Total Project Time: Approximately 5-15 minutes per skein
I know that I have an organization obsession but what’s the point of having things if you’re never able to find them? Well, I recently lost my mind because I was frustrated about not being able to find the yarns I wanted.
I normal keep my yarns wound in balls or cakes. Winding yarn into a ball is great for when you’re immediately using it, but the loose ends can get caught and they easily unravel. I don’t find it great for storage of larger balls of yarn.
And that’s why I wanted to come up with a better method for storing yarn. I wanted to share my methods of organizing. One because I think it looks great. Two because I spent a lot of time on it and I’m strangely proud of myself.
Check out the Craft section of MCG for more fun patterns in strings and things or more unlimited ideas.
Ball Yarn
Storing yarn in ball for is great for when you have a smaller piece of yarn that you want to keep for later uses. Otherwise, I prefer yarn balls for active knitting projects rather than storage.
Due to their shape, the yarn balls like to move and roll. And rolling can lead to unraveling, as my very playful cats like to remind me from time to time.
Cake Yarn
A “cake” of yarn is made from wrapping the yarn around a winder. This is my preferred format for yarn in projects I am actively working on. One big advantage of cake yarn is that both ends are accessible.
This can be especially useful if your project calls for strands of yarn to be used while one end is attached to the project. You don’t need to go fishing for that other end (or buy a second skein of yarn).
However, double the ends means double the trouble when it comes to storage. For a while, this is how I stored my yarn but pulling out one cake ended with several strands of yarn from other cakes being pulled with it.
Skein Yanr
Skein yarn is how a lot of bespoke yarn is purchased. This is how I find some of the nicer threads in my local yarn stores. The big chain stores have skeins that are typically wound my machines. But skein yarn can also easily be done by hand.
I like this method the most when it comes to storage. The ends are held together, and that yarn fits well in a long, tall, and thin shape. The ends are also nicely tucked into the skein so there is not much to catch. And I am able to stack them in a way that I can see all the yarn I have!
I used a special winder to create the skein, but a chair back is also a great tool to create a skein. The first step of creating a skein is making a hank. This is where the yarn is wrapped around the winder and has scraps of yarn holding it together. I like tying the yarn together at three separate points for security.
Then I grabbed the hank at opposite ends and twisted the yarn together. The yarn twisted in on itself when I brought my hands together. The last step is pulling one end through the loop of the other end. And with that, the skein is secured and it is not going to untwist!
Because I store my yarn in drawers, I placed the skeins facing up so I can see the ends of year yarn ball. Some yarn skeins are thicker than others because there is more yarn to work with there. I did combine several balls of yarn into one skein to help keep everything as consolidated as possible.
