From Yarn Stashes to Agatha Christie: The Art of Organization

Have you ever found inspiration in the most unexpected places, like the fog and mist of Kodiak, Alaska? I invite you to join me here in my cozy home library as I share my journey of transforming this space into a creative haven for knitting, reading, and connecting with others.

Let's dive into the art of organizing! From Agatha Christie mysteries to yarn stashes, discover how I categorize my books and ponder the best way to sort my collection of yarn. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic too - share your organization methods and any challenges you face with your stash. Plus, I'll reveal a little tip I use whenever I get new yarn that you might want to try for yourself.

Lastly, I open up about my experience with ordering yarn online and the valuable lessons I've learned. We'll also discuss the significance of connecting with the stories and yarns in our stashes, both old and new, as well as the importance of recognizing our own value and creativity. So, let's embrace the joy of finding sunshine through the fog as we explore the world of crafting and creativity together!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:16

I'm Mel, a really curious yarn fan who loves knitting and is also obsessed with encouraging you to feel the same, no matter where you are in your journey. Whether you're an adventurous knitter or one in the making. We've got more in common than you might expect. It wasn't so long ago I'd get frustrated with too many cast-ons, but never any completed projects or endless piles of wavy yarn from ripped out knits. Fast forward to today. I've learned from languishing projects and so-called failed ones too. Every aspect of my life fuels my creativity and my creativity adds to my enjoyment of life. I've created this podcast to share tips, mind shifts and challenges to help you do the same. So if you're a thoughtfully creative spirit or someone wanting to grow in that direction, looking to love all the perfect knits you make and embrace the ones with feature design elements too, you're in the right place. Friend, welcome to Encourage Better Knitting Podcast, your knitting podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Today I am chatting with you in a completely different way than I usually do. I'm usually sitting down with a microphone and I've got planned ideas out, and I'm just being still and focused. There have been other times that you and I have chatted and I've taken you on the go with me as I'm wandering in the woods or along the seashore, and today it is incredibly foggy outside. What I love about Kodiak is it's such an adventure living here, not just when you go out and find a boat in the forest or up a mountain or along craggy rocky ocean edges, but it's an adventure each day waking up to see what is today going to hold, what's the weather going to be like, and we have been socked in with fog and cool weather for quite some time. Going on an island, the fog and the weather make things. It just kind of changes the way things happen. A lot of our groceries are barged in, and so when the barges can't make it here, we have to be very aware of the fact that you've got to conserve and you may need to be scrappy with what you have. Hello knitter, i bet you feel that sometimes with your stash, the other thing that the fog and the weather changes is our ability not only to get groceries but for mail to come in and to go out. There are times when you're expecting, for instance, a birthday present for your son's special 21st birthday, and the mail is not coming in again today, and that phrase has been on repeat for quite some time. You just realize that you celebrate the moment without the gifts and the extras, that the gift is just having their companionship and knowing that a gift can be given and appreciated even on the day that isn't the date of the celebration.

Speaker 1: 4:15

I'm in here today in my home library. We have a room that I thought would be fun to share with you a little bit about. It is and has evolved over the course of several years, and the reason I'm sharing this will become evident later as I share with you its tie-in to knitting. I just wanted to pull back a bit of the curtain or the clear up the fog, so to speak. Today I'm not going outside and I'm getting a bit done in here instead. I do love rainy weather, i do love the fog, i love the way the mist feels on my face. Kodiak is just the perfect spot for me. The temperatures Don't usually sway more than 30 degrees one way or another, so it's that constant feeling that you can just really enjoy knitting your sweater in the summer while you're wearing a sweater unit last summer, as the case was for me yesterday. However, today I looked out the window and saw the fog and saw the mist blowing and I just thought I'm not ready to go out just yet. I'm going to get a little bit of work done in the library.

Speaker 1: 5:52

One of the reasons we bought this home is because I fell in love with this particular room. Sometimes that is the driving force when we purchase something. We just have this connection, this affinity for whatever it is. Hello, yarn purchases. It's a foreshadowing of what I'd like to talk about.

Speaker 1: 6:17

Anyways, this particular room had what I've loved about other homes that I've either visited or homes that we've had in the past. We've lived in a lot of places, moved a ton of times, and I've learned something with every move and with every home. Well, with every house that we've turned into our home, this room when I walked into it it was a rainy, cold day and I walked in and the warm wooden floors reflected the little bit of light that was coming through this wonderful wall window. The wooden floors are honey and they're just this calming, comforting, warm feeling. There's no carpet, it was just hardwood floor. The walls were brown and there were bookcases, bookcases and cabinets. Bookcases from the floor to the ceiling and then cabinets on the bottom with several shelves reaching up to the ceiling And then right in the center of one wall was this big double door cabinet with bookshelves on either side that took up the whole wall And I thought, whoa, that's interesting. And the person showing us the home said wait till you see this. And they asked me to back up a little bit. And so we did. And they opened the door and down came this Murphy table. Murphy beds have been something I've always thought are so cool. And to see a Murphy table, a hidden table, that when it folded down, was this beautiful same color honeywood for the surface And the legs. The side of the table matched the interior of the cabinet that it pulled out from And in the back of it was a chalkboard. And, as a homeschooling mom, that just set me up for falling in love And I said I love this.

Speaker 1: 8:52

There were other parts to the house that were checked off And my husband had one thing that was his big thing. Our son had one thing that was his big thing, and same with my daughter and same with myself. Our eldest daughter was away at college, so she didn't care. She just wanted to make sure she had a home base to come back to in the summer For us. We all found a check mark in this home And this room was an extra check And I just loved it.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Now, full disclosure. There were plenty of things about the house that we knew we were going to have to really work hard at improving and fixing. It wasn't a turnkey, obviously. It was safe. It was a place that we could move into and be happy, and we knew that we'd have to work at making it our own and work at bringing it up to specs in some areas. But this room was such a joyous spot. We filled the shelves with books and books and books, and they were books that were for kids and books that were for school and books that were for me and books that were for all of us, and then books that were just for knitting and just for sewing and just about fiber and all the things.

Speaker 1: 10:30

And I found I had a few extra shelves and cabinet space that I could devote to yarn And I began stashing my yarn in these cabinets. The problem was, when I stashed the yarn in the cabinets, the cabinet doors closed and there are beautiful wooden cabinet doors with lovely, strong, sturdy handles, and when they closed, the yarn is secure behind them And they're out of sight, which leads them to become out of mind. Can any of you relate? Have you ever had that moment? you've found the yarn, you love the yarn, it's such amazing yarn And you tuck it away, only to realize that a month has gone by, maybe a few months have gone by, and you forgot about it. Suddenly, you open up the cabinet door and it's like a long lost friend surrounded by other long lost friends, and they're all like hey, what are we doing here? That is a topic for another episode, but for this episode I wanted to share this state of flux and transition and change and readjusting, as this room is allowing me to see it.

Speaker 1: 11:57

My youngest child has recently graduated from high school, and so this stage in my life of needing to be a teacher and having teaching materials here in this library that season has come to a close. To be honest, i am a bit sad about it. I wanted to be a teacher for many, many years growing up. My heart was set on being a teacher when I headed off to college And I was able to teach and also teach dance and just so many opportunities to teach. And then, joy upon joy, teaching our kids at home worked really well for the life that we were leading and the fact that we were moving quite a bit during their young years. That homeschooling gave us some continuity in that one area so that we could pick up and move and have that area squared away and focus on joining in activities with other people or developing new friend groups or discovering new hobbies. We had something set up the homeschooling that was constant and everything else could change and be different, and it worked wonderfully for us. We loved it.

Speaker 1: 13:44

And as I look at these shelves and shelves of books that I'm gonna need to be going through and removing and sharing and tucking away, it's going to make room for new books to come in and things to move around a little bit And yarn that has been sequestered to come out. And I started wondering about how to display the yarn, how to organize the yarn. Do I organize it like I do my books? And I started looking at my books and I realized that I have a variety of organizational things going on. I have, like I had mentioned before, my knitting books are all together and I have them all together and classified within that section. I have periodicals. On the top shelf I have informational reference books. On the next shelf. I have patterned books that are great for pattern inspiration and instruction on other shelves And that section.

Speaker 1: 15:08

I feel good about My nonfiction section. I have organized. It's primarily Well. I'll come back to the nonfiction because that is actually. I'm looking at it, saying it's nonfiction and it's a hot mess. I'm gonna skip over to the fiction section, which is primarily here a lot of mysteries, and so I've got them organized by genres And then the mystery section just warms my heart.

Speaker 1: 15:44

The majority of the mystery section is Agatha Christie mysteries. They are my favorite. I love mysteries And I really enjoy Agatha Christie. I love Eric Yo-Paw Rowe. I do love Ms Marple.

Speaker 1: 16:01

A fun fact that I may not have shared in the past I collect Agatha Christie books in other languages, especially French. I love French. My pronunciation, pronunciation of the French language, is horrible. No matter how I try, i don't do the beautiful language justice. But I do love reading in French And I love challenging myself as I'm reading in French And so I get excited when I can find, or I've had friends in the past gift me Agatha Christie books in various languages, french being one of them. In fact, i had a friend that shared with me. She didn't even realize that it was a book in French. She just said I was in a bookshop, i saw Agatha Christie. I knew it was a foreign language. She's like you know, melissa, i don't know another language But she said I just grabbed it and it was. It was a book that I didn't have and I love it.

Speaker 1: 17:15

So they're organized, and they're organized again genre and alphabetized, and so I'm looking at my yarn and wondering do I organize it by weight? Should I organize it by weight? Should I organize it by project desires? And by that I mean, do I put together a bunch of sock yarn that wants to be socks, and then a sweater quantity next to it because I really wanted it a sweater, and then kind of line them up almost in order of importance? Do I decide to go with colors? Should I put all of my little mini skeins together? Should I break up the mini skeins into what type of mini skeins they are? There's so many different ways I can run with it, and it's quite a lot of fun to look at these possibilities And it got me wondering what do you do with your yarn?

Speaker 1: 18:28

Do you have a stash of yarn that you make a place for, or do you simply, you know, tuck your yarns in here and there. You know, maybe you don't have one central location for it. Maybe you have a basket by your favorite chair in the living room and then maybe you have a space by the foot of your bed that you tuck in. I imagine so many of you with a chest at the base of the foot of your bed like a hope chest, and then when you open it up, it's like a beautiful box of Pandora's box of beautiful things rather than tragic things, and inside are all these beautiful yarns leaping out. Maybe you have a space that's in a craft room that you have, and it's baskets and bins that you tuck your yarn in. Maybe you don't have a huge stash because you love the feeling of yarn in, yarn out, and the yarn that you acquire is thoughtful not that other purchases aren't, and other people when they purchase it, but you thoughtfully know that I am working on this project now and my next project will be this, and so I'm gonna order that yarn for this, so you don't have a stash accumulated. I'm curious. I would love to hear from you what it is that you do to effectively have your yarn organized, and also I would love to hear the pain points of what is driving you nuts about your stash right now, because it's important to have these ideas shared so that all of us can grow and do better.

Speaker 1: 20:43

I do have some things that I do with my stash that I love and it helps me. I've done it for years and years. It's evolved and and changed. It's gotten better and more refined over. Oh, let's see how long I've been doing it At least 15 years of evolving and just tweaking, so it's not major changes anymore. I would say the last probably since we've been here, at least the last six years. It's small, refined changes, very simple changes, things that I do with my yarn when I get it. I'd like to share one thing that I do, that I love and I do it every time I get yarn, you know, without fail, before I tuck it in somewhere. This is something I do and I'd love to share this one idea with you so that you can consider Trying it, maybe with the next yarn that you order or the next yarn that you're gifted.

Speaker 1: 21:57

It's no secret to anyone who has spent any time with me that I love journaling, i love writing and love it as much as my knitting. It's not a. It's not a hobby that competes with any other hobby. It's a part of every hobby. Every craft that I do Incorporates an aspect of journaling, of writing. I've been a writer since I was a small kid, and I absolutely find freedom in being able to Put thoughts down in a variety of fashions, but putting my thoughts down in a way on paper that I can come back to In order to learn more about myself or revisit a moment that meant a lot to me, and so this is something Journaling is something that I have always done, and it's not something that has to be a Monumentous task. It's not something that the day I started, i Did not sit down for, you know, six hours to write a novel. I Sat down and I wrote a sentence.

Speaker 1: 23:15

I can remember as a kid, in kindergarten, and this was in New York, new York City, and it would be so exciting to head out to school. There was a lot of sounds in New York City. You can hear a variety of voices and languages, lots of different smells, lots of different city sounds, and I would hear all those as I was headed to school, and the first thing we would do in school is, in kindergarten, we would draw a picture or write words and in first grade We would make a smaller picture. The space for the picture was less and the space for the words was more. And in Second grade the same thing, and then by third grade, there weren't really no more pictures, unless you added them in and you'd write And I would capture. I loved saying today on the way to school You won't believe what I heard, or I would count to try to hear the different sounds of languages, and I can remember I heard three different languages. I didn't know or I smelled the smell of this today and it made my mouth water. These are things that I just remember doing and It was fun to write little snippets that stood out to me.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Why am I sharing that with you? because when I order a yarn and It arrives, i quickly jot down a little snippet of what it is that stands out to me Every yarn. I'm looking at all of you beautiful Scanes around me. Now, when I order a sweaters quantity, i don't do it for every single one, i just do it for the sweater bunch, but I write down What I love about this yarn. Now, full disclosure. I have ordered some yarn and it arrives and my Capture in words is the fact that, oh, this is not at all what I thought it was going to be. It's not always the response that I anticipated and, instead of Pushing that aside, being honest with myself helps me make better decisions later. Like I will get a yarn and online, if I ordered it online and I signed up, maybe, for a mystery skein.

Speaker 1: 26:03

It arrived, i opened it up and I was like whoa, this is definitely the end of a mystery. The mystery has been revealed and what is this? And I just write my response and I find that, as I write a few sentences, i'm able to work through my initial shock or surprise and take a few minutes and capture what my hope is for this skein, or what I want to learn or, very basically, why I got it. In fact, i think right over here, let me see, yes, there you are, hold on, i'm probably gonna make some noise, because I Tucked a few of my old journals in front of this and a tin.

Speaker 1: 26:57

Okay, so here it goes. All right, this skein here I'm gonna. I'm gonna first describe it to you and then I'm gonna share with you not everything, because there it is a little personal on it, but it's It's something that I can share a little bit about. So I have and you can kind of hear the tag. That is my tag, not the actual skein Band. This is mine that I put on it. But this yarn is absolutely soft and lovely. It smells really good and the yarn is Brooklyn tweed the well I have to describe it. It wasn't just a yarn that I got, it was a bundle, it was a creation that I I Mean totally back up.

Speaker 1: 27:57

The reason this is special to me is I was given a Certain amount of money to use on a birthday and I wanted to Create a moment With that money, buying yarn locally in the state of Alaska and something that was hands-spun. That was my challenge and I had this amount of money that I had been gifted to use and I found a lovely, lovely Group online. They're called the Calypso yarn and they are on the mainland of Alaska and They you'll hear other sounds now because I'm inside and I'm not. My cat is doing its thing so you might hear only under in a minute. Calypso yarn is our. Calypso wool is what it's called. They incorporate their hands-spun with other yarns to create a kit and I loved the idea of being able to purchase this, and so right away when I ordered it and went ahead and I set aside a Moment and I wrote down What I was so excited about.

Speaker 1: 29:31

The person giving me the money was a lovely friend and I coupled it with some money that I had gotten from family and To me it just was really fun to know that I had this freedom to use their gift for something Anything I wanted, and what I wanted was to tie in my love of Alaska and hands-spun Calypso wool Did not disappoint, and when it arrived, the Colors were absolutely stunning and that's what I wrote down that I cannot get over how beautiful these colors are. The two skeins of Brooklyn tweed that came with it it says that it's dapple and I have a gold color and a very light heathery Gray and then one skein of Calypso, hands-spun with it, which is approximately 40 yards, and it is soft and it is lovely, and Around the yarn I put that I'm recounting the people that contributed to the gift card And I shared what I was hoping it would be like. And then, when it came, i put down the date that it arrived and how I felt about it and what my hope is when I make something out of it. It came with a pattern called the Borealis Cowl, which is a pattern by a woman that says Susan Wilsrant, and I don't know if that's what I will use it for or if I will use something else, but the date that it arrived is here, how I felt when I opened the package, how the package was presented and how I would love to order from them again.

Speaker 1: 31:49

I will say again, since you and I are friends and friends are honest with each other, i don't wanna paint everything as lovely, perfect, always. There have been times, like I said, the mystery yarns. I have discovered that I am not a mystery yarn kind of gal. There have been times I've invested top dollars that are very dear to me. Um, you know, a dollar. The thing that I love is when you are thoughtful with your purchases. You gain confidence in future purposes. What I don't like, when I spend money and don't like it, my confidence waivers And, if I don't take time to jot things down, sometimes, the stories that I tell myself about my ability to be effective. Those stories are not congruent with what I really know to be true.

Speaker 1: 32:57

I can purchase things very thoughtfully. I can purchase yarn and be very happy with it, and I can do a great job stewarding my resources. When I tell you that I saved up to join this club and I was so excited about it it was a yarn that everybody and everybody and their brother on Instagram had been touting and saying what a wonderful yarn this is. It's amazing. You know this club is so fun. It only opens now and you know, try it, try it. It's amazing and I tried it. And the yarn I think it's amazing. And the yarn, the feel of the yarn beautiful.

Speaker 1: 33:44

The receiving of the yarn was not in alignment with what I wanted, my thoughts when I wrote down that you know I'd ordered this yarn and looking in my journal and even creating the little tag that I knew it was coming. And I have a little box that when I order something I put things in. So that way I know and I can expect it. And it's just. I know it may seem to some people like a silly, overly thoughtful way but, like I said, i live on a secluded island. I don't have a place to shop. There is no mall here to buy fancy shoes or fancy shirts or fancy yarn. So when I do, take our hard earned dollars. To me they represent hard work, and when I want to purchase something, i'm thoughtful about it and I want to honor that, and so I generally will write down on either a note card or one of my tags that I have, you know, ordered on this day so excited, mystery yarn. This is how they said it's gonna happen. This is when I can expect it. I can't wait.

Speaker 1: 35:00

And then this one came and the feelings that I captured were disappointment, the packaging of it. You know. I felt like my yarn was stuffed into a plastic bag that was folded rather than, you know, having it wrapped and thoughtfully to me, what I would think would be thoughtful. My idea of what I was gonna receive was different than what I actually received, and that's okay. It doesn't mean that what they did was wrong. They did what they did and they have a packaging distribution way that works for them. I was new to it and so my expectations and what I received were different, and I learned from that. I learned that that is great for a lot of knitters or crocheters or yarn lovers in general.

Speaker 1: 36:08

That for me was not fun, having my package come and I opened it up and all the things were just tucked in together And I pulled it out and I wasn't sure. Okay, well, this was supposed to be a mystery. Over the course of a certain amount of time, all of these are together. Do they fade into one another? Do they go with one another? Are they a hodge podge? What am I looking at? It wasn't understanding, and so I captured that in my response, taking a little bit of time and updating it.

Speaker 1: 36:46

I found that there were a couple of things that I did like in the mix, even though the colors were not at all my wheelhouse. The fibers were lovely and I was curious as to what could I do with them. How would this purchase really feed my spirit, my creative energy? did my purchase mean that I would keep some and then share some? And if I was gonna share some and these are questions that I wrote out if I'm gonna share this skein, who would really love this skein? whose color wheel looks like this skein? And the thing that I'm sharing with you now is an opportunity to maybe try what I'm suggesting.

Speaker 1: 37:41

When you order yarn or you purchase yarn, maybe you're on a special hunt for the perfect sweater yarn and you go to your local yarn shop When you bring that yarn home. Wouldn't it be fun to just jot down your feelings and to capture that? And by jotting it down it may not be on a physical card or a tag or a journal. Maybe you start an app. Note a note in your app yarn purchases, what I got starting day one this year and your first entry. Snap a picture, stick it in the app, write down. I was so excited.

Speaker 1: 38:29

I spent two hours in the local yarn shop today with local yarn shop owner, who is fabulous. These are the ways she helped me search for the perfect yarn. I'm planning on knitting my first sweater that is color work and talk about your dreams and your excitement and your enthusiasm for what you want this yarn to be. I will say when I dig through and start to use this room and spaces in this room to organize my stash, that's one of the things I'm really looking forward to is reconnecting with the stories that accompany all of the things that I'm seeing in here that the sock yarns, the hand spun my own hand spun the fiber. That when I first got the fiber I wrote what I was thinking and hoping and then what I spun was completely different. This next step, this next season, where spaces that I'm taking and purging books and letting them go will be filled with yarns that have potential and have hope and dreams tucked inside of them, maybe from a very recent acquisition or a long forgotten one from stash. And being able to reconnect is gonna be a lot of fun, i know. I hope that this different way of sharing with you today is fun and enjoyable.

Speaker 1: 40:22

As always, it's a pleasure to hear what you think and what you are learning on your journey, and so I do encourage you to reach out to me at melissa, at encouragebettercom, email me perhaps the way you store your yarn or a story that you may have brought to your mind as you listened to this episode.

Speaker 1: 40:56

And to make it even easier, linked in the show notes is a link you can click on and it says share it with me. So if you click on the link in the show notes that says share it with me, you can directly access me and give me some feedback to a couple of things that we talked about today. Wherever you are, and whatever you're making or dreaming about making, i hope you realize how valuable you are to this world, to the knitting world, to the creative world and to our beautiful home here on earth. You have value, you have purpose and I am so glad that you're here. I hope that the sun is shining on you, even if you have to look very hard, like I do, through the fog, to find it. Wherever you are, i hope the sun is shining on you and I look forward to connecting with you again soon. I'll know how, my friend