I keep falling down the same Pinterest rabbit hole. And it’s all because of my attention span. Or rather lack thereof.
But that too is a contradiction. Because when I venture down these rabbit holes, I can be lost for hours. But the reason I am down these many holes is because of said attention span.
I’ve always said I have the attention span of a gnat. And it’s the reason I could keep 19 files open on my desk at any one time. Good for the workplace, certainly in my field. Not so good in other parts of my life.
Like my crafting life.
My craft room, also known as my loom room, is a perfect demonstration of the gnat that lives in my brain. I can never really settle on any one craft. So I weave, I cross stitch, I hardanger, I do counted thread embroidery, I do counted thread needlework (yes, they are different) I do black work (these last several are variations on the stitching theme, for those who don’t indulge). I knit. I also dabble in water colour painting,and drawing, have tried acrylic folk painting (and still have a suitcase full of paint), pencil crayon drawing, pen and water colour art. And there are books for all these activities. And magazines. And patterns beyond measure or count.
What I am getting at, and why I disappear down these Pinterest rabbit holes, is that I lack organization for all these crafts. Because none of them is a small craft. And my loom room is bursting at the seams. Sometimes I can’t find floor to walk or stand on.
Ken says I build empires. For example, early in my cross stitching days I overheard someone say that she had decided if she were to be considered a serious stitcher, she had to have at least one of every colour of floss.
Ding, ding, ding.
I suddenly had to have one of every colour of floss. Lucky for me I had this inspiration back in the day when you could get floss for 33 cents a skein. (Today a skein of floss is more than a dollar.) Important when you consider that DMC, one of the floss companies, has about 500 colours. Yes, indeed there are that many colours. Then there are the specialty flosses, the silks, the metallics, the rayons, the variegated. And lo and behold you have a floss storage problem.
And it’s not a simple solution. Many companies sell systems. There’s the flex bo system that fits into binders. (Guess how many binders you need for 500 colours). There’s the floss-away system, a plastic bag system (think of a small sandwich bag) that fits into nothing that currently exists, and is so slippery that it pops out of alignment when you do manage to find something to hold the bags and then squeeze too many of them into the constricted space. Then there’s the cardboard bobbin system, which has the same pop out problem because I am not a machine and can’t seem to wind every single bobbin the same. So some bulge more in the middle than others. And of course the ends are always coming loose so when you pull one bobbin (or spool for that matter) out of the file, you can catch a loose thread and pull out several, which then need to be refiled.
Then there’s the spool system, and I tried that too. Wound more than 500 skeins of floss onto more than 500 spools. Stored nicely in a multi-drawer plastic tray sytem but you need either a project box or something similar once you take the spools out of the storage system to work on a project. And as you might guess, I don’t like simple projects so I use upwards of a hundred colours on some projects. So yes, indeed, I have more than one skein of each colour.
My latest system came from Europe, and is beautifully carved and wood burned wood. Think the top inch or two of a hanging folder, make little square holes across and carve it beautifully with my choice of design (I chose an ocean theme) and hang floss from each of the holes. The holes, are numbered according to the previously mentioned DMC system.
I started my reorganizeation using this system by attaching skeins using a sheep shank through the holes (yes, my past includes macrame). Several problems came to mind immediately. First, the various skeins would tangle with each other once hung in a stand. Second, as soon as you removed a colour for a project, it becomes separated from its number. And with 500 numbers, well, you can imagine the mess. Because I never throw anything away (yes I border on and sometimes venture into hoarding) I still have the plastic bags from the floss-away system so was able to put the floss into the bags. This meant I could keep them on the cardboard bobbins or spools that they were currently residing on, which doubled as both containers and labour saving devices. But that has its own problems, and the system is unweildy.
So you can see my storage problem just with floss. And then there’s the fabric. It comes in various forms and compositions measured in ways that you really don’t care about, but this complexity means that it too has to be sorted. I choose to sort by thread count. And I can never pass by a sale, so if there’s interesting stitching fabric on sale, I am likely to have some in my bag when I leave the store. And on top of floss and fabric, there’s the issue of embellishments. Many patterns are enhanced by beads. So I have drawers full of beads. And of course you need scissors, various sizes and shapes of needles, needle threaders (for old eyes and really skinny needles) hoops, frames and pattern holders, magnets (to keep needles from going astray), specialty lights for working on small thread counts and in winter (plus old eyes need help) and magnifying glasses. Sometimes I use drug store glasses in the large numbers to magnify the fabric I am stitching on. (Imagine 36 holes in an inch).
As side issue, the counted thread embroidery is often done on canvas with different flosses than cross stitch, so a different system is necessary for this project.
If floss, fabric and beads were the only issue, I would still have problems.
But to multiply my storage woes, I knit and I weave. Both take large amounts of yarn. I use the word “wool” as a generic. Like tissue instead of kleenex. My yarn could be silk, cotton, linen, yak, acrylic, blends, so i say wool to capture it all. Wrong, I know, but the shorthand helps. So I have no system for this either. I have tried. I have a shelf above head level that goes around two walls of my loom room filled with cones of wool (I had a great time in Scotland collecting Shetland wool, and various hand spun and dyed wools often from the people who raised the sheep. Sometimes I came home with one suitcase filled with nothing but wool). I have a book case which is stacked with plastic “shoe boxes” and I have taken the doors off the closet (in a normal house the loom room would be a child’s bedroom) and Ken has built me shelves.
Sorting and organizing the wool is an ongoing, constant effort. I started by spread it it all over the second story of our house on every available surface. I debated different ways of separating and sorting it, and decided that I would use weight. Wool comes in various weights ranging from lace where you can expect anywhere from 850 to 1000 metres in 100 grams to bulky where you would get 50 to 100 metres in that same 100 grams. Because of the kind of projects I do, I chose to divide the wool by weight. But of course as you use it and look for wool for any given project, things get messed up. So the wool is sorted and resorted and resorted yet again.
And in addition to the wool, you have needles. Double pointed needles, circular needles, straight needles, interchangeable needles. All of which come in a multitude of sizes. You often need crochet hooks to weave ends in and to catch dropped stitches, so although I don’t currently crochet, I have a supply of crochet hooks in various size. And the patterns. Well, that’s another whole issue. I have binders full of them.
Then you have the handling systems. Good wool comes in skeins. You can’t knit or weave from skeins, so you have to wind the wool into balls. You can use another person’s arms, or you can use two chairs or you can get a swift and ball winder. I have done all of these, but the swift and ball winder are my favourites. But they too take space when not in use. Fortunately the swift does collapse. Otherwise you would need a space about the size of a bar fridge for it to sit in.
Weaving is no different in terms of wool-handling. When you weave you need several hundred lengths of wool all the same length, so warping mills or warping frames come into play. Bobbins have to be filled, so a different kind of winder enters the room. I have manual and electric. And you need shuttles to carry the weft back and forth, and lease sticks (like yard sticks) and hand tools to assist in “dressing” the loom. And wrenches, screw drivers etc to maintain the loom.
My floor loom and its bench take probably a full third of the floor space in the room, hence the name “loom room”.
Of course I also have a triangle loom (six feet on each side which sits on an easel-like apparatus), a peg loom, a tapestry loom and a rigid heddle loom.
My painting and drawing habits are probably the most contained of my crafts. I have the watercolour supplies in a suitcase with wheels for ease of transporting to my class. And my drawing supplies thankfully are easily contained in a bag. Although my paper supplies are starting to overwhelm me.
But you can see my problem.
All the rabbit holes I visit on Pinterest are single craft rooms. They ask and answer the question “How do I deal with all the fabric from my quilting/sewing/card making?”(Ken is thankful daily that I have no interest in any of these crafts although paper quilling has called to me a couple of times). Solutions are often simple compared to dealing with a disorganized multi-crafter. I’ve never seen anyone address the issues I have.
I am interested in solutions. Do you have any to offer?