I don’t know whether the word is still as fashionable as it was a while back, but do you remember how practically anything you could buy was a solution? Software solutions (programs), packaging solutions (cardboard and parcel tape), gardening solutions (compost, plants, seccateurs), stationery solutions (pens, paper, staples) and, of course, storage solutions (boxes). Well, once upon a time I had the perfect storage solution for my un-bobbined threads – hinged metal rings with thin varnished light wooden rings on them, and cheap & cheerful plastic clip-shut boxes.

Then the thin, varnished light wooden rings were no longer to be had. And the hinged rings weren’t easy to find in the right size any more. And the Dutch shop where I bought the plastic boxes was out of the size I wanted. Obviously, I should have stocked up in a big way on all those three parts of my storage solution when I had the chance! But is there any stitcher who has a realistic idea of how many threads she will have in a year’s time?

So I now have two half-sized boxes, smaller metal rings and larger, thicker and rougher wooden rings. Not ideal, but they’ll do, and it is still a joy to play with my lovely new threads. But when I’d finished putting the pre-cut perles onto my wooden rings, I came to the next challenge – Threadworx’ overdyed Vineyard silk. Unlike their perles and stranded cottons, the silks don’t come in pre-cut lengths. And unlike the perle cottons, which may look pretty and dainty but are quite sturdy underneath, the silks really are as delicate as they look and I wouldn’t dream of putting them on those untreated wooden rings, even though I did sand them to get rid of the worst roughness. So what to do with them? The obvious answer is to do what I do with all my other silks and wind them on plastic bobbins. But that means keeping them with the other bobbinated threads in one of my bobbin boxes, and I particularly want to keep them with the Threadworx perles as they are meant to go with some of the #8 perles instead of a #5.

Have you ever known an object really well only to realise after years of use that they have a particular feature? That sounds a bit complicated, but here is what I mean. I have wound threads onto bobbins for years. I know them back to front. Flat white plastic things with a hole in the top end. Subconcsciously I knew that hole was there. I even knew it was there because some people keep them on hinged metal rings. The metal rings are, after all, sometimes known as bobbin rings. But because I keep bobbins in bobbin boxes, this idea never really made it into my conscious mind. Until yesterday,when it suddenly came to me that I could have three rings of perles-on-wooden-rings, and one ring of silks-on-bobbins, and keep them in the same box.

So I did – but there was one last complication. There were rather more Threadworx threads than I’d realised so I now had four rings of perles and one of silks, and they wouldn’t fit into the half-sized box. A bit more stash rearranging was obviously called for, and eventually the Threadworx collection ended up in my wooden thread box, while my DMC/Anchor variegated perles now inhabit one of the half-sized boxes, and my House of Embroidery perles the other.

Storage problem solved!

For now…