Knitting Needle Wall Hanging?

How do you organize your knitting needles?

Although I love my Hiya Hiya needles (and the circular interchangeables even come in their own beautiful embroidered silk case), I have LOTS of other different needles collected over many years of knitting.

I used to keep my needles organized by size in individual zippered pencil pockets within a huge zippered binder arranged by size. When the binder got past the point of bulging and I was getting lazy about putting needles away (thus frustrating myself later with the wasted time to find what I needed for new projects), I created an organizer system from a metal merchandiser clip strip and velcro that I had on hand. The result can sort of serve as a piece of “wall art”, but I doubt it will get any awards. Anyway, it serves a purpose. And now there is room again in the binder for my other straight and double point needles. Yay!

Circular Needle Organizer
Circular Needle Organizer

For this circular needle organizer, I simply labeled the needle size with a marking pen on pieces of velcro, the needles are inserted through the layers of velcro and held by their cables, and inserted under the clip of the merchandizer strip.

The velcro holding all needles of a certain size is easy to unclip from the strip. That is handy for me because I like to try out a variety of needle compositions and lengths before making a selection to suit the particular yarn fiber and type of project I will be working on. When I have made my selection, I just re-clip the velcro strip holding the remaining needles.

Not only am I feeling more organized — the wall hanging makes quite a decorative conversation piece!

How do you organize your knitting needles and crochet hooks? Please share in your comments below or post under “This weeks question” at the HeartStrings FiberArts Facebook page.

Related Images:

The Key to the Mystery

Earlier this week I was looking around for a photo prop to go along with my article The Key to Keeping Your Free Membership Active at the Knit HeartStrings learn-and-knit-along site. A regular house or car key would not be very interesting. And photo’g one of those new-fangled hotel card keys that is loaded with advertisements would be too crass. Then I thought of  this old hotel key that is both interesting and mysterious to me.

central hotel glasglow key
Room key for Central Hotel Glasgow

Isn’t it’s design lovely? (at least I think so) They just don’t make keys like this anymore. I like it’s boldness. It’s strength. It’s manly, rustic look.

How did I come into possession of this key? It’s a mystery! The name plate identifies the Central Hotel Glasgow. A little Internet research reveals this hotel dates back to 1883 and was built at the site of Central Station, the main train hub of Glasgow. I’d love to go to Scotland one of these days, and  now this hotel is definitely on my list of places to see. But I still don’t know how I got the key to room 473. Something in my child- memory tells me my grandmother might have said my uncle had stayed there while on a tour of service duty and gave her this as a momento. But I might just be making this up as a fantasy.

Please help me start solving the mystery behind this key. Does this style of key look familiar to you and could you help date its time in history?

Related Images: