As far as most fiber artists I know, my yarn stash is tiny. Like the total number of skeins is probably in the teens. I typically buy yarn specifically for projects, as I’m paranoid of running out of yarn while knitting because I bought a skein or two five years ago and now the yarn is discontinued and they’re going for like $20 on ebay. The majority of my stash is leftover odds and ends, a couple souvenir hanks or balls from trips over the years, and yarn for projects I’ve long since forgotten about.
I know you’re supposed to keep your yarn in air tight containers to keep moisture and moths out, but that’s way too organized and put together for me. I also don’t like the idea of hiding my yarn for myself. With its current storage, I forget what I have, I forget what I bought it for, I discover it years later and don’t know what to do with it. I really wanted a way to display it, have it match my office, and not be really expensive. The solution finally presented itself after weeks of scouring the internet for any tall narrow shelves that weren’t weirdly expensive and matched the vibe.
It’s not the highest quality piece of furniture, and a dowel is snapped (and snapped again after being glued while my partner slightly modified it), but it’s cute, matches my other furniture, and the best part? It was $25 off of Facebook Marketplace. It’s definitely from the 1970s and has the sweet musty smell inside the cabinet to prove it, but it’s 13 inches fits the space and leaves room for access to the plug between it and the secretary.
Because it isn’t closed and doesn’t have side walls, I did slightly modify it to fit it’s new life as a yarn shelf. Now if you are a vintage furniture purist, now is the time to look away. I usually am too, but this piece was probably cheap when it was new, only parts of it are real wood, and it has a snapped dowel, tons of nicks and scratches, and a sticky spot on one of the shelves that no amount of Goo Gone could touch. If the next owner wants to restore it, my clumsy additions are pretty trivial.
First, my room is pretty small and already pretty crowded. It doubles as a guest room and has a queen sized sleigh bed in one corner, my desk, and this secretary. I liked that it was open as it makes it visually lighter, and I wanted to retain that while ensuring the smaller skeins of yarn didn’t just slide off the edges. My solution? Fishing line. I put two small nails under the bottom shelf and inside the top of the top shelf and strung fishing line between them. Since it came out a little as it had to go over the lip of the bottom shelf, and to add some stability and tension, my partner stapled it into the side of the top shelves as well.
This was a bit more difficult than it seemed at first. The carpet stapler my partner was using wasn’t actually loaded with carpet staples, just standard staple gun staples, so it kept getting jammed and ended up snapping the line twice. It was during this process the dowel broke again. But in the end it worked! I have added yarn security and didn’t make any irreversible changes to the shelves.
The second modification I made is even more temporary. I’ve had a couple skeins fall victim to moths, and my first lace shawl has a small moth hole in it I still need to repair. I love natural fibers and lace weights especially, and I also had a scare a few weeks ago when I saw a moth flying away from my lace shawl wip. I was terrified and put it in the freezer for two weeks. I finished the shawl and so far so good, fingers crossed. So to protect my out in the open yarn, I ordered some cedar planks. They go underneath the yarn on the shelves, above the yarn on the underside of the shelves, and I have enough to shove in the middle of the yarn stacks too.
So far so good! I haven’t seen any moths, my yarn is no longer rotting in bins long forgotten, and I think it looks pretty cute next to my other furniture. Plus Morrigan likes to watch me work from on top of it. Win win for everyone.
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