Before and After

That crazy New Year organization bug grabbed me on Wednesday, our last day of vacation, and forced me to clean out the study closet. The study closet is where the yarn lives.


Before the great reorganization of '07 the yarn lived in these large rubbermaid bins. Nothing against the rubbermaid, but I bought the cheaper non-clear bins, and damn if you can't see through those. Every time I wanted to find yarn for a project (unless it was sock yarn which lived in it's own bin - the one about to explode top right), I had to open every.freaking.bin. This, of course, led me to rarely dig in the bins. However, not knowing what you have, and where it is, is a bit counter-intuitive when you're trying to knit from the stash. A quick trip to big lots (one of my favorite stores - right up there with dollar tree), led to fourteen clear bins, some salvaged bins from other areas of the house, and an extra set of shelves from the garage, resulted in this:


Ahhh. I will still have to look a bit for each specific project's yarn, but pulling clear bins off the shelf is so much nicer than digging through six enormous tubs o' yarn. And I was wise enough to sort things - all the dishcloth cotton is together, all the lace, the sock yarn is in the two larger bottom bins, most cottons are together, etc.


I found this particularly humorous - how many plastic storage bins are specific to yarn storage?


Now for the fun part: CONTEST! Partly because this is my 450th post (wow!), and partly because the anal part of me really wants to share this dorky information, we're having a contest.

I'll admit that I did this prior to the great reorganization, (perhaps avoiding some Christmas knitting?) but it seems particularly fitting now. I spreadsheeted the yarn. And it is, um, a wee bit scary.

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guess how many balls of yarn live in my stash. Partial balls of less than 1/2 their original size will not be counted in the total.
Contest closes next Sunday, January 14, at 10 pm CST and the winner will be announced on Monday, January 15.

Have a very knitty weekend! I'll be back tomorrow with our first KAL update!