Winding yarn pegs NOT! Happy days…

A cold Monday in December is hardly a special day in the grand annual calender. But it might go down in my crafting journey as one to remember… and its all got to do with winding yarn pegs. Or rather, not winding them.

Going back to the last podcast, Episode 44, I talked quite a bit about the tools for colour planning that I was trying out with Stylecraft Special DK. My idea is, that once I have a good system going, I want to branch out and try it on other ranges of yarn, perhaps even for storing samples of some of my own hand dyed yarns. I also mentioned that the Queen of Yarn Pegs (AKA Lucy of Attic24) had given me a tip to look on Etsy as there were lovely people on their who are into winding yarn pegs and selling them.

One of the star yarn peg winders is Emily, whose Etsy shop is ThePolkaDotGiraffe. She does all 88 colours of Special DK but also other ranges such as Stylecraft Batik, Scheepjes Catona Cotton, Paintbox Simply DK and Cygnet DK. These are all very reasonably priced, bearing in mind how much time and effort goes into winding yarn pegs. I did five and that was enough and these sets are a fantastic time saver for me! I also think they are good money savers too, as a complete set will save you making costly mistakes when planning your own colours for blankets and other projects.

You’ve probably guessed by now that the highlight of my day was the arrival of the postie who brought a parcel with two excitingly labelled boxes inside:

I wanted to tear them open as soon as I got them through the front door but I retrained myself as I wanted to share the excitement with you.

I opened the small one first…

Don’t they look pretty! Like a box of carefully wrapped chocolates but with no calories. The boxes are great too – easily sturdy enough to store the pegs if you want to. After the appetiser, I moved on to the main course, beautifully  wrapped in purple tissue paper… What a treat! And to have the two sets together was fabulous. I hadn’t actually been expecting them to arrive for another week or so. Emily must have been winding yarn pegs like a demon!

I could have spent all afternoon playing with them. They are so photogenic and easy to layout into colour palettes… I put together the one in the pic below and I need to remember it as I really like it; copper, tomato, gold, camel, shrimp, silver, grape, spice, blush, apricot, grape, parchment, vintage peach, soft peach.

But before I got totally carried away, I wanted to devise a good, long term storage solution to keep the pegs in perfect condition but still accessible and easy to use. I thought that the vintage box I’ve been keeping my wound yarn tags in so far would be a good solution. Plenty of room and a lid to keep everything dust free and tidy.

I just poured them in at first but I realised that all the pegs, the wound tags and the shade card were going to be a bit of a tight squeeze. Neither did I like the pegs looking that untidy when they had been so neat in the original box.

Tidying them into lines worked much better but after filling up one layer, I had a lot of pegs still to fit in. Doubling up the layers was OK, but I couldn’t see all the colours at once.

Perhaps the Batik pegs could stay in the box they came with, and I would get another smaller box for the wound tags. But that would mean boxes on top of the pegs, making them even more difficult to get at.

What I really needed was a larger, shallower box that I could fit all the pegs and tags into so I could see exactly what was there. At times like this I tend to go off and make a cuppa and wander round the house looking for things I can repurpose. Today’s prowling meant rediscovering the mahogany tray that I bought for a few pounds at a local hospice shop the other week. I had been using it as a tray for making my stitch markers but I had a reorganisation of my beads and tools this weekend so it was handily empty.

I took all the Special DK yarn pegs out and started lining them up in the tray and I was very pleased with myself when the last peg and tag fitted in nicely… The tray could have actually been made for this. I think I paid about £3 for it and that was a bargain for a solid hardwood tray but now its yarn peg heaven, its become priceless.

The pegs are in a single layer, they fit perfectly into five rows and while I have the tags in there for the moment, it means I have some expansion space if there are new shades in either of these ranges. Now I’ve got to be on the lookout for a similar tray if I want to get pegs for other ranges of yarn!

What follows is shameless tray and peg spam! And that’s a turn of phrase you don’t read everyday 🙂

Its all such fun and I am going to have so many happy hours playing with this little lot. If you fancy joining me in winding yarn pegs NOT! check out Emily’s Etsy store. She’s getting busy now and will be taking some time off at Christmas to spend time with her little family, so if you want the perfect gift for a yarn-obsessed friendling, get over there quick.