Organizing My Knitting

For the last few days, I have been entering my knitting books and magazines in Ravelry and bringing some organization into my knitting world. Spurred on by my success with UFOs this summer, I have been eager to bring everything together in one place and evaluate what I have. For years I wasn't able to knit much, but still managed to accumulate stash, so now I have a gold mine to dive into.

For anyone who doesn't know, Ravelry is a great website for knitters. In fact, it probably is a little knitting corner of heaven:) On Ravelry, I can type in the name my books and magazines and most of the time up pops a picture of what I have. I can then click on the picture and most of the time I am taken to a page with photos of all sorts of projects that are featured in the publication. The next thing I do is look at all the many variations made by other knitters and read their comments. But that is only the beginning! From there I link to the project page by marking it as a "fave" and if I really like it, I put it in my queue which is on my "notebook page."

I've had my grandson bring down all sorts of yarn from the attic and I am working on adding photos of my stash and linking them to the projects I've picked out. I had some ancient Bucilla Glace that I was going to just take to From the Heart in Richmond. I clicked on the yarn and found a great idea for it. Knittindiva made a beautiful shawl using the Glace as one of the anchoring yarns and added bits and pieces of other scrap yarn.

This is part of my resolve to get order in my knitting life. Actually, my doctor recently put me on a stronger thyroid medicine and I am feeling so much better that tackling it seems much more doable now. I am trading back and forth between working on the computer and actually knitting the projects I am working on now. The success I had this summer has fed upon itself and I am ready to go.

Also, to keep up the energy, I have contacted two women who were also on Ravelry and live in Fernandina and we have already had one knitting session in our local Kafe Haus. It is so much more inspiring to have someone to look at what you have accomplished so far or to have a "show & tell" deadline than to just knit on your own...at least, it seems so for me. I got really spoiled in Virginia with all the great folks in my sister's group.