How to organize your knitting stuff

Well I promise a year ago that I would do a post on how to organize your knitting and a year later here it finally is.  I will first start off by saying my way of organizing is not the cheapest way but its not the most expensive either. The reason it took me a year to finally write this post , is because it took me a year to finally purchase all the items I wanted in order to finish this project.  There are many creative and inexpensive ways to organize your knitting, however, my knitting is in our study and out in the open.  So I wanted to do this in a very appealing way t and  would not be an eye sore.  You will need the following items to complete the project.

1. Shelving unit 
2. Canvas drawers
3. Vase
4. 3 ring binder
5. Needle pages
6. Pencil case
7. 3 x 4 resealable bags
8. Magazine storage bin

I will tell you where I got my items, the names, and what I paid for them.We will start with organizing your yarn.  To begin, I did some research and decided to buy a 6 cube system from target made by closet maid.   I happen to catch a sale so I was able to get it for $39.99 .

 

At this same I also bought 3 closet maid canvas drawers for $6.99 a piece.   Once I got the shelving unit put together I then put my yarn in each drawer.  I have to say they are not as organized as I want to get, but right now I have so much random yarn its hard for me to organize the yarn. The first drawers is scrap yarn, yarn that I have used but never used it  up. I am hoping to knit some charity projects with this yarn and get this bin empty.

The second drawer, is yarn that I will use for future project.

The third drawer is my knit picks yarn.  Eventually I want to organize the drawers by yarn weight.

Now that your yarn is organized and put on the shelves its time to organize your needles, notions, and books.  Using all these helpful products that are listed above.

First , I bought a magazine storage bin(from target fro $4.99) to place all my books and magazines in.  I placed this on top of the book shelf.

Now for the tricky part the needles and notions.  I will start with the easy part.  I found if you find a nice vase that you have around the house and place your straight needles in them, it looks like a needle arrangement. I took a rubber band and wrapped it around the points of the matching needles so they would stay together and I placed the vase on top of the shelving unit.

Now for the fun part the circular needles and the DPN needles.  In the list I said to buy a 3 ring binder.   I wanted one that would hold a lot and after much research I got a cropper hopper craft binder.  You can get these on line any where ( amazon, walmart, joanns). I got my from Walmart and had it shipped to myself for a total of $15.99.  I love it.   Then I went on line an purchased ( really mom and dad Sours gave them to me for Christmas) some needle pages.  These pages are made for circular needles and DPN needles.  Here are the links Circular http://www.yarnmarket.com/yarn/Knit_One_Crochet_Too-Needle_Notebook_Pockets_circular-3428.html
DPN needles http://www.yarnmarket.com/yarn/Knit_One_Crochet_Too-Needle_Notebook_Pockets_II_double_points-3971.html
The Circular needle pocket comes with 5 pages for $10.95 and the DPN pockets are 3 pages for $8.95. I found that so far one order of the DPN pockets are all I need.  I will need to purchase more of the circular pocket pages.
So how I arranged my circular needles is sizes 1-10 by 16"-36".  You can mark on the page what size needle and how long it is.   Since I don't have all the needle sizes there are gaps in my pages, but some day it will be complete.  Below is a picture of what each page looks like and how I marked my page.

I put these in the binder in order by number and length. So my first page is size 5 needle 16".  My last page is 7 needle 29".  When my collection is complete I will divide each length with dividers so I can find my 24" needles when I need those and my 32" needles and so on.  Now with the DPN they are organized the same way, however, I don't buy my DPN by length. So I just organize mine by size.  so my first size is 1 and my last size is 8. I don't have all the larger needles at this time.  This page holds 5 sets of needles. Below is a picture of the page and how I arranged and marked mine.  I placed these pages behind the circular needles and one day will have a divider, dividing the circular needles from the DPN needles.

 

 

Finally, organizing all your little notions like counters, pins, scissors, stitch holders, buttons etc.  This is where you will use your resealable bags and your pencil case. I placed all my little notions in my baggies and put them in the pencil case.

Then I put the pencil case in the 3 ring binder.

 

The binder I bought was too large to fit my shelf so I just placed it right next to cubes on the floor like so.

 There you have it all your needles, notions, yarn, and books organized.  Below is a picture of everything all organized and put together.

The 2 navy drawers are my fabric and sewing supplies.  I didn't get a 3rd navy bag as I need room for my blocking pads.  So what do I do with the projects I am working on?  My sister made me this beautiful basket for my knitting. So I place the yarn for my next projects and my current knitting in the basket.  Currently, I don't have any projects going on but I will start one tomorrow.  The yarn in there is for my next 5 projects!

I am pretty satisfied with the out come and hope to continue to organize as I go.