As part of my effort to get my yarn stash organized, I have been making a series of stash bags that I am making in an effort to both use and organize my yarn stash.

Over the past seven-and-a-half weeks, I have documented my work on these bags, and several readers and fellow ravelers have asked me about a method I use to mark the rounds.

Because stitch markers and coil-less safety pins are one more item to keep track of, I have instead taken to using lengths of scrap yarn to mark the rounds of my work. I find that they are less cumbersome, less likely to get lost, and I always have several to choose from readily available.

My most recent stash bag (begun yesterday) is being made from Red Heart Super Saver light periwinkle. Today when I did an inventory of my stash bags, I saw that outside of my inaugural stash bag (made from vintage Red Heart yarn “Denim”), I had no other blue bags, but I still have plenty of skeins of blue yarn in need of organization.

As it is my goal for the color of the bags to give some indication of what color yarn they contain, it was clear that I needed to make another bag from some shade of blue.

As I sorted through the stash in my yarn annex (an area separate from my crochet empire/guest room), to my delight, I found two partial skeins of Red Heart Super Saver light periwinkle. A bit grayer than the delft, and a bit bluer than the country blue, the light periwinkle is a lovely shade that I always enjoy working with, despite the fact it is not as intense as many of the colors I favor.

After completing the first two rounds of this most recent effort I took the following photos in an effort to both document and explain the method I use for marking the rounds of a project. I like to start with a scrap that provides high contrast so that it is hard to miss. To that end, I grabbed a scrap of black yarn.

The picture is taken as I began work on the 3rd round of the stash bag:

That is how the bag looked yesterday when I began work on it, and here is how it looked today after my son’s trumpet lesson:

I do not know exactly how many of these bags I will need to house my yarn collection, but each one is fun in its own way, and as I can see that this particular project does indeed have an end, I know that when I reach that end, I will feel an odd mixture of joy (at having crocheted so many wonderful bags) and sorrow (because it will be time to move on) and accomplishment.