playing with colors, trying to find some yarn that will go together, I don’t want to have to log into Ravelry to see how much is left in a ball of scrap yarn.   

These labels are easy, fun, and the best thing ever for a Type A knitter!

Next Up

I thought I was almost done weighing and labeling. Then I pulled out all my bins of yarn and found more scraps.  Of course.  It ended up being fun… I organized all my stash yarn by weight and fiber content and even played with some color combinations.

Because sometimes you need to pull out your stash and play with it.  That gave me great joy!  What’s giving you joy these days?