Squirreling Away My Stash

Hiding away a mountain of yarn aka the stash.

When you hit a good sale on beautiful yarn, as a knitter, you buy in bulk.  The last time I purchased yarn, I grabbed a solid 24 skeins (little skeins, of fingering weight yarn)…but still, those suckers take up space.  And amount to one’s “stash” of yarn.

I don’t normally mind balls of yarn around the house, but it does look a bit untidy- and I know that my soon to be husband will agree.  As we get ready for the wedding, we’ll have more and more people, including out of town guests coming over to our house.

I’d like it to look neat and tidy.  But what is the best storage solution for squishy little balls of fiber goodness? I had baskets and bins before but that still doesn’t look very polished (in my humble opinion – no offense intended to anyone who likes to display their yarn.  It’s just a personal preference).

One day my mom and I were perusing our favorite stores in Ligonier.  If you’re ever in the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania and looking for great food, coffee, ice cream and shopping, you have to hit up the diamond in Ligonier.  Two of our favorite stores are The Swan’s Downe and The Wooden Bobbin.

In the first store – which happens to be located in one of the oldest houses in the town – it’s adorable and I love every inch of it, we purchased an old dresser.   This piece was perfect!  We had searched high and low for something that would fit, but just never found anything – and then, there it was.

We snagged it for a steal and both of my wonderful parents put some sweat equity into this dresser to bring it back to its glory.  Now it holds (almost) all of my yarn and its a focal point in my basement office.

In the second store, I snagged some adorable antique wooden bobbins still wound with wool.  I grabbed four – and that was restraining myself! I don’t know why, but these little things, their simplicity and their history just speak to me.  So now these sit atop of the dresser, right under an Edison bulb and it’s perfect.  I’m in love with my little dresser – its the perfect solution for squirreling my yarn stash away!

If I don’t have things squirreled or stashed away, it ends up becoming a tangled mess.  I can’t tell you how many times I went looking for a ball or skein of yarn and had to dig through a bin or a basket, dislodging the labels and creating a bit of a mess.

This dresser, and it’s small drawers has helped me organize my yarns by weight, and allows me to see different layers of my yarn stash at a glance.  I still have some bits to knit through before it will all fit neatly in the dresser, but now its a great start!

And, as a rule to keep my fiber purchasing habits in check, now I’ll be able to tell myself that I have yarn to knit through before I can buy any more, because it should all fit nice and neatly in this dresser…so I tell myself anyway!