UFO Inventory

UFO stands for “unfinished object.”  I personally distinguish between WIPs (works in progress) and UFOs, though some people use the terms interchangeably.  A WIP is something that I’m actively working.  An UFO is sitting around waiting for me to get to it sometime.  I don’t like to have a lot of UFOs.  I do like to have multiple projects in progress, so I always have an option for a project that fits my current attention span and activities.  But UFOs lurk in the back of my head, sucking up small bits of energy and sometimes making me feel guilty for abandoning them.  I used to have a number of unfinished projects, but in January of 2013, I inventoried my UFOs and addressed all but one of them.  Either I finished them or I frogged them.  Since then, I have tried to finish up projects within six months or so of starting them.  Despite those efforts, I have accumulated a few UFOs and I’d like to finish with them.  Today I took the first step towards finishing them by taking them all out and determining what needs to be done to finish each one.

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2015 Goals and Plans

I do not set crafting resolutions.  To me, the word “resolution” implies doing something drastically different than you had been doing before.  I’ve been a fiber crafter for a long time and that is not going to change.  Instead, I set goals and make plans.  Goals differ from resolutions in that goals are smaller, concrete, and incremental.  I already have a base of fiber crafting skills and I want to build on those skills.  There’s many things I have never done, especially with crochet, spinning, weaving, and dyeing as these are the skills that I have only acquired in the last two years.  Although I’ve been knitting for 20+ years, I spent many of those years knitting the kinds of projects where gauge is nearly irrelevant and so the list of things I have never done with knitting is longer than you might expect. I’m starting out the year by picking one or two skills to work on for each of the fiber crafts.

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Projects Finished in 2014

I did not expect to take time off from blogging during the holidays, but that’s what ended up happening.  The last six weeks have been a whirlwind of events with family and friends.  I’ve done very little crafting as a result.  However, I will be back to blogging regularly starting next week.  For today, I put together a short video compilation of all the projects I knit, crocheted, spun, wove, and / or dyed during 2014.  I hope you enjoy it!

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August 2014 Preview

I know we are a week into the month, but there’s still 3 more weeks to go, so I’m still calling this a preview!  August is a HPKCHC break month.  I use break months to finish anything that is lingering from the end of term and get all my plans made for the beginning of the next term.  Chris and I are vacationing the last week of August (heading to New Jersey to visit his mother), so I need to plan for some portable projects that I can bring with me on that trip.

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