Knitting (and not) Blogs that Keep Me Entertained

Knitting (and not) Blogs that Keep Me Entertained

By guest blogger Jana

The Yarn Harlot (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) is on my must-read-every day list. She’s seriously funny and inspiring (yarnharlot.ca/blog). You also can’t go wrong with the crazy ladies of masondixonknitting.com. Occasionally I take a look at wendyknits.net (great cat photos) and leethal.net. For home-grown ranting, I check out trulyrandomestates.net (Randy’s blog – yes, Sheila’s husband). For general all-around offensiveness and the best puns in the universe, there’s twitter.com/thetweetofgod.  And for total belly laughs, please read thebloggess.com – not a knitter, but very creative, especially with the ethically taxidermied animals and giant metal chickens named Beyonce.

New Designer to Watch

New Designer to Watch

By guest blogger Jana

I’m becoming obsessed with the designs of Ann Weaver (annweaverknits.com). She has a slightly punk sensibility and an intriguing eye for color, plus her designs have great names like “The Whiteness of the Whale” and “A Tea Tray in the Sky.” Her cowl inspired by the color studies of Josef Albers has shoved its way to the top of my very long queue and her Grundy sweater (an homage to Johnny Rotten) is elbowing its way in. I also enjoy her blog (link at the website given above). Most of her patterns are on Ravelry, some free and some not. I recommend a look.

How Do You Organize Your WIPs? By guest blogger Jana

How Do You Organize Your WIPs? By guest blogger Jana

If you’re looking in my house, you’d probably think, “Well, obviously, Jana, you don’t organize your works in progress.” I beg to differ: what looks like chaos is just bad housekeeping. The projects themselves are actually organized. Sort of.

Two categories here: Projects in Rotation and Resting Projects. Projects in Rotation are actually being worked on or at least thought about. Each of these is in a project or knitting bag along with a copy of the pattern and any notes I’ve made on the project. Any specialized tools needed (cable needle, row counter) are also stored in the bag. These projects tend to live in the living room or my car, or hanging on the back of the door to the yarn room on a purse hanger – basically an elastic band running top to bottom on the door with hooks all along its length.

Resting Projects are the ones desperately hoping to grow up to be Projects in Rotation. They live, along with their patterns, in ziplock baggies in the yarn room closet, stored in those canvas sweater hanging dealies. The unused skeins of yarn for all Works in Progress are also stored in these same sweater hangers, in ziplock baggies.

I do try to take the time every few months to review the Resting Projects and move some of them up into Projects in Rotation. If I decide to frog any of them, the yarn gets put back into the stash as described in my earlier blog.

How Do You Organize Your Stash? By guest blogger Jana

How Do You Organize Your Stash? By guest blogger Jana.

You may be one of those odd ducks who only have yarn around for the one project you are working on, and you don’t buy more until you’ve finished that and need another. In that case, read no further. But say you have a little less willpower, or you’re susceptible to yarn fumes, or that coworker moving to Hawaii gave you several bags of yarn – and now you’ve got an official stash. How do you keep track of what you have? I’ll tell you what works for me.

First, I sorted my yarn into four weights: bulky, worsted, sport, and lace. Then I sorted each weight by color. Next I made one 3x5 file card for each yarn. The card lists the color, fiber content, brand, and total yardage. I also snipped a 2” strand of the yarn and glued it to the card. These cards went into a small file box sorted by weight of yarn and following the same color spectrum.

Against one wall of my yarn room I put 18”x18” cubes of wire mesh 5 cubes high by 4 cubes wide. The skeins of yarn were put in gallon-size ziplock baggies and stacked in the cubes, again keeping the weight and color sorting scheme intact. Finally I taped on a small label identifying the yarn in each baggie – this might seem like overkill but believe me one brown sportweight alpaca yarn can look exactly like another in dim light. The fact that I have numerous brands of brown sportweight alpaca is an issue we’ll get into another time.

Now when I find a pattern I like, I just go to my file box, check what yarns I have in the correct weight, and see if I have enough of a particular yarn to make that pattern. What could be easier?

If you are on Ravelry, you might want to use its Stash feature to keep track of what you have. I’m a little lower tech than that, and like being able to see and touch my yarn.

 (Sock yarn is kept separately in plastic boxes (I love the Useful Box in the 3 liter size sold at office supply stores) and I don’t keep track of what’s there. I knit socks but I am not a Sock Knitter. Also novelty yarns and dishcloth cotton yarns are put by themselves in a bottom cube and not tracked. Leftovers and one-skein orphans are put in baggies in bins on top of the cubes.)