Friday, March 11, 2011

Yarn Tree with Swatch Overgrowth

It's the busy season at our company, so rather than drive myself crazy using every spare minute making inventory to stock my Etsy store, I have decided to use this time to experiment and learn. A machine knitting class series at the Portland Sewing School has had me making swatches galore.

You only see a small bundle of them in the photo of the yarn tree below, but soon there will be patches of swatches choking the life blood out of that seven-foot tree.


There must be a better way to store swatches. Some people block them all and put each one in its own plastic protector sheet. All the sheets then go in a big old ring binder. This is the purist's method. It works best for those with plenty of time on their hands.

Others don't bother with blocking and just throw the swatches in a box or hang them on rings. The latter method is the approach you see here. Each sample has a little card-stock tag giving particulars on stitch techniques/hand manipulations used and machine settings. 


(Confession: I also have some ring binders full of samples from several years ago when there was more time and also some binders that came to me from the previous owner of a couple of my machines.) 

Soon all these swatches will be forming a union and will ask for a closet of their own. I might honor their wishes, but only to the extent that no additions have to be made to the studio.

2 comments:

T@PoppyPlacePdx said...

Oh my goodness you are so busy. You must have tons of knitting equipment. Have we seen photos of your studio??

I am organised with some of my fabric and them I pull tons out to do projects and that is when I get piles building up, tossing yardage here and there to see if they will work with one another :)

I love your yarn tree and the swatches look cool.

Have a lovely weekend T. :)

Cindy said...

That all looks very organized to me! All my organization skills seem to have vanished about 13+ years ago when my daughter was born. I'm now a drawer and closet stuffer. Love your yarn/swatch tree!