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Great Tips for Putting a Project to Bed

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use project cards to keep your ufos in orderWe’ve all had times when we knew we were putting a project in time out. Usually that is accompanied by frustration and getting the project out of our sight as quickly as possible.

But we really should be kind to our future selves and take a moment to write down some things about the currently offending pattern in the hope that some day we’ll want to deal with it. This is also good advice when you’re putting a project away for a while even if it hasn’t been behaving badly (say it’s the dead of summer and you can’t stand working on that stranded knit sweater any longer).

Ashley Little from Crafty’s knitting blog has some great tips for taking notes on a project before you put it away. She says you should note what the pattern is and where it came from (yes!), as well as where you are in the pattern, what yarn you were using, needle size and the size of the garment you were making.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten all of these things about a project I put into hibernation at one time or another — sometimes more than one.

This is such great advice! Check the site for a link to a cute download (those project cards pictured above) that might help you get your UFOs a little better organized, too.

[Photo via Craftsy.]

Comments

  1. This is a great idea!! I gave a knitting project a little “time out” a few months ago. I have the yarn and pattern all tucked away together, but have three sets of needles in the project bag. I plan to get back to this project soon, but I can’t for the life of me remember why I put three different sets of needles in with this sweater (?!?)

    Oh well, I guess I’ll be swatching again 🙂

Have you read?

Knit a Log Cabin Blanket with All Your Scraps

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn. 

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small. 

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches. 

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come. 

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you. 

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?). 

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry. 

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns. 

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]