It was bound to happen some time, right? After 30+ years of crocheting and crafting with yarn, I'm surprised it's only been recently that my brain could no longer catalog all the brands and colors and weights, and whatnot, of all the yarn I have tucked into tote bags. Perhaps that's an indication, not of the copious varieties of yarn in the tote bags, but rather my aging mental capacities. Eh. Let's just pretend.
Because I have sooo many different yarns (*wink*), I've started to catalog them. I'm not putting any monumental effort into the process, so I've only started, and it will likely take me a while to get 'em all processed, but here's my strategy:
~ Record the yarn's brand, color, and color number on half an index card (mine were super flimsy, so I folded each whole card in half)
~ Punch a hole in the top
~ Crochet up a tiny swatch (mine is single crochet, five stitches wide)
~ Attach swatch to card (I went with safety pins instead of staples)
~ Put all swatch cards of like brands on a single ring (I'm using a shower curtain ring)
I had a few colors that were in ball form, the skein wrappers long gone, so on a recent trip to Walmart, I took the entire ring with me and stood in the yarn aisle matching swatches with skeins and recording the info there. And inevitably picked up a few more colors I didn't have. Go ahead, tell me I didn't look like a hard core crocheter with this big swatch ring and seven skeins in my basket!
Another bonus to cataloging this way: Planning a color scheme or stripes no longer requires dragging out entire tote bags of yarn. Just pull swatch cards and line 'em up, switch 'em around, swap 'em out... Easy.
And when I'm running low on a color, I can take the swatch card with me to shop, so I can be sure the colors are the same.
Maybe years from now, when I have a hundred tiny swatches of discontinued colors, I'll stitch 'em into a watercolor quilt-style afghan.
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