Storing Japanese Silk Threads (and Waterskiing)

You might be wondering what I've been working on now that phase 2 is complete and phase 3 has not yet arrived. The answer is absolutely nothing. 😂 At least nothing embroidery related. 

That wouldn't usually be the case, but my oldest brother and his wife flew in from Boston to spend the week with us. I haven't seen them in nearly two years, so when I wasn't working, I was spending time with them and the rest of my family. (They go home today. 😭)

On Wednesday, we went to Canyon Lake to do some boating and waterskiing. Although it's not embroidery related, it may be the last time I'll ever water ski, so here it is, documented for posterity:

I sprained my ankle seven weeks ago and it's still not fully healed, so I only attempted this once. It was fun, but it was about a thousand degrees at the lake (i.e., 113°F / 45°C) because we're in the midst of a nasty heat wave. You can just see the sunburn starting to form on my right shoulder:

Fortunately I have an aloe vera plant, which I immediately harvested that night to relieve some of the pain and redness.

Anyway, back to embroidery. Although I haven't been working on any embroidery pieces this week, I do have something embroidery related to share. It's time to talk about Japanese silk threads!

I get most of my threads from the Japanese Embroidery Center because that's where my phases come from. I ordered a color card from them several months ago, and I love it:

When I'm trying to choose colors for a new piece, it's so helpful to have this card and be able to see the exact shade I'll be getting. I can also detach the cards from the loop and hold the colors up next to each other to see how well they'll go together.

I recently ordered the color cards for Midori's silk threads as well:

I got this color card set because she has slightly different shades than the JEC. Sometimes I prefer her colors and sometimes the JEC's. But most of all, I just like to have as many options as possible.

Since I'm not going for JEC certification, I have a lot more leeway than the average Japanese embroidery student. I can use whatever colors I want from whomever I please, and I can alter the design to suit my tastes. (For JEC certification, you have to do a JEC design exactly as designed using only JEC threads.) When my phase 3 materials arrive, I'll go into this topic in more detail, but for now, I want to discuss storing Japanese silk threads. 

I haven't had too many spools to store yet. My first phase included only a handful of colors, and my first two Midori pieces had about six colors between them. So I just stuffed them in a bag and put them in a box. Handy, no? 😂

But I've recently ordered my phase 3 materials as well as a second practice piece (you'll have to wait till they arrive to see what they are!), which included 27 spools of Japanese silk thread! Add to that the dozen or so spools left from my phase 2 piece plus my phase 1 and Midori spools, and I will have over 50 spools that I need to store somewhere. Enter the photo storage box:

I found this at Michael's on sale for about $16. It's designed to store 4" x 6" photos, but I found it was perfect for storing Japanese silk threads. When you open the box, it has 16 little cases, each just slightly larger than 4" x 6":

Each case will hold eight spools of Japanese silk thread:

My Midori spools fit perfectly in this vertical fashion because they're a little bit shorter and fatter:

The JEC spools, however, are narrower and longer, and while I can fit three vertically on the left and right sides, the middle of the case is indented a bit and it's just not quite wide enough to fit the JEC spools. So I put three in vertically in the left side and then turned the other five horizontally:

Worked like a charm! I was so happy to find a storage solution that fit both my Midori and JEC spools perfectly. And best of all, I can group things easily by color, designer, or project. I will probably generally do it by color and designer once I'm done with a project. But I like that I can set up little cases for the projects I'm working on and just have one or two small boxes out at a time. The rest of the box, which is fairly large, can stay neatly tucked away in the closet.

By my calculations, I can store 128 spools in this entire box, so I should be good for another couple of phases. After that, I may need to purchase another one of these. 

And that does it for today's update. I can't wait to show you my phase 3 piece, but I decided to customize the actual design this time, so it's going to take a little longer for it to arrive.