Project Planning Organization by guest blogger Annie

Project Planning Organization  by guest blogger Annie

How do you plan your projects? I’ve heard that many knitters actually select a pattern and then go to their LYS to select the yarn, needles, notions necessary and then set to work. I’ve never been that organized in my knitting. I find patterns I want to knit while browsing Ravelry, magazines, or at knit night. If I find a pattern on Ravelry I will usually add it to my “queue” where it almost surely stays, forgotten about, until I see someone else knitting that pattern or wearing it. If I see a pattern in a magazine I’ll turn down the page and then set the magazine aside until 2-3 years later.

I buy yarn that I’m attracted to by color or feel, especially if it’s on sale and then stash it away while I wait for the “perfect” pattern worthy of the yarn comes along.  You can imagine this process has lead to quite a stash of yarn along with stacks of magazines and a rather large Ravelry queue.

This year I decided I needed to put an end to or at least curb this haphazard approach to knitting so I set out to knit from the stash and knit through my Ravelry queue. I set about entering as much of my stash as I could into the nice stash feature on Ravelry – this allows me to search what I have from the comfort of my desk rather than climbing amongst the yarn bins. I then went through all the patterns I had queued up and spent a chunk of time matching stash to pattern. I put all my purchased and loose patterns into three ring binders and placed sticky notes with ideas of which stash yarn to use for them. All this organization made me feel calm and serene until I realized that if I stick to the plan I would never be able to buy another skein of yarn since I likely have all I need for the rest of my life. I of course did what any sensible knitter would do then…..I walked around the corner to my LYS and bought some yarn with no plan and no purpose, just to settle my nerves.