what I did yesterday

I bought a double CD case at Aldi for €2.99 (they were only available in gray, can you believe it?) and stuck all my circular needles in it. They're all sorted, first by size and then by cable length, with little labels so I don't have to keep measuring things to be sure I've got the right one.

I've been looking for a good way to store circs since - well, pretty much since I started knitting. The first thing I did was stick them all through a stitch marker and hang it from the ceiling, but then I had to measure to find the right one every time, and that was kind of annoying. It did make a very nice wind-chimey sound, but it didn't look very nice.

I saw recipes for a circular-needle-holding wall hangy-thing made out of old jeans, but that's not really the sort of thing I tend to hang on my wall. This is a prettier version, but still, it has all these needles hanging out of it.

Then I tried this linen silverware holder we have for the nice silver (which lives in a drawer right now, and so doesn't need its holder). The premise is good, but this is made for knives and forks, not for knitting needles, so it rolled up clunkily and there was no reasonable way to sort them by length. I also couldn't label the sizes, because I knew I'd want to use it as a silverware holder again.

So then I had this smaller square CD case, but the needle points stuck out too far. So I cut out all the little envelope-things, labeled them by size and length with a Sharpie, and stored them in a flat plastic box so I could flip through them, like we used to flip through records, back in the olden days. I ran out of envelopes before I ran out of sizes, though, and kept getting them out of order and being too lazy to put the needles back when I was done.

Here's an idea I love - but I tend to work with whatever materials I have to hand, and the binders I have have only two rings and the plastic sheet protectors are kind of baggy. The weight of the needles makes them sag, and the two rings that hold them are not enough to prevent that. If I ever do get the materials (there's a Muji in Munich), I probably will make one, but, you know. That could take forever.

It's a bit squeezy to shut it, and of course I don't have all my needles in it because I have 8 or 9 WIPs lying around, but there was also room in the back of the case for my DPNs - there sure are a lot of them! Some I bought, some were given to me, most of the sets are incomplete, and since I really only use them occasionally, as a cable needle or a pointer to help me count chart-squares, I probably don't need to organize them. If I ever do need a set, there's my needle gauge, voilà.

So. We'll see if the latest of my many systems works.

Also, I have now organized maybe 30 square centimeters of space. In my 140-square-meter house. Talk about your baby steps.