Knitting in the Shadows

It's Confession Time -- The BuJo Bug Bit Me - Part I

There's a new craze around the stationery stores.  It's spawning dozens of new blogs, and has brought Washi Tape to craft and office supply stores every where.  Suddenly, people are talking, not only about journals and pretty covers, but specific journal brands, and page sizes.  There are FaceBook posts and blogs discussing the relative merits of ruled vs dot grid pages...

Evidently, some guy (Ryder Carroll) thought up a special new way to use a journal that makes it both more efficient, and more susceptible to time sucking artistry. He created The Bullet Journal (or BuJo, for those in the know).  At it's simplest, it's a way to make daily task lists more effective - and to journal rapidly. Since Ryder has already done the explaining over on the Bullet Journal page, I'll let those of you who have not yet been assimilated by the BuJoBorg wander over there to learn about it.

Once  unleashed upon the complexity hungry world, the BuJo grew.  Where once were simple lists of daily tasks and appointments, now we find "spreads" and "trackers" and all sorts of creative things filling up the journal pages.  Ryder thought of a simple thing, using a pen and paper.  The BuJo community has expanded the concept to the point that I'm not sure Ryder would recognize it.  But these offshoots are fun.  They invite creativity into your daily life, and encourage blending art and list making .... (You know how I love lists).

You would think that a person with as many projects going on as I have would be able to resist one more thing that wants doing every day.  But you'd be wrong.  This one comes with office supplies!! Special paper, special pens (pens!!!), and new magic tape!!  Yep, I caved.  I mean look at all the pretty tape!

And now, I've gone even further -- I'm blogging about my journal.  Why, you may ask.  Why write a blog about journaling, when I often find BuJo blogs to be disappointing?  I always hoped to learn something new, or be inspired, but found that I'd spent the last X minutes learning nothing much?  Well, because I foolishly started following a BuJo group on FaceBook, and someone asked a question, and I answered, and that someone asked me for pictures.... and I realized that just because I don't get a lot from those posts, other people DO.  

What could I do?

So, If I've not bored you enough -- I'll take you on a walk through my BuJo, from it's simple start, to the multi-page system I am currently using.  And I'll even take you through setting up my current spreads.

In the beginning, there was a journal.  And it was good. (It's a little smaller than A5, at about 5X8')

I followed the recommendations of the Source, and set it up with an Index, and a Key to all the symbols I'd be using.

 

When I first started, I was sure that I'd forget what all the symbols meant every time I went to use them.  So I wanted the key to readily available, no matter what page I was writing on. I created a little fold out tab with pretty card stock (really, it IS pretty on the other side).  Since Glue Sticks are great, but aren't always reliable for things you want to stay put for a long time, I supplemented the glue with Washi-Tape.

Wait -- Name and Phone Number??? really?   YES!  If I lose this thing, I would dearly love for the finder to be able to reach me to return it.  There's a lot of work in here.  A lot of time spent -- and a lot of information that is important to me, but likely no one else.  Sadly, though I still use many of the symbols in the top of that key, the color chart has been superseded by later versions.

Lets take a closer look at those upper symbols, shall we?

This is where it all really starts to work.  Simple symbols in front of each line in your list convey whether it's a task or an appointment, whether it's started, finished, or delayed until another day (pushed to the next day, or straight up rescheduled). 

When I first started my Journal, it was very simple -- and pretty much followed the symbol magic from that image:

Here you see that I DID have that brunch.  And while I did order transcripts, I put off putting away the work sheets until the next day. (which is what the > symbol means).

While that was EFFECTIVE, it wasn't FUN.  And when a journal isn't at least a little fun, it soon finds itself gathering dust on some surface somewhere, neglected and forgotten.

Enter "Spreads" and pens!

Daily lists are all very well and good.  But a planner also needs to have a place to see what the upcoming days or weeks are going to look like.  After a few weeks, I started trying to put a whole week's Appointments and tasks and a bit of tracking on a two page spread, with daily notes on the following pages:

The left most column shows the days of the week and their appointments.  The right column on the left page shows tasks for the week that need to be done on specific days.  The third column (left one on the right page), shows projects I'm working on -- the PLAN, as it were.  It is broken down into Home projects, Work Projects and Personal Projects. The far right column has space to note something significant that is coming up (Looking Forward), and a little graph for me to track self-care activities (Like walking, sleeping, drinking enough water), and a chart to track habits I'm trying to build.   That's actually quite a bit of information for that amount of space. You may notice that the columns are divided by decorative stripes (I used washi-tape), and that different colors of pens have come into play. 

I should mention that I love pens, fine point pens.  No, really, FINE point pens.  And I love color.  And an excuse to play with colored ultra fine pens is always welcome.   After a bit of hunting about and stalking the office supply stores, I came home with these:

Your average medium point pen is about 0.7mm, maybe eve 1.0mm.  Your standard mechanical pencil is also 07.mm.  Fine points come in at about 0.5mm.  It's usually a challenge to get things finer than that.  But these beauties are 0.3mm!!  I love them!!

 I used that spread for a while, but it wasn't quite doing it.  And frankly, having ONLY ultra fine pens wasn't quite doing it either.  I soon yielded to the Temptation Gods when they put these on sale 40% off:

They've got a chisel point on one end (makes italics SO easy), and a split tip on the other- lets you draw truly parallel lines.

But we were talking about spreads, not pens....

I realized that I wasn't really using the "day specific tasks" because very few were really day specific.  So they didn't need their own column.  And, I realized that I didn't really need ALL that space for the weekly appointments (especially since I'm working on breaking the habit of cramming too much into one day). This was the next incarnation of my Weekly Spread:

I still have the days of the week, and their appointments, but I've condensed the other three columns into one, with sections for End of the Month tasks, Personal tasks, and House tasks. The bottom of the page had room for my self care chart and for things coming up on the horizon... And I got a whole week's worth of stuff into one page, leaving more room for recording daily accomplishments, and tracking how much water I'm drinking.  I also added a fun little thing called a Spiraldex, which I used to track how I was ACTUALLY spending my time each day. (By this point, I was bored with straight line charts for water, so I was experimenting with water bottles and pitchers for the visuals...

I'll leave you with my Full Month Spread for September (yup, it looks a lot like a calendar).  Next time, I'll show off some of my more interesting spreads -- ones that worked, and ones that didn't work for me (they might work for YOU if you get lured in...

Don't Let Plans Stop You

I had a plan for this months blogging.

That plan included lots of pictures.  There were going to be pictures of the prom, pictures of the graduation celebration, pictures of Mothers' Day stuff, pictures of the spring burgeoning about my yard, pictures of the Birthday, pictures of the H.S. Graduation celebration ....

ahem.

I've got pictures.  Some.  Not as many as I'd like.  But my phone (whose camera records more megapixels than my camera... go figure) and my computer are no longer on speaking terms.  This means that the best I can do is email my pictures to myself.  And when I do that, the camera shrinks them "for" me...  until they're too small to be worth much on the blog.

In frustration, I let that stop me from blogging!  I "couldn't" blog until I fixed the picture issue.

????

That's silly.

It's also a bit of a wake up call.  How many things do we not do because we can't do them the way we'd planned?

I had planned to set up my 90% finished living room with new shelves for the DVDs (since the old ones no longer stand up, having had their bottoms warped), and with a new gadget to allow me to stream my music from the hard drive (where I'm uploading all my CD's) instead of keeping all the CDs on the massive shelf.

I can't find a DVD storage unit that is both attractive and sturdy enough not to fall over (I already have falling over ones) without bolting them to the wall.  Thus, I've not quite finished putting those things away. 

I can't seem to get the folks at the local purveyors of electronic gadgets to identify the gadget I need to stream my audio stuff through my stereo (they all say they know it can be done, they've seen it done, they know people who do it, but they don't know what it takes to get it done).  Instead of just setting up the stereo the way it was, I'm waiting to get the gadget, and we're relying on the bad radio that was built into the intercom in our house for music.

I'm letting the fact that I can't do it the way I planned to do it interfere with getting it done.  How dumb is that?

Sure, I'll keep burning my CD's to the system so that when we figure out the how, we can implement it... but today, I'll focus more on putting together what I CAN do instead of why I can't get it the way I want it.

If we look, I'll bet we'll find lots of places in our lives where we've let not being able to do things the WAY we want has kept us from doing them at all.  I know that there are several other things in my life that suffer from this silliness.  I won't share them all, but here's one more:

There are lots of things in the house that constitute clutter now.  I'd like to get them out ... into the garage perhaps ... and then sort them for sale and/or donation.  But... the garage is a mess.  And the weather and my schedule haven't combined to allow me to clean it out to make room either for the stuff cluttering my house, or to sort what's already there, much less more stuff.  Somehow, I've let this prevent me from de-cluttering the house, from getting rid of some stuff that I know will wind up at GoodWill, and from simply chucking things out there for later contemplation. 

This does not sound like a win win to me.

Planning is a good thing.  But letting plans keep you from doing what you want to do... not so much. 

 

 

The Season of the House - A Little Perspective

Once upon a time, this blog was all knitting all the time.

Then it became primarily knitting, with a smattering of travel and family stuff.

Lately, it seems to be about my house (in particular about fixing or cleaning it), with a smattering of knitting.  This was not planned.  And I don't anticipate that it will continue too much longer.  But it will go on a bit more.

Since the season is turning ... we are at the Equinox, I thought I'd do a quick review of this extended Spring Cleaning Binge.  Admittedly, this is more for me than for you, but it will also include a bit on what I still perceive as left to do, and that will give you a clue about how much more of this I'll be posting.

It started in January with an abrupt Deep Clean of the closet in which the Christmas/ Solstice /Yule tree lives.  At that point, I was still disputing that I'd be on a crazed house cleaning binge.

I moved on to the Yarn Closet (which remains clean and tidy).

Cleaning the Yarn Closet meant taking a serious inventory of all the yarn.  That led to taking an inventory of all the needles (creating a several part series).

Then I cleaned out and organized the Massage Room Closet.  I'm not sure I blogged that. I'm still inordinately pleased with the Massage Room Closet, but began to think you had all had about enough of my closets.

Along about this point I caved and admitted that even though I hadn't resolved to do a full on whole house purge and clean, that was apparently happening.  I added all those steps to The List (this week's list, by the way, started with 81 items).

My plan at that point was to continue cleaning out the closets in the house, one at a time, and to remove from the house all the things I found buried deep in those closets that we didn't need any more.  (For those who are counting, four closets remain, all but  one of which are smaller than the two big ones I've already tackled.)  I'm still planning an assault on the rest of the closets that aren't in the kids' rooms:
1) The storage closet in the Guest / Play room,
2) the Master Bedroom Closet;
3) the storage closet behind the Master bedroom closet; and
4) the floor of the back hall closet (the upper half having already been addressed).

When we get to my bedroom closet, I will be purging it of all my clothes that don't get worn and those that don't let me feel lovely (except, of course, the wedding dress).  I figure the Master Closet will take the longest because it comes with many decisions.  I may or may not include in the Great Clothing Purge an assault on my dresser and the Cedar Chest. If not, I'll get to those later.  Either way, I promise a picture of the mountain of clothes that will be leaving.

After the closets, I planned to tackle the Laundry Room (default place to shove stuff you don't know what to do with) and the Garage (by the time I get there, it should be warm enough). 

Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men are foiled by water.  That led to a series on the clean up, remediation, and effective remodeling of my family room after the whole house humidifier abandoned humidifying air in favor of watering the floor.

We're closing in on the end of that.  I'll be showing you the finished room as soon as we get window coverings and replacement media cases in there. (The media cases were mostly fine as long as we were okay with not putting videos on the top two shelves.... the water had warped their bases so much that fully loaded they rocked and fell over).

So... here's what I think will show up between the next few rounds of knitting posts:

1) Merry Maids, a Redux -- which I'm hoping will be "How Awesome ARE These Guys"

2) The library Windows

3) The Master Bedroom Closet

4) The Storage Closets

5) The REVEAL - A living room washed clean.

6) The Garage.

Wait? What happened to the laundry room?  Well, it got all cleaned up in preparation for the house cleaners.  I've already sent stuff to the Goodwill or the Recycling (or the trash). You'll see the result with the MM REdux.

See, only six more house cleaning posts.  And I promise more knitting, and more new designs, and more glorious Massage goodness.

And a college visit.

And a finished dress form, perhaps in combination with a WIP RoundUp.

Needle Inventory Part IV: The Discoveries

Taking inventory of something as portable and losable as knitting needles results in a lot of digging about in old project bags, and drawers, and baskets and hidey holes.  Taking inventory of a storage closet does some of the same.  Sometimes you find things that are just a bit ... unnerving.

Take this for example.

That .. is the start of what I seem to remember was a purse of sorts for my then 8? year old daughter.  As you can see, it's primarily made of beads, backed by yarn.

In a way, I'm proud of this never to be finished object.  To set it up, I had to chart the design (which I think was a monogram), and then load the beads, one by one, IN ORDER, onto the yarn.  There are hundreds of beads there, carefully placed in order.  And they were working.  (you can see the strung blue beads at the bottom of the picture -- also there, a rainbow of beads on red yarn -- I don't want to know what I planned to do with that).

Sadly, the child in question is now 23.  As chic as beaded bags are, bags made of plastic shiny beads like these are no longer quite the thing for a soon-to-be college graduate. 

I frogged the bag.  I'm now left with a ball of yarn with hundreds of carefully strung plastic beads.  I may be taking it all to the I.D.E.A. Store.

Thinking of the I.D.E.A. Store reminded me of another discovery (wholly unrelated to inventory).  When you buy pillowcases these days, they come in little fabric bags (at least when you do it in places like Target anyway).  Some of these little bags look an awful lot like project bags to me.

This particular project bag cost me $6.98 plus tax -- and I got two more pillow cases to use in my massage studio as a bonus.  Oh, wait, no.... I got two pillowcases for my massage studio, and got this project bag as a bonus.

Back to the Inventory Discoveries.... As I rather anticipated, I found a lot of duplication in needles and hooks.

I  understand why I have 8 size 13 crochet hooks, but who really needs ten (10) size G Crochet hooks?  or twelve (12) sets of US 2 double points?  I mean really.

Also, as anticipated, having assembled all those sets of five double points, I've got this pile of needles left over.

I know that some of the dpn sets are incomplete because I broke some.  But I haven't broken THAT many.  And I know I haven't broken any of the metal ones or the bamboo ones.  So where are all the missing needles?  I've checked all sorts of unlikely places (having exhausted the likely ones). 

I don't have a clue.  But what I do know is that I've posted most of my spare needles on KnitSwap for sale, and will happily send a current listing to anyone who is interested in buying needles cheap.  The unmatched ones will likely find their way with the above mentioned now beaded cotton yarn - unless, of course I can fill in the missing spaces by reaching others who have spares.  (I figure any set of 3 needs to be filled in; any set of 2 constitutes spares to fill in others' sets).

I also found one last project....more on that later.

The last discovery?

Boy it feels good to have all this stuff organized, and put away. 

And my closet done.

And BOY it feels GOOD to be DONE WITH THIS project!!

Next up - the cedar chest.

 

 

 

Needle Inventory Part III: The Insanity.

When I started this inventory project, I thought it might be a bit tedious, but that was okay.  I'd had a rough week (there will be a full report on the REMEDIATION soon), and I deluded myself into thinking that taking inventory might actually be soothing in a way....

After all, it's a simple task. The steps are all small.  No higher math skills are required.  And frankly, with the tiniest bit of forethought and planning, it wouldn't even take extended concentration.

This idea is the work of the devil. I'm well past the 1/2 way mark for the entire inventory (and even noticeably past the halfway mark on the dpns), so stopping now would be wasteful and disheartening. But Boy Howdy will I be glad when this project is over! It's crazy making.

I was pretty sane about the whole circular needle inventory.  Really.  I gathered the mess, I sorted by size, and I tackled one size at a time -- counted em up, updated the count on Ravelry, and popped 'em into their binder sleeves.  Easy Peasy.

It won't take much to do the straight needle inventory, since I only own about 6 sets of straight needles. (And frankly, if I don't have their inventory I dont' really care since I use them about once every three years.

But the dpn inventory has taken me over the edge.

Perhaps it was having to check each and every needle with the needle gauge.

Perhaps it was the consistency with which I'd find one needle in a sleeve that clearly did not belong there.

Perhaps it was the frustration of verifying that any given set really did have all five, only to realize that if I popped them back in their sleeve, they'd get all mixed up again....but I found myself making little sleeves for every set of needles for which the original sleeve was missing.

Seriously -- as of this posting, every set of dpns US Size 7 (4.5mm) or smaller has been carefully wrapped in a little sleeve made of printer paper and scotch tape and labeled with the needle manufacturer, the size in both mm and US sizing, the length of the needle, and the number of needles in the set (they come in 4 or 5, but some folks give you a spare, leaving 6).  I'm beginning to wonder if I should market these things (in something more durable than printer paper).

I even made those little packets for the ones that I know I'll be offering up for sale -- I figure it will make it easier to locate a given set, and pre-protects them a little for future shipping.  Since I no longer use 8" needles, I'll be offering almost all of them up for sale.  Ditto the sets of 4 (I really prefer using 5).  When I've finished wrapping all stick like objects in the house in little paper sleeves, I'll post the list.

Wait, is that a ball point pen?  Do we have others that color?  I'll make up a set.....

 

 

Needle Inventory Part II: The process.

In my last post, I referred to  my Ravelry needle inventory. It still rather frightens me just how many sets of needles it indicates I own. Ravelry, being the wonderful resource that it is, happily provides you with a little chart of your needle inventory (and a way to print out a copy that you can carry with you to stop you from duplicating things).

My chart looks like this:

Since I know that this chart is not accurate, my inventory process will include rounding up all of the needles that are not in current projects (most of them are actually in the Binders where I store them, but some are in various knitting bags that have come upstairs full of things to be put away in the Yarn Closet, and some are in chair side needle caddies, and some are still in the project bags that housed a project that has been finished.

Once I've rounded up all the needles, I have to count, sort, identify, and then update the data for all the needles I own.  As I mentioned in my last post, I have circular needles, a few straight needles, and scads of double pointed needles. 

Since I started my needle collection, I have also acquired a couple of interchangeable needle sets.  Interchangeable needles have "points" in a variety of sizes, and cables in a variety of lengths.  Using a handy little tool, I can affix the points I need to the appropriate length cable, and create the needle size/length I need for a given project.  In theory, these mean that you don't actually need as many needles (one set of points can be used for a variety of cable lengths).  The Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth is trying to tempt me into acquiring another one of these sets.  'Cause clearly, I don't have enough needles.

Here's a more detailed view of a section of the circular inventory, that also reveals a bit of what I'm doing now:

 

You'll note that I appear to have far too many 4.5 mm(US Size 7) circular needles. I tend to agree. BUT, you'll also note that I have at least five DIFFERENT brands of 4.5mm needles, and that I have them in at least four lengths (there are more size 7's in the list, but you didn't REALLY want to see the whole thing, did you?).

You may also note that some entries say "in Binder" and some don't. That means that I've physically located, and put in the binder where I keep my circular needles, some of those needles. Interchangeable needles have their own binders or rolls.  I have not begun the interchangeable inventory yet. Here's what my inventoried collection of stand alone US 7's look like. (This points out another issue -- circular needle storage around here needs a new plan). 

Alas, this does not really mean that I have all the US 7s in the binder. The chart claims that there's one in a shawl (Pc of Vt), but those may well be the same ones I now list as being in the Binder, since that shawl is no longer on the needles. (sigh).

Even so, I'm pretending the main circular inventory is 90% done. I have to go through and take and input the inventory for the needles that are currently in projects. And I'll have to delete needles I can no longer locate.  Otherwise, until I start in on the interchangeable needles, I'm done with circs.

So I started in on what we in the knitting world call dpns or dps (double pointed needles).

These are more fun.  When you have a set (or three, or twelve) that hare not in little wee cases, the only way to tell what size you've got is often by using a needle gauge to check.  I've gathered a bunch of needles, and sorted them by size.  Here are the smaller ones:

 See that lovley pile over on the left?  Yeah.  That's a bunch of random needles that were in a lump with a bunch of other random needles.  I measured each of them with the needle gauge (the pile on the far left are all 2.25 mm needles), and now have to sort them into sets.  DPNs come in sets of four or five, depending on the manufacturer.  Some, however, come with spares, so there's a set of six.

Once I've sorted these, I'll open the binder and, taking them one size at a time,  get all the needles out of the "sleeve" for each size, confirm that each is actually in the right sleeve (again with the needle gauge) and sort the needles there into sets.  As you can see, the binder sleeves are a bit jumbled:

Once I've confirmed the sets in a given binder sleeve (one sleeve for each needle size), I'll update the Ravelry inventory, showing which ones I actually have in the Binder.  I'm going to update the Ravelry inventory for each sleeve before I begin the sorting for the next.

Next up:  How that actually works in practice (i.e. the insanity).

Inventory Part I: Why I have so darned many knitting needles.

Recently, I've been on a bit of an organizing/cleaning/sorting binge.  I'm tackling closets and storage spaces like a bit of a maniac.  That's okay, every time I finish one I feel so good about it I take it's picture (later this week, I'll show you the Massage Closet - it's beautiful (in my eyes anyway).

I keep meaning to take "before" pictures so that when I get all sentimental and show off the "after" pictures, you'll understand.  But, alas(?), I'm too interested in getting to the work to take pictures.

So.. where is this leading?  Back to the Yarn Closet, where we learn (sort of) that while I'm clearly a bit unhinged when it comes to collecting yarn, I'm not quite as crazy as I look when it comes to knitting needles.

As is true of many knitters, even when I was finished with the Yarn Closet, I wasn't truly finished.  I keep finding yarn lurking about the house, and having to go find it a home in the Yarn Closet (and then update the Ravelry inventory).  Some of this is because there are projects I was planning to start, but then delayed, and the yarn got pulled.  Some of this is because there are bonus storage places in the Living Room.  So... that continues.  But as I find the yarn, I'm putting it AWAY, and logging it into the Ravelry database.  

But... the side-show to the Yarn Closet that is now eating my days is the corollary project - inventorying the needles.

For those of you not addicted to sticks and string, I'll diverge for a moment to explain why so many knitters seem to have large needle collections, and why, for that matter, anyone would want a large variety of needles:

1) The obvious reason: knitting needles come in different sizes. When the circumference of the needles changes, the size of the stitches those needles create changes.  When the stitch size changes, the fabric changes.  You simply can't use the same needles to make socks that you do to make a bulky cabled sweater.  So, since I've never heard of a lending library for needles. tends to want at least one set of needles in every size one has ever been called upon to use. Unless you keep using the same yarn all the time, sooner or later, you need more needles.

2) Knitting Needles come in different types -- There are three basic types of needles:  straight needles (what you see in comics etc. - two sticks with points on one end and a stopper thing on the other), which are great for knitting things in pieces that you'll sew together;

circular needles (two sticks with points on one end joined together by a flexible cable and which range from as short as 10" or so to as long as 60"), which work quite as well as straight needles for knitting pieces, but which also allow you to knit around and around creating a seamless tube -- which is lovely for sweaters, eliminating the need for seams;

and double pointed needles (sets of four or five sticks with points on both ends), which are wonderful for knitting tubes that are too narrow for the logistics of circular needles (like socks and sleeve cuffs and the tops of hats.

There are also things called Flex Needles (of which I have one pair).  Flex needles are a sort of cross between straight needles and circulars - they have tips like circulars from which a cable extends, but they have stoppers on the ends like straight needles.  This lets you create, in effect, a really long straight needle.  I tried the one set, and decided that it's just as easy to use circulars for back and forth knitting.

3) Knitting Needles come in different lengths - Straights are typically no shorter than 8" and get only about as long as 14"; Circulars typically range from 16" (though 12", and even 11" or 9" do exist, they're really hard to work with) to 60"; Double points range from 4" to as long as 10" but rarely go above about 8".  Which length you use depends in part on what you're making, but also on personal preference.  You can use 8" double points to make socks, for example, but I rarely use any longer than 6" and actually prefer 4".

For circular needles, the differences in length are necessary to allow different circumferences in the tubes they make.  You can make something as small as about 14" or maybe even 13" on a 16" needle if the yarn is forgiving, and you can get up to about 25" worth of stitches onto a 16" needle --- but that needle is just not going to hold your 36" sweater.  As you can imagine, the situation is similar for longer lengths, until you get to the really long ones.  There's a method called "magic loop" that will let you knit a sock (9" circumference) happily on a 40" needle.  Some folks love it.  I'm not one of them, but I can magic loop in a pinch.  That means that I have circular needles in about 9 lengths, and double points in at least five lengths (see the picture above). 

4) Knitting Needles are made of different materials, with different finishes.  This is where we get picky.  Yarn slides about differently on different materials and different finishes because some materials and some finishes are slipperier than others.  The shiny metal needles are very slippery; if your yarn is also slippery, you're likely to lose stitches. The slipperiness of the metal needles depends on the finish; some are really slippery, some are only moderately slippery.  Casein and plastic needles are not very slippery. Bamboo needles tend to be a bit "grippy", and birch is somewhere in the middle.  That slipperiness difference can actually change your gauge (the number of stitches per inch you get when knitting a given yarn on a given set of needles).  Gauge is important to making a garment fit.  Sometimes, to get the gauge you really want, you have to change needle material and not needle size.

I periodically go on insane perfect-gauge quests in which I am determined to force whatever yarn I am using for a given project into the exact gauge the designer specified (you'll hear more about this with the upcoming Bohus Report).  This means that over the years I have acquired needles in brushed aluminum, coated aluminum, nickle plated aluminum, birch, wood laminate, two kinds of bamboo, casein (a milk product), and several forms of plastic. If you've got antiques on hand, you may even have bone or ivory needles to play with.  And still, sometimes I find that I can't get gauge with what's in the house, and have to go find a new brand.  Recently, they've started making square needles (which work surprisingly well).

5)  Needle sizes vary a bit by manufacturer.  For most needle sizes, there is a fairly universal size.  US Size 7 needles tend to be, fairly reliably, 3.5 mm in circumference.  But, not every manufacturer has their gauge set precisely the same way (since the error tolerance on that sizing is greater than zero), so some US 7 needles are bigger than others. The difference between a 3.52 mm needle and a 3.57mm needle will show up in your gauge.

Worse yet, for some US needle sizes, the prescribed mm correspondence varies.  US 1s are either 2.25 mm or 2.5mm. And US 2s can be 2.75 or 3.0.  More gauge differences.

6)  Some knitters, like me, have more than one project on the needles at the same time.  Every now and then, this means that a knitter will be working on more than one project that uses a given size needle.  This leads to duplication in the needle inventory.

 

Even so, I've discovered that my early days of buying a new needle when I thought I needed one have come home to roost.  I looked at my Ravelry Needle Inventory and found that at one point, I'd input a lot of information about my needle collection.  It included some numbers that causes one pause (7 sets of the same size circular needles in the same length? really??), but I have no idea whether that information includes double-entered data.

I haven't even tried to maintain the inventory since I input it literally years ago.  That means that even if it was accurate then, it's not all accurate now.  Worse yet, as I go digging up needles from the various temporary holding zones, I'm finding that I have more than I'd inventoried of some of them.  This is not quite offset by the fact that as I've broken some tiny needles, I've not updated the inventory to reflect the loss.  So... I may or may not have 10 sets of 2.75mm double points. (I'm pretty sure I don't, since I rarely use "standard" length double points.)

In my next posts, there will be a tour through the inventory process (what I'm doing differently to ensure accuracy this time), and a discussion of just what kind of insanity doing a needle inventory has led me to.  I anticipate that in the end, I'll wind up selling off part of the inventory.

 

 

Major Achievement Award Leads to Sale

You remember that List I was talking about the other day?

I put five new things on it (making gifts to pay it forward).  But, I took one HUGE thing off of it.  That one line has taken about a week of work.  Admittedly, most of it was done in fits and starts, an hour here, two hours there, but it started with a Sunday of full on focus.

What was that line on the list?

Clean Out Stash Closet and Inventory Yarn.

I really should have taken pictures!

When I started, the closet showed clear signs of haste from parties and over-night guest hosting over the past couple of years.  You know what I mean -- those moments when you realize you're just NOT going to get the cleaning job done in time if you put everything all the way away, so you shove something into a closet.... 

Yeah.

Sure, some of it was me just chucking the leftover yarns from a project into a small project bag and lobbing it into the Yarn Closet.  But some of it was lobbing wholly unrelated things in there.  It had ceased being a walk in closet.  It had become a danger zone in which access to the lace yarn was blocked by bags and baskets and boxes of things like computer cables and office supplies.

So... I pulled everything out of the center "aisle".  I dealt with the boxes of cables and office supplies... putting some things away, sending some things to the garage, and sending some things to Not In My House.

Then, I dug way back into the closet and extracted all things that had been stored in there that were not legitimately fiber related.  The box that holds toys from my childhood and from my mother's childhood has been moved to a different storage closet (yeah, I know, more work for THAT closet, but it really didn't belong in THIS one).  The games have been re-located to the place where games live. Ditto puzzles.

I pulled all the many project and tote bags.  I made sure they were empty, and folded them and put them into two bags -- one full of single/small project bags, and one full of sweater sized project bags.  I put them in the closet.

Then, I started with the yarn.  Ravelry is my friend (again).  Ravelry let me download a spreadsheet of all the yarns I had listed there.  I printed it out (we will not discuss the number of pages), and used it to inventory every drawer, cube, bin, and crate in the closet.  I counted the yarn to be sure that what I said I had, I still have.  I recorded on the list which drawer, box, bin, crate etc. the yarn now lived in.  Then, I updated my Ravelry stash to SHOW where the yarn is located.

And, where I didn't have a photo up in Raverly, I took pictures, most of which have been uploaded to Ravelry.

Sometimes, I found yarn that wasn't in Ravelry -- so I entered it.  Sometimes Ravelry listed yarn that I can't find.  Some of these, I know I used up or sold.  For these, I updated the Ravelry database to say "All Used Up" or "Traded/Given Away".  Some ... well... some I'm pretty sure is in the house somewhere.  For those, the location is now listed as MISSING.

I even dove into the other closet and inventoried the For Sale Yarns that are stored there.

And now, my Yarn Closet is clean,

organized,

and accessible.

Doing this leaves me with a Great Big Feeling of Accomplishment.

But...

As a result, I have come face to face with just how huge the stash has become.  It's time for another Stash Reduction Sale.   Over the next several days (weeks?) I'll be updating my Stash Sale Page.  But once again, I'm declaring open season on my Ravelry Stash.  The stuff I WANT to sell is listed on the For Sale or Trade List there.  But ANYTHING that is in my Ravelry Stash that has a price listed in comments is actually available ...  Heck, for the rest of January -- even if it doesn't have a price tag, if you want it, let me know, I'll consider reasonable offers.

 

Someone Else's New Years Resolution Attacked Me

I didn't have a major resolution this year. 

I didn't resolve to lose 20 pounds, or exercise every day.  I didn't resolve to really do the bills once a week, every week, or de-clutter my house.  I didn't resolve to start making my own clothes...

But someone somewhere did.

And someone's resolution seems to have attacked me.

Why do I say this?

Well.... last weekend one of Golf Pro's buddies declared his intention to visit us later this week.  So, I got all hostess-like, and tackled the guest room.  You know, so it wouldn't be a scary place when he arrived.

Most years, I round up the clutter, shove it into boxes or bags or something, and shove it in the closet.  Each time I do that, I promise myself I'll really go through it later. 

This year, I really did go through ALL of the paperwork, and filed everything that needed filing. I filled two paper bags with paper that was now useless, and set it out for recycling. I paid all the bills.  I went through all those bags and baskets and boxes and sorted all the stuff (throwing quite a bit away, sending some to Goodwill, putting a frightening amount into the garage where it really belonged).  The only thing I just chucked into the closet was a bag of yarn, and some knitting projects (which you'll soon see, as they must make their return-appearance on the Delayed WIP Revue).

My desk is CLEAN.  The coffee table is CLEAN. 

Okay, one cleaning frenzy doesn't a resolution make, but there's more.

I've been promising myself I'd put up various certificates and posters and things in my Massage Room.  Yesterday, I hung my diploma, my license, my Certifications from the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, the American Massage Therapy Association, and my Usui Reiki Second Degree  .... finally... my Bone poster.  And... I put the picture hangers and hammer and rule in the box of stuff on the way to the garage tool counter.

and then....

Well... things exploded.

Instead of just shoving the box of ornaments into the over-stuffed closet, I ... um ... wel...

kind of emptied the closet into the front hall. At this stage, it was not possible to walk through that archway into the kitchen.

I put the artificial tree into the closet -- all the way into the closet.  This means that it is no longer in the middle, and thus a person might be able to, oh, I don't know, get at anything else in the closet...

It's clear that I've watched too many police-procedural TV shows.  That reminds me of a body bag somehow.

Ahem.

I then rearranged all the stuff in the boxes, putting some things in the donation bag, and reorganizing the boxes to make it easier to get things out of the closet in some kind of order when Holiday Decorating Season returns.  They all fit with room to spare now.

Okay, maybe not a LOT of room, but there's a whole area of wood floor that you can't see -- where we put shoes and such.  Before this adventure, the stuff was packed to the door!

We even went through the hanging things -- and filled a bag for Goodwill with coats no one wears.  Another bag has shoes and stuff in it.

And....my front hall now looks like this:

This is not my resolution!  I didn't promise to declutter, or clean, or any of that stuff! I promised to quit taking on all of the responsibilities for family sized projects.

Help me .....  I've been hijacked!