Sunday, July 29, 2012

Order From Chaos

I'm still not sure what came over me, but last week after a particularly boring and unproductive day at work I had an uncontrollable urge to completely reorganize my knitting notions. I just had to do something, you know? So I did this:
AAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!
I emptied out the top two drawers of my plastic knitting cabinet, organized every kind of needle I had by size, and bagged them up tidily. I had previously had them separated by type (straights, circulars, DPNs) but in a very unhelpful way, and it was always a pain while knitting a hat to go searching for both the circulars and DPNs of the same size in different places with everything so jumbled up. Now I have straights and circulars bagged in the gallon sizes by category (sock, small, medium, large, extra-large) and within those bags, sets of DPNs are in smaller sandwich-sized plastic bags labeled by size. No more fishing through a mess to find that 4th DPN of a set! I wish I had a prettier/more environmentally-friendly method than use all the plastic bags ever but this will have to do for now. How do you organize your notions?

In the midst of all this organizing I discovered I had duplicates of sizes that I rarely use and won't need. Actually, they were triplicates. I can justify owning duplicates (one set in metal, one set in bamboo) but definitely not triplicates. Nobody sane needs three pairs of size 13 aluminum knitting needles. So that means we are going to have our first every Woolen Diversions give-away!

Pictured above are:
  •  a size 15 (10.0mm) 16" bamboo Clover circular needle
  • size 13 (9.0mm) 14" aluminum Susan Bates needles
  • size 11 (8.0mm) 10" plastic needles
  • size 5 (3.75mm) 14" aluminum Boye needles
  • a knitting needle inventory card
And just to sweeten the deal a little, part of the giveaway will be:
  • a random 6 gram mini of BMFA Socks that Rock
  • a random 5 gram mini of Bugga
  • one of my patterns
Currently, I only have one pattern for sale but I have several others in the works so if the winner would like to wait for one of those to be available, he/she can do so. There are a few different ways to enter the drawing: I really enjoy writing this blog and my patterns and would like to spread the word about them a little more, with your generous help. If you'd like to give these needles and mini-skeins a new home and receive a free pattern of mine, please leave a comment below letting me know how you've spread the Woolen Diversions / Shoelaceswitcher Designs love! I will do a random drawing next Sunday, August 5th. (And if you spread the love in multiple ways, I'll count that as multiple entries.)

Who's excited?! :)

6 comments:

  1. You have me wanting to go back through and organize all of my stuff. My circle needles are just everywhere while all my straights are in a nice jar. So tempting but I already have doubles maybe triplets of some needles so I think I will have to pass this time. Though now I am creeping on all of your patterns!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Such a great way to organize! I wish I had that many notions, but I haven't had the time or funds to do so. I guess I will be fine owning one of everything.
    I have been following your facebook for a while now, and I started your beriboned wrists and discussed it on my blog a while back. I am going to go add you to my favorites now (if I haven't already) Good luck clearing out your stuff!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've sort of slowly accumulated them somehow, but it does get overwhelming. Thank you for sharing so much love! :) I think I can count that as 4 entries, because you nominated my blog that time as well.

      Delete
  3. I'm glad I'm not the only one with needle problems! I have more than I care to think about and they are also organized in a very unhelpful way. Good for you for working hard and getting it done!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was a force to be reckoned with, ziplocs and sharpie in hand!

      Delete

I love reading your comments, thanks for stopping by!

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.