I first heard about setting up a crafty rotation in the cross stitch over on LJ. People would rotate between two or three projects. They’d work one for a week or until some big milestone was complete, then go to another. At least one project would be an Un-Finished Object (UFO) in most cases. The rotation forced you to complete things you “needed” to finish and didn’t leave much room for starting new projects.
I decided it was about time I set up a crafty rotation. I wrote down every single craft project I have going on, including a few that I’ve been wanting to start but haven’t. I won’t bore you with the whole list but it’s fifteen projects long (sound familiar, Anastasia?). I numbered them in the order I thought of them, wrote the numbers on paper scraps, and literally chose randomly from the pile numbers.
The first five projects are as follows: Evening Bag (knitting – for me), blue and green fractal (cross stitch – for ?), Clapotis (knitting – Erin’s), motifs sampler (cross stitch – Sterling), and Sheldon (knitting – for my dad). I’ll work on each for a week or until I reach a big wall (like not having enough of the right floss colors or needing help with a technique). I’ll work through the entire list of fifteen items, starting back at the beginning after that.
The Evening Bag (From Knit2Together) was started in June. I fell out of love with it quickly. Stupid ribbon yarn. Yesterday I realized I’d followed the directions incorrectly so I frogged all progress and restarted. This time I used my aluminum US 10.5 needles instead of the bamboo ones I’d been using. What a difference! Today I’m very proud to announced I haven’t worked on a single other project, haven’t started anything new, and I got both “sides” of the bag knit. Sorry, no photos ’cause, well, it’s hard to take photos at night of black yarn. Poor lighting plus really bright flash and my bad photo skills. Sadly, the project must be put aside until Wednesday when someone can show me how to pick up stitches (Marlyn?) to work on the rouching along the bottom of the bag. I’ll be moving on to the blue and green fractal until then.
We’ll see how long this whole one-project-at-a-time thing lasts. I give it a month.
You called? ;-)
Oh, btw, the craft rotation sounds like a great idea. I wonder if I can do it?
Tee hee, craft rotation, good luck! I will sometimes attempt such foolish goals, then give them up oh, ten minutes later. Seems when I give myself the goal of finishing things I want to start a heck of a lot more!
More power to you if you can do it! And picking up stitches is not difficult, though I learned two days ago that apparently I pick up stitches for my sock gussets “wrong”, though I like the way they come out better than the “right” way! That’s what happens when you teach yourself to knit…