Saturday, May 27, 2006

Setting Priorities

Guys, I have such a hard time choosing which of my planned projects to knit, remember in a past post I showed you "my next two things to knit", well scratch that, I was waiting for the yarn to knit the cabled shirt in Vogue Knitting and meanwhile got another yarn for another project so I started that, it is another project from another Vogue Issue made with FILATURA DICROSSA BRILLA. Oh! how am I loving this yarn !!! I heard of people saying they loved it and now I can see why. The fabric it produces is beautiful ! It has a great drape and such a fresh feeling and the colors are so nice. Anyways, I will try to take a picture of it as soon as I can as my camera perished in action...

The issue that I wanted to bring up is how to set priorities when you have such huge amount of projects you want to knit. I was thinking about this and decided that there is no point in starting a bunch of projects. At least I have found this very unproductive and it seems like you never finish anything. So, I allow my self to have two projects, one that is easy and portable and one that is harder and requires full attention. So, with that in mind, I am trying to use two criteria for choosing my next project. 1. How eager (exited) I am about this project and 2. Need.

I never thought about #2 before, until I read in a book about the importance of knitting based on need. So, I went to my closet and chose the colors according to what I need and also decided that I really need some nice tops to wear with skirts for church and stuff, so that is why I am knitting tops right now. I just finished the turquoise top and I am still finishing a top that I made last year from GEDIFRA Highlights 101. This top took me like 4 months to knit because of the small cables it has. It has was equally hard to finish it. Once it was finished (sewn together), I realized that the shoulder bands were too long, so I had to undo the shoulders 1.5 inches and sew them back together only to discover after blocking, that the arm opening needs more definition, so I am going to have to add a finishing border to it. Wow! So much work! I hope I can get to wear it some time soon.

I also force my self to work in finishing every other week. Right now I have 4 project awaiting finishing. So that is the only way I can get it done. I, like most knitters, HATE FINISHING!

Anyways, I wonder if other knitters go through the same questions when selecting the next projects and what parameters do they use to choose what to knit next once they finish a piece.

My mind is always in the search for new challenges and projects... So my motivation to continue working in what I have already started is the possibility of wearing the item soon. I also look at the amount of yarn I have used up and the amount of yarn left to motivate myself and keep me going ...

I wonder how other people deal with these issues...

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Canadian Living Magazine Website




Wow! what a great finding! These are only a few pictures of the beatiful patterns available for free in the website of the Canadian Living Magazine. I want to make the tea cozy for my mother in law. I felt in love with it since I saw it in the book Mindful Knitting but I did not want to buy the book just for the tea cozy pattern right? Well, what a nice surprice to find the pattern available at www.canadianliving.com Excerpted, with permission by the distributor of the book Raincoast Books. Check out this great website which also have wonderful tips for the home and plenty of yummy recipies!

Monday, May 15, 2006

Aran Knitting YAHOO Group

About 4 weeks ago I found a Yahoo group in Aran Knitting. That is how I learned about a book called ARAN SWEATER DESIGN by Janet Szabo. Everybody in this list "worship" Janet and her book so I went ahead and got it from her website www.bigskyknitting.com . The book is wonderful, it is a complete design workshop specific for Aran Knitting. Janet is also the Administrator of the Yahoo group which is extremely strict about content. Janet reads every email and decides if the content is relevant or not. Many posts get deleted because she considers that only postings related specifically to ARAN should be published. Therefore, conversations on other knitting related subjects are deleted and don't even make it to be published in the list. I wrote to Janet expressing my desire of the group to have a more relaxed guidelines regarding posting, after all, all group members in the list are Knitters first, and Aran lovers second and most of us knit many things, not only Aran items. As long as the subject was related to knitting, it seemed appropriate to me to be allowed in the group. This seems to be the position of several people since Janet wrote a note to the group saying that "many people continued to ask her to allow other knitting related postings". The interesting thing is that my post and those other postings requesting a slightly different posting guidelines were never published to the list. They were deleted by Janet before they went into the group. It is sad to me that instead of moderating the group, Janet is censuring it to the extreme of not allowing any opinion that is different than hers in any way. Yes, it is true that she founded the group, but what is the point on opening the membership to the public if only your opinion is allowed?
Janet sent an Administrator Note to the group letting us know she was temporarily going to shut down the group due to the non related postings and people (like me) asking her to have a more open posting policy. Janet unkindly invited these "new members" to "go chit-chat somewhere else".
Janet states how she is tired and wants to take a break from the group which is understandable since she exercises such a controlling and time consuming supervision over it. In my opinion, she should take a big breath and relax and let people enjoy their conversations on knitting and aran. Needless to say, I unsubscribed to the group and head up for friendlier waters. I finally was able to subscribe to another Yahoo group on knitting and another one for socks which so far seem very friendly and more focused in the fun of knitting.
I respect Janet Szabo a great deal for her personal and knitting career achievements and whish her the best in the future but I think she is exaggerating a little bit at macro-managing a yahoo group that should be a relaxing outlet for her instead of a daunting task. It would be a lot more fun for her if she moderated the group instead of censure it. Loosen up Janet! Life is too short to stress out over little things, there is so much to knit too...