WIP Wednesday 1.4

I had a really busy weekend/week (for some reason I always think of my weekends as Saturday-Tuesday...lol). I was really behind on the 31 days to get organized because Day 10 tracking your stash took forever (more details below). I also worked on some baby bibs and I'm making some Valentine's Day stuffed animals to add to the shop.

My Wip's for the week are at the bottom if you would like to skip my announcements and 31 days to get organized update! :)
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ANNOUNCEMENTS 
Valentine's Day Animals will be available at the shop starting today Wednesday, January 23rd.

Baby Bibs will be available starting Friday, January 25th. I'll be adding the Heart Bib first. I will be adding a total of 10 bibs through February 3rd. If you are interested in one of the baby bibs but would like it in a different color let me know.

Remember to purchase your stuffed animals by Wednesday, February 6th to get them in time for Valentine's Day!

I send my animals through USPS Priority Mail with delivery confirmation but since some of the smaller animals like the caterpillars are small enough to send through USPS First Class Mail and its cheaper this way, that is how I will be shipping them from now on if you want to upgrade to Priority Mail let me know before purchasing but it will be as expensive as shipping a larger animal. I recently shipped a ladybug and it was $7.05!

USPS will be raising their shipping rates starting January 27th so you might want to consider buying now. I am considering paying for postage online to save on shipping and get free delivery confirmation but I still need to figure out how to work that.
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31 DAYS TO GET ORGANIZED

Day 9

Tracking your Stash

This one is pretty easy to figure out. Basically the tips in this post are all about how to keep track of what is in your stash. If you have a lot of yarn this will come in handy because you will have a record of every yarn you currently own. Otherwise when you store it there is a chance that you may forget you have it. I have a lot of yarn but not nearly as much as others and another advantage is I tend to buy a lot of the same kind of yarn just in different colorways. So keeping track of what I have isn't hard even without a written list but I thought it would be a good idea to do this anyway. When I started using Ravelry I noticed the stash tab but never got around to adding yarn. This day took me about a week to complete but I finally finished adding all my yarn. I currently have 178 yarns in my stash. It took me longer than I thought because I actually took a picture of my own yarn instead of using those on the yarns website and it didn't help that all of last week it was really cloudy. But I'm happy its done. I will try to update this information every time I buy new yarn so it doesn't accumulate over time. Using ravelry to stash my yarn is also helpful when listing a new project because now I don't have to look around for the labels to know what colorway it was, all I have to do now is add the yarn that is already in my stash with all the information. And every time I finish a project I can keep a record of how much yarn I have left over that way its easier to know if I have enough to use for another project or not.

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Day 10

Ideas on using Leftover Yarn

In this post several people shared ideas on what they do with leftover yarn. Some of the ideas were interesting but I think I am going to stick to something I make already which is amigurumi. Some of the patterns from Freshstitches don't call for a lot of yarn so I think I may end up using it on that. If  its not enough to make an entire amigurumi then I could use it to make a stripped one. For example these tiny owls below only need 60 yards of yarn total.

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Day 11

Getting Rid of Unwanted Yarn

This post is another one that doesn't really apply to me since there isn't any unwanted yarn in my stash. But if there ever was something I just didn't want, it did give several ideas on what to do with that yarn. :)

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Day 12

Identifying Mystery Yarn

I only have one yarn I'm not sure what it is. I bought it some time ago its supposed to be like recycled fibers or something similar. I'm pretty sure its acrylic and its a fingering weight. The pack came with four large skeins so I decided to get it but never found a use for it. Whenever I want to test out a new pattern or need some waste yarn for a project that's what I use it for. So I didn't really bother figuring out anything else about it like the post suggest since I'm pretty sure I won't be using it for an actual project. 

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Day 13

Organize your Yarn Stash

I mentioned before that I use this system to store my yarn and will continue to do so but this post did help me with some ideas. I store my yarns by brand and now also by color. KnitPicks yarns are in the top left separated by brand like Comfy, Shine and Brava. The top right stores my Berroco Vintage which I separated by color family. One has warm colors, the second cool colors and the third neutrals. The middle row stores most of my acrylic like Bernat, Loops & Thread and Lion Brand. I have three bins for my Bernat Softee Baby which store the boy colors like blues & greens in one, girly colors like pinks & purples in another and the last one, colors that could go work for both. The bottom left has one bin where I store my Joann acrylic yarn and the other two store cotton yarns from Bernat, Hobby Lobby and Lily. I recently bought these two new storage units below at Michael's. They are meant for storing scrapbook materials but I decided to use the for my yarn. The one on the left stores my crochet thread and the one on the right the rest of my acrylic yarn from Caron and Hobby Lobby. I placed them under my desk since there was no more room for them anywhere else and I also used the top as my book shelf to store my pattern binders and craft books.

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Day 14

Protecting your Yarn from Moths

I've never had a problem with moths getting to my yarn. I didn't even know of the damages it could do until I saw it online so I've never done anything to prevent it from happening. This post will definitely come in handy. I think I will need to do something to protect my yarn before its too late.

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Day 15

Organizing Craft Books, Magazines, & Pattern Books

This post tells you to decide which books to keep, give away, or toss just like the de-stashing yarn post. I actually don't have a lot of craft books. Most of them are stitch dictionaries and I try to get ones that don't have the same stitches in them. There are a lot of books that I want to get eventually but just haven't. So for now I don't really have a lot of organizing to do. My craft books are organized by craft under my desk. I didn't have anywhere else to put them so I put them on top of the new storage drawers I mentioned above. I also store my binders with individual patterns with the books that are in the same category. As you can see below after my knitting binder I have all my knitting books to go with it. So if I am ever looking for a book from a certain category its already there and I don't have to do any searching. I don't buy magazines so that's not something I have to worry about. Most of the patterns I own are in binders and I know I need some help organizing those but that will be in another post.

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Day 16
Organizing Single Patterns

I currently store my patterns in sheet protectors and put them in binders according to category. In the picture above you can see I store my binders with my books. I currently have seven categories: Jewelry Making, Cross Stitch, Knitting, Baby Knitting(only patterns for baby items), Crochet, Freshstitches( I have so many of her patterns they need a binder to themselves), and Tatting. All the binders except the Freshstitches one are seperated into sub-categories. For example my knitting one has sections for shawls, hats, scarves, socks, etc. I really like this way of storing them at least its working for me. :)

The two patterns shown above are free at www.freshstitches.com. I tried making them small enough that you can't see what the writing is. :)

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Day 17
Using & Reorganizing you Ravelry Queue

I've never really used the Ravelry Queue so this was another day I didn't need to do anything for. But after reading the post I think I decided to give it a try. I currently only have four projects I am really interested in.

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Day 18
Organizing Digital Patterns

It took me less than 20 minutes to organize my digital patterns. I took some time to organize them last year so all I had to do now was organize the most recent I had downloaded which were not many since I started using Ravelry I don't really download that many anymore unless its something I am going to work on. Below is a picture of the different folders that I use to store what I have downloaded. Some are by designer and others are general crafts.

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Day 19
Keeping Track of your Patterns Library

I don't think that I really need to do anything for this day either. My patterns downloaded to my computer are organized. I've been using Ravelry for storing most of the other ones and the ones in my binder are organized. So if I need to find a certain pattern I'm sure I won't have a hard time doing so.

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Day 20
Sort your Knitting Needles & Crochet Hooks

This day was also a fast one. I did some cleaning and organizing over the weekend so I had already stored my needles and hooks in a drawer. I don't have too many of them so I don't really need to get rid of any of them. I do have several duplicates of size 5 needles because it tends to be the size I use most for my baby blankets so I bought plenty to have in case I got bored with one blanket and wanted to start another. I have an idea of what I want to use to store them in but I haven't gotten it yet. That's what the next post is about but I will save that for next week.

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WIP's

This week I have been working on some Valentine's Day stuffed animals for the shop.

I currently have 2 caterpillars which mom actually helped me crochet all I have to do it sew the pieces since she doesn't like sewing them. I also made a Valentine Owl that I will be sharing for FO Friday! 

Next I worked on finishing up my Hermit Crab which I had to put on hold because I ran out of red yarn. Well it almost happened again because I was using the red yarn for the Valentine Owl but luckily I still have enough to finish the Hermit Crab and I will share him on Friday also.

I'm still working on my Baby Bibs. I've completely finished 3, I'm currently working on 2, and I need to start and finish another 5 by February 3rd. I still believe that I can get it done. It's at the top of my list for the rest of the week. 

The last thing I have to share today is that I started the Haruni Shawl using the Candy Skein Yummy Fingering yarn I bought a couple months ago. I really love how its looking. The yarn is very pretty and the pattern is easy to follow. I'm following the written directions since I'm not that confident in my chart reading skills and I don't want to mess up and have to start over. The  provisional cast on took me a while because I had never used it before but after a couple of tries I think I finally got it. I know I will need to block it which is something I have never done so I am already making a list of blocking materials I will need. I'm thinking of buying the blocking mats, lace blocking wires and blocking t-pins at KnitPicks but would like to hear from anyone who has purchases them how they like them so please let me know. Also if anyone has any good blocking tutorial links or tips those will be greatly appreciated. :)

I finally figured out how to add progress bars to my blog. So I added my WIP's progress bars to the left. They are linked to my ravelry page for each project. Most of them are projects from last year that I never finished and want to this year. I've made a plan that I will assign one UFO each week and I will schedule some time each day of that week to work on that one project. I can only work on that project for that week so any extra time I have to work on something that will be it. Of course I will continue to make items for my shop, swaps, and cal's as usual. This week my project will be the Haruni Shawl since I'm really excited about working on it. If I happen to finish the project before the week ends then I can start working on whatever the next week's project is. I've already added a timeline below my progress bars to keep my on track.

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Share your works in progress and take a look at what others are working on by checking out Tami's Blog! 

Don't forget to come back for Finished Object Friday!