Tidy mind, tidy stitches - 2KCBWDAY3

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

When I was a young child, I was incredibly messy! My parents used to have enforced bedroom tidying sessions, where they'd almost disappear into a black hole of junk. I was forever making things, and these 'things' would all get pushed into my rather large cupboards! Tidying was a major event, lasting an entire day. Luckily for my parents, things did improve dramatically, and I was an unusually tidy teenager. This (I hesitate to call it an obsession, but Mr JK might beg to differ!) need I have for order and tidiness has continued throughout my adult life. I'm lucky enough to have a room where I keep all my crafty accessories, and I try not to let them spread out too much round the rest of the house (apart from my current knitting projects by the side of the sofa!) Mr JK isn't at all worried about my stash (he collects vinyl LPs and guitars, and they take up far more space!!), so it's all on show. Nothing is hidden away! Do you want a peek inside my room?

In one corner I have a shelving unit. This unit stores folders of patterns, knitting needles, all my knitting and craft books, buttons, beads ........... you name it, it's probably there! Yarn and fibre are all stored in plastic boxes. I have (ahem!) six of them currently! Here's my 'posh' 4ply box.

I do have all my yarn photographed and listed on Ravelry. I bravely looked at the total on the spreadsheet to see how much I've got. Are you ready? Sitting down? Just over 83 kilometres!! That's over 50 miles! Blimey! Not all the yarn is currently stored in plastic bags, but that's something I'm hoping to remedy over the Easter holidays. I have another box of 4 ply, laceweight, DK, single balls and garment quantities of yarn plus 2 fibre/spinning boxes. Oh dear, it sounds quite a lot, doesn't it, put like that?! At least the fibre boxes aren't bulging at the seams (yet!)

I'm not going to show you what's in all the boxes - if you want to take a look, you can find them on my Flickr page!

I'm a compulsive gatherer of cards whenever I'm at knitting shows, and these I keep on a little ribbon board. You just never know when they might come in useful!

Tucked into another corner is a work table with 3 drawers (one is currently storing my Innocent Smoothie hat collection for this year, another stores my swift and ball winder, and the third is currently empty!!) My sewing machine lives here, along with the ironing board (the only time it gets used is when I'm sewing!!), and of course, my spinning wheel.

I'm a complete sucker for lovely project bags to keep my knitting in. These are some of my favourites and come from Three Bags Full. I've always had a fantastic service from Michele, and I'm sure that I'll be visiting her shop again!

Alongside my knitting bags, I have a thick plastic pencil case that stores all my knitting notions - sewing needles, stitch markers, dpns, tape measure, scissors....... I'd be lost without it!

The one area I definitely need to improve on is how I organise my knitting needles. They are currently stored in several places, and to be honest, I don't know exactly what needles I've got. I'm sure that I've bought knitting needles when I didn't need to. How do you organise your knitting needles. Please share the secret with me!