Monday, September 6, 2010

So much time so little knitting

I've been busy with other life aspects lately and just haven't had time to do much knitting. Hence the lack of posting. I have decided I am nicer when I have been able to knit though so from now on, I plan to make finding time to knit more of a priority.

Another problem I had was too many projects all scattered about. So this long weekend I finally got myself sorted out. I had an epiphany and realized that I needed a framework for my organizational theme or I'd never get anywhere. Now I have one. It's baseball. Which if you know me, and know how much I find baseball on tv to be yawn city, will amuse you no end. But it works.

I have several categories:

At Bat: the projects I am currently working on - currently I have 11 projects in this category and 7 days in the week I think I can see an issue already...

On The Deck: the projects I would like to be working on right now but I have got to set some limits - currently 13 projects are in this category

In The Hole: projects that I do want to get too soon and for which I have all the yarn and pattern ready to go - currently there are 20 projects in here (although that's not counting all the sock kits and shawl kits I own and all the yarns I have that I wish I were knitting or, to be more honest, wish I had already knit and had available to wear)

Benched: projects I started but for which I feel not the love any more, or at least not right now - currently there are a mere 4 items here

Disabled List: projects that have something wrong with them that needs fixing, whether it is that I screwed something up or the yarn pooled when it should have striped or the dog ate my needles with my project on them - currently there are 5 items in this category and some of them will be staying there for a while I am afraid

Yes, that means that I currently have more projects stacked up than there are weeks in the year and that's not counting all the sock clubs and shawl clubs and other clubs I have been in since I discovered such things existed less than a handful of years ago.

In any case, on my right sidebar all my At Bat projects will show up since I am committed to keeping my Ravelry projects up to date in that category anyway. So anyone who'd like to help me get things done, should feel free to nag me if they don't notice movement on the progress bars.

In an attempt to get things done as much as possible, I have assigned each project a day of the week on which I am going to work on it. Today is the day for the Ophelia Shawl from the Shakespeare in Lace club from Wooly Wonka Fibers (my Ravelry project is labeled as "David Tennant Can Make Me Do Anything" because I watched his Hamlet and it finally made me appreciate the play which made me decide to cast on sooner rather than later) that I am KALing with a buddy and I have been sorting out where I went wrong with it because I was damn near done with the first row (which is working on a cast on that was 626 stitches long so even that took a while) when I discovered I had made an error. I had already had to rip everything completely back once since I first started this shawl about the same day as I did my last post to the blog.

Sad that I am still only 626 stitches in isn't it. That's less than 7 stitches knit a day since then. Though, since I had to reknit the whole thing once and almost half of the first row a second time I sort of got more knitting time in. Plus I worked on other things of course. Still way too little output. Anyway, I have now finished the first row and it is all correct. And my shawl is just bristling with stitch markers. One after every 2 repeats of the pattern on the long sides so that I can catch mistakes faster from now on. Now I get to do a plain knit row. Thank goodness. I have also decided that this pattern absolutely should have a life line put in on every rest row. I don't ever want to have to tink back that many stitches again.

Well, I'm off to get some more knitting done on Ophelia now. Next time I hope to have enough progress on it that it will be worth a photo and I will talk a bit about the construction of this one which is unique.