I know I’ve mentioned “the tiny cat” before. And I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about the kinds of trouble she can cause. So you might be concerned when I tell you that the tiny cat recently noticed my circular needle storage. It definitely worried me. It worried me enough that I’ve just changed the way I store my circular needles….and I’m still hoping to find some of my missing needles tucked in hidden corners around the house.
This is my old storage system with them hanging on my Inspiration Wall. I know it was a little messy and many of the needles didn’t quite fit. But I had zero motivation to find a different solution since this one worked. Recently though, I’ve been having trouble finding some of my needles. I figured the missing needles must still be tucked in FO bags waiting to be found and sorted. Then one of my 60″ interchangeable cables went missing. I only own two. One is in use and the other not. I knew I hadn’t used it recently. I knew it should be there. It wasn’t…..and that got me thinking about the other needles I haven’t been able to find recently.
As you can imagine, that sent me looking under and behind and in all kinds of spots in the house. I did find two 16″ fixed circulars in my search (way in the back underneath my desk). But I’m still missing another 5 or so circular needles and my 60″ cable. You’d think that cable should be easy to find since 5 feet of anything must be hard to tuck away. But so far it remains missing. It also got me watching the tiny cat around the house more and she doesn’t like it. The puppy helps me follow her around now too. She doesn’t seem to mind that since they’ve become best buds.
I asked around to my friends what they do for circular needle storage and this is the suggestion that sounded best to me. A bait binder (sometimes called worm binder) sold with fishing supplies for serious fisherman.
The plastic storage sheets are reinforced and resealable with metal grommets where they attach to the binder. The storage sheets are also clear to see what is in each pouch easily. There are handy-looking zippered inside pockets too. I haven’t decided what to do with them yet. But they look useful.
Here is where I veered a little off the path though. There was a deal. I could order a double binder for a little less than the price of the single binder. Now that I see it in person it looks like doubling the binder probably wasn’t necessary. But who knows? Maybe I’ll sort my dpns in the back half someday. One of my friends does that and she’s very happy with her system.
For now I’ve made a page for each size of needle and used painter’s tape (one too many unhappy experiences with masking tape had me searching the basement for a different solution) plus a silver sharpie for the labels. Since I don’t knit with the largest needle sizes, the 10 sheets in the front half plus 2 from the back half that I moved to the front were plenty to sort all my needle sizes.
I do wonder if I would be happier with the shorter needles separated from the longer needles. You can see that some of the sizes are extra full and I might have some tangling. So possibly I could go crazy and use the front half for shorter circulars and the back half for longer circulars. But I have no intention of doing that anytime soon.
For now I’m happy that I can zip the bait binder closed and the tiny cat can’t get to them. Yet. She was watching me move them very closely. So to be safe I plan to keep a pretty close eye on the bait binder for the foreseeable future. Just in case.
