January 2024 – The Crochet Architect

In 2016, I became a grandma for the first time! I had so much fun crocheting for my granddaughter! Isn’t being a grandma amazing?

Well, fast forward 7-8 years and life is always busy (even for grandmas)! I’ve gone through 2 family weddings, 4 family deaths and the birth of 3 more grandchildren (all 3 are boys) since the birth of my first grandchild. And there have been many trips/vacations to other states, as well as countries, during the past 8 years, as well! Life is never dull!!!

All this to say, that in 2016, I designed a crocheted baby toy for stacking baby rings. Life got busy and I never published that pattern (okay, I’m a procrastinator and a perfectionist, too, which doesn’t help!!!). This crochet toy is like the plastic ones that Fisher Price made back in the day, and still does. I’ve always liked this fun toy for babies, probably because it’s made with rainbow colors and I LOVE rainbow colors! So without further ado, here is my newest crochet pattern, “Stacking Baby Rings”. Each ring is made with a different color. All 5 rings stack (in the correct order) onto the cone that is attached to the base. The rings, as well as the cone, are stuffed with fiberfill. Each piece is crocheted with basic crochet stitches: chains, single crochet, sc increases and sc decreases. They’re easy to crochet (even for an adventurous beginner) and fun to see come together into a beautiful tower of color!

These stacking baby rings would make a great gift at a baby shower, for a birthday or for Christmas. They’re great for babies and toddlers. They’re super soft and squishy, too!

I really enjoyed designing and crocheting these stacking baby rings. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Happy crocheting,

Susan

I’ve known that I need to get a handle on my yarn stash for a couple of years now. The last time I purged some yarn was 3 years ago when we lived in our previous home. A few weeks ago, I finally took the plunge to purge some of my yarn/thread stash! Boy, does it feel good to have a more manageable stash now!

I started with 1 ½ closets full of yarn and crochet thread. I had a total of 23 plastic tubs full (or partially full) of yarn/thread. My goal was to go down to 10 tubs, but was that realistic? Nope! So I decided to amend my goal to have all my yarn/thread fit into just one closet and eliminate the other half closet full. Now that was an attainable goal that I was able to accomplish! I think downsizing my yarn by 1/3 was a great goal!

This was my yarn stash before purging:

Here is my reorganized yarn stash in both halves of my one closet after purging:

Here are some extra photos of my yarn stash in the purging process in my living room:

If you’re ready to purge/downsize your yarn/thread stash, here are some tips and suggestions to help you:

-Make sure you’re in the right frame of mind to downsize your stash (this is the most important point because if you’re not in the right frame of mind, you won’t be successful).

-Make sure you have lots of time (it took me 6-8 hours, so most of one day).

-Make sure you have plenty of room to work in. I used the living room to look at all the yarn and crochet thread. This gave me a good idea of how much stash I actually had! Putting it all in one area is a real eye-opener!!! The yarn can really accumulate over the decades of crocheting/knitting!

Ask yourself these questions:

-What do I know I want to keep for use in upcoming projects or designs?

-What do I want to keep for later projects or designs?

-What do I think I’ll need for later?

-What do I know I don’t want?

-How long has this yarn been in my stash? Why aren’t I using it?

-What fibers do I enjoy working with and which do I not like/enjoy?

-What colors do I like?

-What colors will I use/wear?

-What colors and fibers would my project recipients use/wear?

-What type of projects do I typically make?

-What type of yarn do I use for these projects?

-How much yarn do I use for these projects?

-Do I need multiple skeins of the same color or small amounts of different colors?

-What can/will I reasonably use in my remaining lifetime?

-Should I sell or donate the yarn and thread I don’t want (or a combination of them)?

-How should I organize my smaller stash (according to fibers, yarn weights, etc)?

-Do I need some smaller tubs/containers for some of my yarn categories?

To help make a decision about some of the yarns/threads to keep or purge, look up the yarn on Ravelry, and specifically the projects made from the yarn, to get an idea of how you can use the yarn. If nothing speaks to you, purge that yarn! Someone else will undoubtedly enjoy using it.

If you’re uncertain about what you want to keep, don’t give away or sell any of the yarn for about a week. This will give you time to change your mind and move something from the give/donate/sell area to the keep area or vice versa. I changed my mind on a few yarns this past week and I’m glad I waited to give/sell the purged yarn!

When I was done with destashing, I ended up reorganizing my smaller stash into some different tubs. I used to have them separated into my personal stash (according to yarn weight) and my business stash (because the yarn manufacturers sent me the yarn for free to use for my designs). I had tubs for different manufacturers so I wouldn’t mix different manufacturers’ yarn in the same design (this is a no-no when designing for publication in books and magazines). But now that I’m not designing for publication anymore (and haven’t been for a number of years), separating them into different manufacturers isn’t that important. What I decided now is to separate them into the yarns/threads I’m going to use for my self-published designs and the yarns/threads I’m going to use for my own personal enjoyment projects. I also sub-separated them into wool/animal fibers or acrylic/cotton so I could keep the animal fibers separated and put a lavender sachet in those tubs to help control bugs eating my wool yarn!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at my 2024 yarn destashing project and how I organized my smaller stash. How do you organize your yarn stash? Do you have a larger stash than you can realistically use in your lifetime? What suggestions do you have for purging and reorganizing yarn/thread stash?

Happy crocheting!

Susan