During her recent visit to Grimsby for the 7 Strands Textile Symposium I had a conversation with Tilleke Schwarz about a photograph I had seen of her studio with all her threads neatly arranged in colours in separate boxes. I asked her how she had the patience to wind them all onto bobbins and she replied that she does them whilst watching the television and even though I am rather impatient when doing that sort of boring job I did think I should maybe do the same.

When I told her that my threads were jumbled up in polythene bags she seemed horrified so I resolved to get on and get organised. It did seem to be a huge task when I looked at the number of threads I seem to have accumulated but I have managed to motivate myself to do it and even though I have not yet finished the task yet I am very pleased with the result.
Here are 3 of the 8 boxes I have done so far .I’ll probably need to rearrange them when I have done them all but I am getting there!

I bought my boxes from Barnyarns of Ripon and I they were very inexpensive but they do the job perfectly. I would highly recommend doing this as I can now find the exact colour I want to use.I don’t use the thread numbers to organise them but just do them in colours by eye which is how I use them.
Barnyarns website