Knitting Organization: Giving My Organization New Life

 I've been mildly obsessed with my knitting needles and organizing them lately. It all started when a lovely friend of mine lent me her Chiaogoo interchangeable set, which has lead to reconsidering what I thought the knitting experience had to be. That's a story for another day, but this did make me remember something I forgot I even had...

I came across 2 of these older Knit Picks needle cases YEARS ago in a thrift store. They were each full of needles in these plastic pages and I snapped them up for $2 each! Craziness because 1) knitting is not a common hobby in Florida, so you never find good supplies - just things you can pick up at a big box craft store and 2) why would anyone think $2 was enough for these? I loved that thrift store for that reason, lol. Anyway, I bought them both, but I really never even took the needles out for an investigation. They both just got put on a shelf, which eventually got covered over with stuff. I decided to unearth them and see what I had when I started obsessing about quality of needles a few weeks ago.

I was happy to discover I have many sets of Knit Picks and Addi circular needles in these little binders, BUT the pages themselves were ... yucky. It's hard to see in the photo, but they had yellowed considerably and developed a gooey film that rubbed off on your hands and the needles inside the pages. Gross. This type of needle case isn't even sold by Knit Picks anymore, though they do sell replacement pages... for $5.99 for 2 pages. I know that may not sound incredible, but for the amount I would pay to replace these pages I could have bought a new needle case, so that was just too much for me. I decided to check on Temu to see if they had anything that would work.

I got a 12 pack of these pouch pages that have rainbow zippers for $2.58 and they worked great for the fixed circulars. Quite the savings! I actually bought several types of pages because I didn't know officially which ones would work, so I also got some that are designed for budgeting cash, so they have fold over tops and are sized for dollar bills and these were great for my flexi dpns. I have a few other types of pages as well that can hold notions if I want.

While I was at it, I decided to upgrade my notions bag as well. I LOVE this little bag I've used for my whole 11 year knitting career. It's a Shinzi Katoh Alice in Wonderland bag my sister got me when she lived in Japan. I love Shinzi Katoh stuff, and I know it's hard to tell from the photo, but this is a bit dirty after such a long time of use.

I had a sad occurrence recently - ALL this time I've kept it so nice, but a pen came uncapped and stained my bag :/ I removed that pen, but honestly this bag wasn't great for being organized anyway, so I decided to buy one that I could compartmentalize a bit more.

This new bag has 3 zipper sections, one of which has elastic for pens, so I can keep my pens and crochet hooks and stitch holders and whatnot in that one, then my jump drives and post it notes on the opposite side, then all my stitch markers and measuring tape and needle gauge in the center. This bag was $3.88 from Temu.

So now I have all my fixed needles ready for use now that I know what I have and where they are ... and now that they don't have a gooey film on them. These binders are pretty neat, honestly, and I'm excited to use all these "new" (to me) needles at long last.

And my notions bag is nice and organized to go with my Chiaogoo needle case, which is also nicely organized. I'll post more about the various tools I use (and more upgrades I got from Temu as well - they have a surprising amount of knitting and crochet tools and they are so cheap).

All in all, I'm super happy with the items I got from Temu and I think I paid less for all this stuff than I would have for just a few replacement pages from Knit Picks. Gotta love a deal!

*This post contains affiliate links, but all these items were unsponsored and purchased with my own money.