Colour

I have been meaning to organise my yarn by colour for a while. Last year I visited a yarn store in Amsterdam where the yarn was stored in that way. I was really struck by the way it looked. It wasn’t organised by brand or content as other stores do. It was very interesting to me as I turned my back on some colours and concentrated on my favorites – purple and blue.

So, this afternoon I decided to finally do it. I spread plastic bags over our bed, both to protect the bed from fibres and to protect the yarn from any rogue cat hairs, and began bringing the various tubs and bags into the room. I emptied the yarn one tub/bag at a time onto the bed and began sorting into colour groups as I came across them.

I finally ended up with the following colour groups

Purples
Blues
Oranges
Browns
Reds
Greens
Blacks/Greys
White/Cream

The purple and blue groups were the largest but I was really surprised at the size of the greens, oranges and browns. I knew that I had a fair bit of red in my stash. I sorted through all of my stash including eyelash and sock yarns. I’ve managed to put every colour into own tub, two tubs in the case of the blue, but I have to visit IKEA to buy more tubs for the purples. I think I’ll have to get at least four of their stackable, clear tubs.

While I was sorting I watched the film “The Hours” on video, I had thought that it would take about an hour, two tops, to sort the yarn out. It must have taken about four hours! Yes, I do have a lot of yarn! Plus my back was aching after lifting heavy tubs of yarn. Still, looking through it helped organise in my mind what I’ll be adding to the European Stash Redistribution Box when it arrives.

Knitwise I’m halfway through the heel of a Regia sock. It’s from 5219 Mini Reingel and is the mate of a sock that I knit last year. I bought the yarn while in Berlin. I started it last night and was amazed by how quickly it knit up. The stripes of colour really help. I found myself thinking, “Just one more stripe” as I worked so it’s really built up. The next sock that I cast on will have to be the mate to an Opal one that I started back last August. It took months to finish because of my RSI problem. Once that’s done I’ll probably look at one of the hand dyed sock yarns in my stash.