Your Olympic Knitting Plans

image from s.yume

You guys? Are you ready? It's time for the Olympics! And you know what that means? I mean, do you know what that means besides gorging yourself on coverage of figure skating, speed skating, cross country skiing, snowboarding, bobsledding, hockey, and other fantastic sports? It's time for the Ravelympics, in which you try to knit a challenging project while the Olympics are on.

image from janusz.l
I've decided that I'm going to do the WIPS dancing event in a hopeless attempt to finish my stupid Slytherin Scarf! I'm probably going to join either Manic Purl's or Never Not Knitting's team since I am not part of any knitting circle either in real life or online.

It's time to be an Olympian. (I want to put a Greek god joke here, but I'm kind of floundering trying to think of one. Let's just end this on a classier note.) Pick out your project and event, join your team, and wait for the opening ceremonies!

Tell me if you plan to compete and, if so, what event.


image from Never Was An Arrow II

Where I Am Going

So, I told you all that I would post more, and here's how I think I'm going to do it. I'm not sure if this will be interesting to my three readers, but some of my plans include:

1. Jacking Bookwormbethie's "Keeping it Weird on Wednesday" idea, but changing it slightly. Bethie has a terribly great idea of posting a random odd factoid about herself once a week. I think this helps readers to get to know her while giving her something to post about once a week. So far I'm undecided about which day to post, but since I think this is something that isn't essential to a crafting blog, I'll use up a quiet reading day (Friday-Sunday) to do this.

2. Starting my book review blog. I'm reading a lot more nowadays thanks to my library's internet reservation plan. I like to write. Now, I just need to write about the books I read. This will also allow me to catalog books I like a lot, help me to think about a book critically, and prevent me from forgetting a book's plot in three seconds.

3. Guest blog for anyone that offers. I love to guest blog. Being given a topic often helps me to write.

4. Edit more. That means writing a post beforehand, and going back to rewrite. I have not been doing any editing for my blogs and it shows. I do it for Helen's blog and my writing is more polished and funnier.

5. Continue with my love of photography, but try to post my pictures faster so I can use them more quickly in blog posts. Also, improve my inanimate object photos.

6. Possibly create a Twitter account for my craft blog and for my book blog. Watching Helen's success with tweeting for her blog is inspiring.

7. Have one giveaway this year, at least! I really love to see giveaways on other blogs because I feel it helps people find you. It also helps you to see who has been reading but not commenting.

8. Jot down post ideas in one of my numerous text files, so that when I do want to write I'm not left floundering.

9. Bake more. This will not only make me a better and more interesting blogger, but I've found, surprisingly, that I enjoy making desserts.

10. A once a month, at least, roundup of links to articles/posts/finished items that I like. I find so much that I like, but never highlight these things.

Last, but not least, have Nathan help me blog.

The Best Laid Schemes, Gang Aft A-Gley

Last week, I told you all my plans. Wow. I don't even know why I pretended to plan last week. Let us review...

Thursday: cross-stitch

I think we already know how this turned out. Now, I did cross-stitch a tiny bit that night, but ten or fifteen minutes of cross-stitch doesn't really count, does it?

By the way, thank you to everyone who so kindly complimented my socks. I'm a little defensive when people do so because I believe they look hideous in my mind, and I'm not taking the compliments. I'm sorry. They are very soft and very warm, and if I can find some colorways that I like, I will be buying more of the yarn.

I have talked of hating crazy varigations in the past, but I'm a hypocrite. While I'll always believe that a colorway like Space Dust will look like clown puke when knitted up, I'll happily buy Koi Koi or any other pinkish/bluish colorway. I believe it was Christy, my future sister-in-law, that said to me that I liked yarns that looked like unicorns had thrown up on them. Sigh.

Sunday: sewing, another cloth book

I didn't even craft on Sunday. On the weekend itself, I might have done another thread or two of cross-stitch, but nothing noticable.

Monday: knitting (scarf if it isn't too hot, socks if it is)

I knit about two rounds of my Slytherin scarf. Okay, lie, I finished one of the gray groups, and started on my green rounds. I'd be sad at the slow progress if it weren't for the fact that I haven't worked on it at all for months!

Tuesday: cross-stitch OR drawing

I might have spent a few minutes cross-stitching this night.

Wednesday: knitting (scarf if it isn't too hot, socks if it is)

I went to Helen's, ostensibly to knit. Then, her three foster kittens brought me low. It was horrible! I was knitting while watching The Tudors and then these three kittens sat on me and my knitting. I then proceeded to pet them because KITTENS.

So, I was going to let this whole entry going to go pictureless, but I think we all know what I think about blogs without photos. Here is a picture of The Rose of Sharon cross-stitch.



Hours and hours of work to show you that I added about two square inches of work from the last time I photographed it. Perhaps less. Next time, I'm just going to link to other people's WIPs and pretend that I did a lot more.

I also have an updated photo of the scarf!



In case you're curious as to why it is laying so oddly, I keep the actual yarn stuffed into the center of the scarf to prevent my kitties from taking it out and carrying it around my house. Since I spent part of the weekend simply rewinding my silver yarn again, I clearly needed to take action.

So, are you asking if I have plans for the upcoming week? Yes, I do. I'm not giving up on my plans. I think I have started alternating projects to good effect, but I do need to be a little less stringent about my planning.

My plans are thus: two days of sewing, two days of knitting, one day of cross-stitch, weekends are free as usual. Ideally, I'd also like to start Nathan's matching ugly socks. I'm still working on leaving my computer a bit earlier, though I've failed tonight!

I do still want to get my cloth book done for my cousin's baby, but I'm itching to start another garment with my sewing. I wasn't going to do the Flouncy Tank Top project from the book Sew Everything Workshop, but then I saw a gorgeous version that made me drool.

Mmm, I love when I find inspiring blogs or photos.

Lastly, thank you to the person who came to my blog and followed my links to Amazon and made purchases. It was nice of you and I made a whole dollar! I was stunned when Amazon told me it had happened, actually, and then I told myself that I'd buy a Simplicity pattern to make for my blog! I love the dollar pattern sales at Joann!

How Goes The Plan, Stan?

Just a week ago, I decided I needed to create a plan for my crafting/free time as I was spending too many hours on the computer and not enough doing anything else. How did it go, you ask? Well, sort of okay. So, on Thursday night, I was due to work on Nathan's PJs. That went as expected. The weekend was my free time, so on Friday, I worked on the PJs again. I also worked on them Saturday night. I was even going to work on them Sunday night, but I was frustrated by my lack of proper sized trim, as described in my last post. It is quite clear that I'm obsessive about finishing my sewing projects. I finished my PJs on Monday night, the night I should have been knitting a scarf. I justified it by telling myself that it was too hot to knit a wool scarf and that I could knit on my scarf when I was in proper air-conditioning. I did finish the pajamas, so I had that, at least.



That face is just telling you that he already know that his mom loves to make excuses for when she overrides her own plans.

On Sunday night, I did work on my cross-stitch for the first time in well over a year. Since I only worked on it for one hour, I didn't get much done and it won't even be worth taking another WIP picture until I spend another nine or so hours on it. I really want to work on it again now!

I knitted on the socks on both Saturday afternoon and on Wednesday night, so that went as planned. I'm mostly done the second sock of my 'barf' pair as I affectionately call them. I'm already decreasing on the second sock, in fact, and I expect they'll be done very soon, allowing me to cast on for Nathan's matching ugly socks.



So, where did I fail? I didn't work on my sewn boxers, but I wasn't too sad about that. I've decided I only want one WIP for sewing unless I become one of those people with lots of spare time on Saturdays or Sundays who goes around cutting fifteen projects at once to be sewn during their spare time. (I would love to be one of those people.) I also didn't work on the scarf, but... I'm not too sad about that.

I have decided I'm going to redraft my plans for each week from now on, keeping weekends free for anything I'd like to do. This upcoming week, it'll be:

Thursday: cross-stitch
Sunday: sewing, another cloth book
Monday: knitting (scarf if it isn't too hot, socks if it is)
Tuesday: cross-stitch OR drawing
Wednesday: knitting (scarf if it isn't too hot, socks if it is)

We'll see how it goes. I clearly wanted to up my cross-stitching and take a small relax from the sewing.

Both Sophy and Wit stated that this type of plan would stifle their creativity, but I work in the opposite way. I love plans, lists, and schedules. They make me feel happy. If I follow them, I'm getting things done. If I ignore them, I'm being a little wild. It's win-win. The worst time for my crafting this weekend was on the weekend when I had the choice to do anything I wanted. I mostly just surfed the internet.

I remember reading that the human brain likes to have a limited number of choices. No choices and we feel hemmed in, too many choices, and we become indecisive. I think that my plan limits my choices and makes me more able to break away from the computer at night. Instead of wondering which craft or activity I should be doing, and then doing nothing or defaulting to socks, I have a plan and I get to doing it. For instance, prior to my plans, at night, I could watch TV, play on the computer, read, draw, sew several items, cross-stitch, or knit on one of two items. Now, I've basically taken it down to play on the comp, craft, read, or draw. And that's something I can choose between.

Though, what I really should do is spend more time with Paul.



He's a good husband and maybe I spend too much time crafting instead of spending time with him.

My Craft Plans

Sophy made a nice comment on my last post telling me that she was interested in WIP posts because they show that blogger are human rather than finishing machines who only do perfect projects. I think she might be correct, but I need more photos of Works in Progress then. For instance, this blog post? No photos, so I know it'll be a dud. Oh well. It is mainly for myself anyway.

How do I plan to make myself craft more nowadays? One, I'm going to try to get off the computer earlier in the evening. That means Flickring and Facebooking and blogging and everything else early in the evening if possible.

Two, I'm going to assign times/days to projects. Here is how it goes.

Sunday -- cross-stitch
Monday -- the scarf
Tuesday -- my boxers
Wednesday -- the socks
Thursday -- nathan's pjs

On the weekends, I can work on any project I want. In the car, I can work on the scarf or socks. I can change days between projects if I feel like it, but I can't work on something for two of the assigned days.

Let's see how this goes. I'm feeling a little anxious about it for now.