Knitting

Taking Stock.

…I am slowly but surely getting comfortable with the Get to Work Book. It’s great to have all my “to do stuff” in one place and I’m loving the templates. Above is a bit of the monthly “Reflect and Goal Set” page (which I finally found time to work on last Thursday and Friday). This “new approach” to knitting is my big project for July. And there’s nothing like sharing about it in a blog post to really hold myself accountable.

The gist is that I’m not going to be able to knit for hours on end; and I’m still not comfortable knitting on any needle smaller than a size 5, or with any yarn that’s not mostly wool. Of course that still leaves plenty of room for all kinds of projects! And I do work for a yarn shop. Those bi-weekly newsletters and the frequent arrival of new yarns continue to tempt me (which the shop owner likes; my enthusiasm translates into sales!)

There’s another section on this Reflect page titled “To Let Go Of”. For me, that’s yarn and WIPs that I’m really just not into (anymore). What a huge relief to give myself permission to frog and repurpose all that yarn!

With all that in mind, I have three action items to complete this month:

1. Sort through all my WIPs (thankfully, they’re all on Ravelry). Assess status and chance of finishing – BE REALISTIC (a few are from 2010 and many are socks…on size 1 needles). Frog what I’m not going to finish (that yarn goes into stash).

2. Sort through all my stash. Give away what I don’t want. Get all the rest of it into Ravelry (with a photo!)

3. Assess my Ravelry queue. Be sure it’s only projects I really do plan to knit (hopefully with yarn I have). My goal is to have nearly all my stash (maybe all but the single skeins of fingering weight?) tagged to actual projects…again, that I want to knit in some reasonable timeframe. BE REALISTIC.

#1 has already started. The cardigan I started back in April on size 3 needles…went for a swim in the frog pond!

Any advice or words of wisdom to share? I’d love to hear!

10 thoughts on “Taking Stock.”

  1. You're working on doing what I'm now doing. It's so easy to become distracted by new projects and never finish what's in the queue, or make the queue (or favorites) so large they are hard to sort through. I tag everything with as many tags I think will do the trick and that makes it easy to sort through "my own stuff".

  2. I've had RA & fibromyalgia for over 25 years, so I've had to learn to find the right balance for knitting and other activities I enjoy so that I don't damage my joints or wind up with out of control pain. Every person is different, for me large needles and bulky yarn are what cause pain, so I tend to avoid those projects or work on them for short periods of time. Listen to your body and you'll find what works for you. I admire how organized you are!

  3. Good plan-evaluate, decide, re-evaluate, begin-wash and repeat. Oh, and don't beat yourself up if you re-evaluate your re-evaluation, have a glass of wine instead (or two) 😉

  4. Good for you for getting it under control. I don't have a huge stash but I wish I had plans for stuff. I think trying to connect every skein to a knitting project would be overwhelming, though.

  5. I don't have any words of wisdom or advice, just encouragement and admiration. You have undertaken a big project, one I've had in the back of my mind, but I haven't even moved it to the forefront or done anything concrete. I'm wondering if I can make this my big project for July also? No promises yet, but thank you for giving me something "to think on" and some action items "to work on".

  6. I did a little rearranging, throwing/giving and frogging this past spring. It felt good. There are still a couple of sweaters at the 60-70% mark that I really need to address. I think the fact that you're even thinking about change is 1/2 the battle!

  8. About the only other advice I would give is to prioritize and focus. Maybe pick just a couple of things to work on at a time and hang with them to completion. I have found that being able to "cross things off a list" carries a lot of satisfaction. I am ever so thankful that I have no stash and only 2 projects on needles at a time. I used to be a committed one-project-at-a-time person and have recently branched out to 2 at a time, as you know. Since I REALLY like the feeling of completing a project, keeping my WIPs to 2 allows me to achieve that feeling more often than if I had a bunch of projects going on at the same time. Some people are "openers" and some people are "finishers." Remember?

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