My Favorite Furniture

Here is my favorite piece of furniture. Can you guess why? Yeah, it's not so much the furniture itself as what is inside it. This is the home of my entire yarn stash and most of my sewing goodies. I actually have some more fabric floating around here and in the old house still, but it'll be coming over shortly.

I was finally lucky enough to have this cabinet moved over here yesterday from the old house. It's huge, cumbersome and very heavy, so I think it took a lot of mental preparation to work up the nerve to move it. The left side has always been somewhat well-organized, but the right side was a mess. I spent all evening yesterday and most of today organizing it all and winding up all the odd balls of yarn that had gotten tangled up together (well, I'll admit there are a couple I still haven't worked up the courage to attack).

A little tour:

On the left side of the armoire in the sock hanger thing there are tons of balls of yarn. I highly recommend this kind of storage. I love keeping them this way. Most of the yarn in here is Anny Blatt/Bouton d'Or stuff I got last time I went to one of their sales (a couple of years ago). There's also some Knit Picks and that skein of lovely sock yarn I received the other day from Jo. Below that is some fiber to spin someday. Behind it is my sewing pattern tracing paper and my swift. To the left of it, in the plastic drawer tower is the bulk of my yarn. In the bottom drawer is almost all my cotton and linen. The rest of the drawers contain all the animal fibers. Sitting on top of that is a plastic bin tower that holds an assortment of works in progress that have either been abandoned or put on hold for various reasons. There are also some odd balls of yarn that don't fit in the drawers.

On the right side of the armoire, you'll find all of my pattern books (second shelf), sewing books and reference books for all the crafty endeavors I might feel like partaking in at any given time. Above that, on the top shelf, is a combination of things. Mostly, there are odd balls of yarns I was either given or have accumulated that don't fit in the drawers on the left. There is also a ton of cotton hiding in there. My mother-in-law tends to toss yarn in drawers, where all the assorted balls and skeins mingle and hang out until they have become one. At that point, she's not all that interested in dealing with them. I was told once that anything I could untangle was mine. There must be more than a pound of cotton washcloth yarn in there. I imagine I'll give some of it back to her now that I've wound it all into nice, little center-pull balls (love that ball-winder!). There is also a bag that holds the yarn intended for the Deep-V Argyle Vest (I'm itching to start that, but I haven't gotten the time yet. There are some things I'd like to get off the needles first, too.). On that same shelf, there are also lots of various yarn samples. Oh, and a bunch of sewing patterns are crammed into a folder in there, too.

On the third shelf down, I have a rather large tackle box thing that I'm considering giving to my son to play with. It seems to take up way to much room in my cabinet, and it's so impractical to pull it out and put it back in that I rarely keep anything I use much in there. I think the space would be much better used for fabric and my sewing notions (which aren't currently in the cabinet. You also see my handy-dandy ball winder (Did I mention that I love that thing?), a couple of boxes of moth repellent (definite must around here), a brown bag full of Kool-Aid (yep, only a knitter would keep drink mix in a cabinet in the livingroom), and two cases of interchangeable needles.

The bottom shelf on the right has what portion of my fabric stash I have rounded up so far and a box with some organic cotton to spin up. On the right on that same shelf is a sweater currently being unwound to be reknit, various shirts to chop up for the rug I'm making, the rug itself and a couple of balls of the shirt "yarn" all wound up and ready to be knit.

Below that bottom shelf is a little drawer. Inside it is a mixture of gauge swatches, some felted, some not. There is also an assortment of tiny leftover balls and all the ball bands I've ever remembered to keep.

So, there you have it. It's probably not the most modest yarn stash out there, but by no means is it the largest. I'm happy to say that I could most likely knit all of that yarn in my lifetime, so that's a plus. My goal is to keep it at that manageable size and allow the cabinet to be the limit. As long as it fits, I figure it's okay to have it. The best thing about keeping all of these things in this one cabinet is that it has a lock and a key that work. No little fingers can go roaming through my stash, and my husband just isn't interested. This means that when I organize it, it stays organized. The only reason the right side of the cabinet was a mess is because it had never been organized in the first place. It also makes a wonderful place to hide Christmas and birthday presents (like the two puzzle hiding out in the back on the top shelf). Love being a sneaky momma, and you just never know when you'll need a puzzle for a kids' party. Now, if only I could fit a little bed in there and cozy up to all the fuzzy fibers and make that my new ultra-organized home, because the rest of the house is still a mess.