Looking Back, Looking Forward | 5KCBWDAY7

Look back on last year's Day Seven post / look forward again to one year from now.

Too many balls in the air kept me from posting yesterday -- but this one writes itself: I have officially completed 2.5 of the 3 goals I had for myself last year at this time!

WAYBACK MACHINE SAYS:
* Finish 12 Shawls in 2013, and be on track for a similar feat in 2014...  DONE!

The specifics for 2013 are here, and I'm at 50% shawl progress while at 37.5% year progress...  I wish Present Me could tell Past Me that there are definitely practical applications for math in my adult life.

* overcome my fear and steek something... DONE!

 

I steeked a thing!  It was horrible!  I'm never doing that again unless someone pays me!  With alcohol, if possible!

* Track down all of the knitting needles I supposedly have in my house and come up with an adequate organizational system...   
um, IN PROGRESS!

I've been working on this, recently and in earnest, but it's not ready for today as I hoped it would be; you can track the current status with the label "projectneedles", because there's no way that name could ever be misinterpreted.

And on that note, my goals for the next year are as follows:

* finish up what I started with #projectneedles, complete with whiteboard!  No barcodes, though, too sexy.

* publish my first original shawl pattern.  #TNOFTW   
It's about time.  Actually, it's about space.  And Hawaiian mythology.  You'll see.

* begin to teach my kid to knit.  That's a good idea, right?  #childsplay

* finish 12 Shawls in 2014, and be on track for a similar feat in 2015.

*  *  *  *  *

I want to thank the incomparable Eskimimi for organizing this fantastic intarwebz event yet again!!  Finding new crafter-writers to follow is always a highlight of my year.  Good times were had by all!
And thank you to everyone who stopped by, first-timers and familiar friends, especially those who have left comments for me this week -- it means the world to me -- and thank you, as always, to my family for sticking with me offline.  :)

To read other posts from those taking part in Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, simply perform a Google search for the tag 5KCBWDAY7, or click here.

Project Needles: Classification

or, How I Assigned Call Numbers to My Knitting Needles

A Librarian's Tale

If the titles did not trigger red flags,
you have now been officially warned: NERD ALERT.

After completing a survey of priorities for the user population (in this case, just me), portability will factor into the storage of the collection, with a minimum of repackaging and an option for decentralization (AKA I will continue to keep my needles in two specific locations for convenience, and relabeling all my needles would be super insane).

Crafting equipment comes with its own controlled vocabulary, so it's a natural step to use this vocabulary when creating an organization hierarchy for knitting needles... things like:

• Needle size: US sizes for user comfort
• Needle type: circular, double pointed, straight
• Needle length: 6", 8", 16", etc.
• Needle material: metal, wood, bamboo, plastic, etc.

can translate to a call number for relatively easy recognition of the object:

In my opinion (and I may be the only one hanging out in this paragraph -- hello, brave souls who are still reading!), this structure can be easily extended, so that no matter how large this specific collection gets, the chances of running out of unique identifiers is slim.  I will not be assigning Cutter numbers! (cataloging humor, stop me plz)

How a user population can use these assigned call numbers for search and retrieval is its own issue.  I may need to get a whiteboard...

**This post is dedicated to my husband; he met me before grad school and he's stayed with me, even though I talk like this now.**

Project Needles: Inventory

We have reached The Reckoning.

Step 1: print out handy-dandy list of knitting needles and crochet hooks already input in Ravelry.
Step 2: resist urge to procrastinate with data (SCATTER PLOT!)
Step 3: profit  fail miserably at Step 2.
Step 4: attempt to find the listed equipment anywhere in my house.

for funsies wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

After the first pass, there are four pairs of needles that I have no idea where they are AND four pairs of needles that I actually need to add to Ravelry for a full account of the facts.

The labelled resealable bags are leftovers from my old system of organization.  Notice that there are no bags for needles sized smaller than US5 -- at that time, I didn't own any AND I didn't anticipate falling in love with finer yarn and lace knitting!

All the straight needles in my collection were added prior to 2006, I believe.  Why stop buying straight needles?  Several reasons:

• they only work for flat knitting, which limits their reuse
• projects get heavier as they go along, and it's easier on the joints to keep the bulk of a project centralized (on a cable, for example) rather than side-to-side shifting
• I drop things.  A lot.  Drop a needle attached to a cable, it goes nowhere! Drop a straight needle--
  CLANG clink clink click-click-click roll.

Now to track down those missing needles... time to comb through the long-term Works In Progress.

Project Needles: This Title's a Little Corny

Yesterday Eskimimi, creator of Knit & Crochet Blog Week, announced the dates for 2014 and it was just the kick in the pants I needed to start talking again.  Last year I set some goals for myself (even followed through with some) and now we're back to it: Project Needles!

It's been 11-ish months since the last time I talked about Project Needles on the blog, but don't think I've been lazy since that time.  There has been a whole lot of thinking, let me tell you.  Such thinking, you guys.  About storage and whatnot.  Really!

Behold, some 1-gallon Garrett's Popcorn tins, left from the winter holidays, now empty of their original contents:

Before you judge me, they were gifts, okay?  And yes, there are more of them, thank you so much for pointing that out I thought we were friends gosh.

They look like paint cans, only super classy, and more importantly: popcorn cans often come with dividers to separate different flavors of deliciousness in one tin.  These did not (Chicago mix FTW!), but the idea was still planted in this brain of mine.  So the thought is: the dividers I make would be movable for additions etc., I could store each needle size separately while keeping like sizes near each other (oh yeah, I decided that was a priority, keeping all size US7s together regardless of needle type), and the handles make them infinitely portable.

Opinions?  I'm still looking for the proper way to fully clean out cheese-ish residue.

Project Needles: Research & Reconnaissance, Phase 1

During Knitting & Crochet Blog Week, I determined that by April 2014 I would have a system for organizing my knitting needles (ha!), and thus Project Needles was begun!

Let's go back...   way back...   to my very first course in library school:
Organization of Information!

From what I can remember (and it's been years now, so please cut me some slack), the first thing to think about when organizing a collection of something is to think about the purpose for the end user(s).
For example, alphabetizing is great, but it makes no sense to put, say, spices in alphabetical order by name if a competent cook relies on knowledge of flavors that go well together.
(My spices are alphabetized, because I only use spices if specifically called for by diligently-followed recipes, and what of it!  You're here for knitting, not cooking!  I make perfectly edible food sometimes!  ...okay, more to the point, it totally makes sense for me to alphabetize spices.)

SO!  As the only end user of my knitting needles (hereafter referred to as "the collection" because it's fancy), I have some decisions to make:

• Do I care about size of needle?  Do I care about "type" of needle (straight vs double pointed vs circular)?  Do I care about color, material, other aesthetic value? What physical traits of the collection matter most to me on a priority scale?
• How much sorting, repackaging, labeling, &c. do I want to do upfront? How long will it take to access the collection each instance?
• What amount of space do I have to work with?  Should the operation be centralized, cataloged, searchable, &c.?
• Should alphabetical order factor into any of this?  Because I love me some alphabetizing, not gonna lie.

The current state of the collection:

Looking Forward | 4KCBWDAY7

One year from now, where do you hope your crafting will have taken you to? What new skills, projects and experiences do you hope you might have conquered or tried?

In the left-hand column of this blog, underneath links to stuff and -ahem- the photo of my current life-ruiner, there is The Knit List: a relatively comprehensive catalog of the skills I've acquired in my 12.5 years of knitting.  Since last year's KCBW, I've successfully deployed intarsia colorwork, reverse-engineered a pattern from a finished piece of knitting, and learned how to add beads as I knit (via prestringing and with an implement as-you-go).  Every time I get all cocky and think I've earned my knitting black belt, I scan The List and it reminds me:

Oh yeah!  I've been intending to knit fancy mittens for myself!
Oh yeah!  I still haven't yarnbombed anything!
Oh yeah!  Original pattern design is completely foreign to me!

So there's lots of stuff to do.  My goals for the next year are as follows:

* track down all of the knitting needles I supposedly have in my house and come up with an adequate organizational system.  #projectneedles
This is much easier said than done, even for a librarian.

* overcome my fear and steek something.  #steekthroughtheheart    
Scary!!

* finish 12 Shawls in 2013, and be on track for a similar feat in 2014.

*  *  *  *  *

I want to thank the incomparable Eskimimi for organizing this fantastic intarwebz event yet again!!  I have loved reading the blogs of so many talented crafters, many I would never have found otherwise.  I've even come out of my usual lurking-shyly mode and posted some comments along the way.  Good times were had by all! 
Next, thank you to all the awesome bloggers who stopped by, especially those who have left comments for me this week -- soooo exciting to get feedback, it means the world to me. 
Lastly, but never leastly: hiya to my parents; thank you for reading everything and for other things as well.  :)


To read other posts from those taking part in Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, simply perform a Google search for the tag 4KCBWDAY7, or click here.