Taming the Skeins

When we’re in the car and I’m in the passenger seat knitting, my yarn will sometimes get away from me and fall on the floor, roll under the seat, get wrapped around cords that are in the floor and it’s kind of a hassle so about five years ago, I came up with a plan to make my own “yarn keeper” using a Mason jar, a Tattler lid and a grommet. You can read about that here.

I was a bit concerned about breaking a jar and having broken glass in the car so I tried some of the plastic containers but short of taping the lid down on most of them, when they fell on the floor or my foot bumped them, the lid came off. In five years of using the glass jars, I haven’t broken one yet.

I’ve always used the jar only in the car and not in the house and only when working with one yarn because that’s mostly what I use but working with five skeins on the current project, I spend more time untangling yarn that I do knitting.

When I’m sitting and knitting with multiple skeins, no matter how carefully I think I’m placing the project in my chair, when I get up and sit back down, I have a mess and it takes several minutes EVERY time to get it all untangled.

I never realized how many times my kitting gets interrupted til I’m having to spend so much time untangling yarn. Rita has to go out. It’s time for Rita’s eye drops, then 15 minutes later, it’s time for the second drop. The chickens are squawking and I have to go see what’s going on with them. The washer is done and it’s time to put the clothes in the dryer. Start dinner. Check on dinner. It’s a tough life! 🙂

Today I told Vince . . I wish you would make me something like a drawer, with dividers and an edge that was open just enough that yarn would freely slide through it. Then I thought . . I just need more jars with holes in the lids!

He agreed to drill holes in more lids because he figured I had no idea where the extra grommets were . . but I knew exactly where they were. I got up and got them so he drilled through 6 or 7 more lids for me. This could be done using metal lids too . . even the used (washed) metal lids.

Once I start using the end of the yarn, unless I break the yarn, I can’t pull it through the grommet but if I want to remove the yarn from the jar, I can put the yarn, and the lid in a zipper type bag and put it in my knitting bag so I don’t have to haul around 5 jars if I’m taking the project with me but, for the most part, colorwork projects using 5 colors of yarn are not very portable.

These yarns will still get tangled a bit, and several time a day I’ll have to stop and and untangle them simply because I may use yellow and gray on one row, then blue and white on the next row. If I remember to do a complete backwards circle with the project at the end of every row, that, in theory puts all the yarn back at the starting point but sometimes that doesn’t even help. No matter . . it’s much easier than what I’ve been doing.