Check-In Post November 24th 2020

[falkner]

Hello, lovely crafters! Welcome to our daily check-in post, where you can tell everybody all about your most recent progress (or lack thereof). Feel free to also chat with other members and generally enjoy yourself!

Check-in is not compulsory, you decide if and when to take part in these posts.


Today's optional question:

How much planning do you put in your projects? Do you immediately get started when inspiration strikes? Or you do meticulously plan everything in advance instead?

If you have questions or suggestions about the community, requests for tags, or want to host the daily check-in posts, head over to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment there.

Comments

[badly_knitted]

I like to make sure I have everything together for a project before I start work on it, threads and fabric for cross stitch, yarn and the right needles for knitting, though it can take me several days to decide on the perfect pattern for the yarn I've got.

Cardmaking though is more random. I get out a bunch of stuff, start seeing what I can do with it, then spend half my time trying to find essential embellishments.

Just about to start my knitting, hopefully it'll warm me up a bit. So cold!

41 rows on my sleeve, and it did warm me up a bit!

[darkcedars]

I plan a lot now. I have pretty little drawstring bags for the small projects, and all the things I need make their way in there before I get started.

I've not started the headband and not looking likely for tonight either. :D But tomorrow!

[badly_knitted]

That sounds very well organised indeed!

Pencilled in for tomporrow - good luck!

[falkner]

Nice work on the knitting!

> though it can take me several days to decide on the perfect pattern for the yarn I've got
When I started crocheting a few years back, I would first decide on a pattern and then buy the yarn for it. But by now I inevitably ended up with a lot of yarn bought here and there that I don't actually know what to do with...

[badly_knitted]

Thanks!

I have so many patterns! Individual ones, booklets, and pattern magazines, even some hardback knitting books, so many designs I want to knit, but it's so hard matching the yarn I've got to the perfct pattern. I do at least know which pattern I'm using next, with a pale pink brushed DK but I haven't even started considering what I'll make with the two packs of blue yarn I just bought. I'm spoiled for choice. And then I go on ebay and look at more patterns... *grins*

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

I always forget what kinds of beads I have until I get to work, so I don't get to do much planning ahead of time. Once they're out, I fiddle until I get a pattern set.

[badly_knitted]

That's really the best approach with beads, you have to see what works for what you want to make. With the pendants I made last year for Halloween, I could only use beads that had big enough holes for the cord to pass through.

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Very true. :) And there's always the chance that what looks good when laid out won't quite go together well when strung.

[badly_knitted]

Which means un-stringing and starting again.

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Yep! Very irritating when I have to do that. :-/ But I usually wind up satisfied with the end result. ^.^

[badly_knitted]

Sometimes you just ave to keep trying until you're happy with the result.

[froodle]

Beads are such a delight to lay out and fiddle with and admire! Like a Dragon horde, but cheaper and less likely to attract sword-wielding adventures.

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Haha! What a delightful way to look at it! :D🐲💎

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

As for any crafting today, I just now got done shaping some cloverleaf rolls for Thanksgiving dinner. They're sitting on the stove, rising.

[falkner]

I had to look up what those are, and they look interesting! Now I want to try making them...

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

We just use premade frozen dough. I've never tried to make them from a recipe. They're so good!

[badly_knitted]

That sounds yummy!

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

They're so good! We each had one. There's something so cozy about warm bread. :D

[badly_knitted]

I wish I could still eat bread.

[m_findlow]

Planning? What planning? There is only chaos here. I don't even plan my writing.
I think if I was it I something like patchwork I'd need to plan but most of my crafts are just see what happens.
I made two more cards last night and they were much better than the first bunch so I think I'm slowly getting back into the swing of it. Though I spent ages agonising over the first one trying to get the right combination of papers and ribbons together. I'm such a fusspot over the colours being even slightly off and not coordinating. :s

[badly_knitted]

Heee! I don't plan my writing either. Wouldn't help if I did, the characters never do as they're told anyway...

I'm so with you on that, and if the light isn't right it can be impossible to tell if the colours work or not >.<

Yay for getting back into the swing!

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Haha! You sound a bit like Mom, in that regard. If one of the elements of her cards is slightly crooked, she fusses over it. ^.^ I've known her to take a card apart and redo it over a mild imperfection. (We both think she might have a mild case of OCD, and she has some confidence issues.)

[badly_knitted]

As someone who DOES have OCD, I can say for certain that it does affect cfafting. =/

[shopfront]

About as much planning as goes into maintaining a Ravelry account's projects/queue/favourites page and comparing my LYS's online stock to whatever yarn is called for to work out how many options I have that might suit a given project. I rarely get started straight away though, I have about 9 things in my queue right now that I have the yarn ready and waiting for plus two WIP projects and I prefer knowing I'm not likely to run out of planned projects anytime soon so I'll continue adding to that as I finish things.

Haven't been checking in regularly but I've been plugging away at my Christmas scarf which I started when badly_knitted was doing the posts. I had to stop and frog about a quarter or so of a scarf though when it became obvious (once I got a bit further into a non-colourwork bit and could compare widths) that my tension/gauge was terrible for the starting colourwork. I've had a much better second go of it though, went up another needle size and paid more attention to not pulling my strands too tight and it's muuuuch better so I'm feeling pleased about that.

[badly_knitted]

Yay for a more successul second attempt, and what a great idea to us a slightly larger needle for the colourwork sections. That would never have occurred to me! I'll try that next time I'm doing anything that requires more than one colour for a border.

[shopfront]

It's worked pretty well! Still not exact, but close enough that I think blocking should definitely sort it now or at least take it into 'only I'm going to notice the difference' territory haha. I can't take credit though, the original pattern suggested some people might need slightly bigger needles for colourwork. I've just bumped the difference in needle size even further.

[badly_knitted]

That's good to hear. You've found the size that works for you, I guess everyone's different.

[froodle]

Once I actually start cutting and sewing, I like a project to be one-and-done, otherwise the beans have too much opportunity to go everywhere. So the taking random dolls out of the box, sorting them into piles,sorting them into different piles, putting them back in the box and taking the out again doesn't really look like I'm organising (and tbh,.sometimes I don't make anything and just enjoy looking at my beanies). Once I settle on an idea, though, everything gets laid out neatly in the order I'll use it.