Moving into a simple yarn hutch

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Today we’re going to get set up and move into my simple yarn hutch! I’m hopeful that a lot of inspiration will come from this hutch and this whole sunroom studio.

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I’ve waited for this moment.

The air is right, just chilly enough to warrant the lighting of candles and wear wool socks.

I have a Lord of the Rings audiobook playing in my ear, and I’m channeling all my inner hobbit coziness into one of my favorite knitting sub-hobbies: decorating the simple yarn hutch.

Goodbye, white yarn hutch!

Where is the monstrosity of a white hutch you’ve seen for the last 3 years online, you ask?

Sadly, the white yarn hutch is living in my garage, safely awaiting new owners to bring it home and love it well. Maybe its new life is in carefully holding delicate dishes, like it was made to do. Or maybe it’s gotten a taste of being an out of the box yarn hutch, and it will end up being a sweet old hutch housing watercolor paints, pads and pads of paper, and endless amounts of worn paintbrushes.

Whatever the white yarn hutch ends up as, I’m grateful for its time with us. But it was time for a change.

We recently refinished our living room floors and in giving the whole room a makeover, decided that the focal point needed to change. In re-evaluating the whole room I decided that my huge yarn hutch didn’t need to be in there, looking all alter-ish in our family living room.

Three cool things have happened now:

1. We uncovered the old built in shelves and have a cozy nook for playing card games. Many wonderful date nights and moments between siblings have grown from this!
2. The room looks entirely larger. With a family of 6, fitting all the people and furniture in our main family room was cramped to say the least. Taking out the largest piece in the room has opened things up. It feels so much more airy, and yet fuller of family life in the best way.
3. The sunroom gets a (hopefully) final purpose. Our sunroom has a beautiful view of the yard and sits right off the dining room. It has had a lot of temporary purposes like an office, a greenhouse, a chicken brooder, and most often, the laundry dump. When we moved in, I was most excited for the sunroom and John was most excited for everything you see outside the sunroom.

I’ve grown a lot in realizing that This Yellow Farmhouse matters to our family, after having it take over and then be non-existent. Things finally clicked into place with all this yarn hutch business when we realized, I’m a work from home mom. I don’t have to feel guilty about having a studio.

So, the story goes that this green hutch, that used to hold our homeschool things and art supplies, is now home to my yarn collection.

Simplifying the yarn hutch

I’ve already cleaned this out and added my anchors that I don’t really ever switch out: my plants. I also have my most favorite knitting books here, and a beautiful basket that I thrifted to hold some needles.

My plan with the rest of my books is to keep them in our bedroom. I say the rest of, but it’s really not that many. A few kids’ knitting books or books specific to a certain project that I can pull out when I need.

Yarn

Now we come to the yarn. I’ve got about half the space here to store my yarn than I did in the old hutch, so I’m going to have to be smart about it. I also have a new challenge: sunlight. This hutch faces the window, and while it’s set back a bit and shouldn’t get direct sunlight for long, I don’t want to have my yarn fading.

My thought is to only keep out what I’m currently working on and what’s truly going to be knit next. So, us going into fall here I’m not going to keep out my chunky yarn or cotton. I currently have two WIPS going, a tank top that’s as simple as can be, and a shawl that needs a little more attention. So I’ll keep those in baskets. Then I can put them right back in here. If I’m taking them out of the house to work on, I put them in a project bag. I like doing that so much better. Then I’m not trying to remember where I set down a small pair of socks in the house.

I’m also keeping out bare yarn for dyeing. We’re going into walnuts dropping on our heads season, and I’m looking forward to foraging and dyeing my bare sock yarn this fall.

Patterns

I’m going to put my pattern binder in the drawer, if it fits, and also my circular needles. Those things both lay pretty flat, and I want them to be easily accessible. I wrote about how I organize my knitting patterns, which you can find on my blog. I’m also keeping other flat things like my circular needles and crochet hooks in here. One thing I’m going to play around with is how I organize my knitting needles. It will need to be a different system than in my blog post. I might rubber band the needles sets together. But I also really like the way this looks! I don’t use straight needles as often as circulars or double pointed.

Bonus space

Underneath, I have the next big projects and designs that I have planned. They’re already sorted by my color palettes, so you can see that I have Christmas and winter designs brewing in my mind. I need to keep this yarn close by so that I can stay on track, so these will live under the hutch like a happy little hutch troll.

I also don’t only knit by designing, so I’ll keep yarn that is kind of speaking to me this fall that I’m hoping to cast on. In this case it’s looking ahead to Christmas by working on my Christmas stockings. One last thing that used to live in my dresser actually, is everything I need to film and take photos of my knitting. Knitting photography is so much fun for me. I’m also keeping a few knitting accessories like my ball winder and yarn swift right here, so I don’t have to search around when I need those tools.

These black wire baskets have been with me for years. They’re sturdy and prevent yarn avalanches, but no yarn catches on the wire!

Collecting yarn simply and slowly

This is a dose of reality for sure. I know the white hutch held way more yarn than most people could display. But this hutch feels less fussy and more “me”. It feels simple and manageable, while being joyful and meaningful. This feels like a homely hutch, and not a great-for-Instagram hutch.

>>Check out my yarn hutch playlist here.

Thanks so much for coming along with me on the new yarn hutch tour. I hope you’re inspired to turn your yarn into an inspiring display no matter what space you have.

>>Read about spring cleaning your yarn here.

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