0: skeins, balls, hanks, or grams of yarn purchased (Woo hoo!)
2: WIPs frogged (one sweater, one ascot)
4: projects completed (including a cowl, paw covers, a headband, and my first test-knit)
9: skeins of yarn donated as prizes through a Ravelry UFYH contest (NSFW, language)
13: patterns in my Ravelry queue
17.4: miles of yarn still in my stash (waaaah!)
At what point does a To-Do list become completely useless? When it loses focus? When it grows too big to be comprehensible? When it no longer inspires anything but a queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach? In the case of my Ravelry queue, all of the above.
When I began drafting this post, I took a good hard look at my planned projects, and noticed two things: first, that nearly all of my queued patterns were huge cabled sweaters or cowls; second, there were 49 items on that list. Yup. Just one pattern shy of the big five-oh, and not a single sign of Hawaii anywhere. I think we can all agree that at no point in my life, ever, will I complete fifty cable-covered sweater projects in a year. Or possibly at all.
Sometimes with knitting (or writing, or lots of creative pursuits), you just have to scrap whatever you’ve done, and start over, in order to fulfill your vision. In the spirit of good writing advice, I “murdered my darlings” and deleted the whole thing. Pattern by pattern, darling by darling, each entry fell to the little black X in the right-hand corner of the screen.
Here’s what made the cut:
These six projects are perfect: not only do I have physical copies of each pattern, I also have yarn in the correct colors and quantities to make them. Plus, I can actually see myself wearing each garment without being overly self-conscious about my changing post-partum body. That’s definitely what I call a win!
First up is that lovely Blackberry Cabled Cardi, which I’ll be tackling as part of a make-along hosted by Bridget over at Cat’s Cradle Studio. Check her page out; Bridget is one if those women whose creativity and joie de vivre practically radiate out from her words. The MKAL starts this week, and will run about 6 months (or until we all finish our WIPs). Feel free to join the fun!
What’s at the top of your queue? Do you have anything that’s been languishing there forever?
Enter the (Yarn) Dragon 