Now after you've made your shopping list its time to go stash diving!
This is the perfect time of year to start using up some of your stash and free up room for all that Christmas yarn you'll be getting from Santa and the yarn sales!
If you do not have the yarn in the stash then start cruising the sales bins of the local yarn stores. The key to this is to always carry your shopping list with you so you know how much of what weight of yarn to get and what person it’s for so you can get a color they like. Don’t forget to write on your list what yarn you got for what so you don’t forget what it is for. It’s also helpful to write down what needles you might need and check to see which sizes you need to pick up.
There is nothing like the smell of victory after you’ve hit a yarn sale, gotten yarn for a gift, picked up the needles, and sat down with the pattern for a Christmas gift months before the actual day. You can even keep the printed patterns in a binder in the car so you can nip over to the coffee shop to cast on the new project immediately! This is also a good idea if your significant other has commented on how much yarn you have. They rarely realize that a project coming into the house on the needles might be new yarn. If it’s already cast on then you must have gotten it out of the stash and not gone to the yarn store.
For those of you that are like me, a little OCD on the organization, or if you habitually loose patterns, printing all your patterns out and putting them into a binder is a great way to keep them together (just make sure not to lose the binder). Make notes on them, like who it is for, what colors and yarn you’re using, how many hours you think you might take to knit it, ideas of where you can knit it (plain sock at the movies, cabling while watching Glee, lace while listening to books), and you can even print a calendar to put in the front to remind you of how close the big day is or mark out what weeks your working on what and deadlines, (really make the deadlines and then enjoy the sound of them whooshing by).
Feel free to now cast on as many projects on the Christmas list as you want! The idea here is to create enough projects so if you to get bored with one you’ll have something else to switch to while still keeping yourself on task. Or you can keep you projects around the house in places you might knit them. Sock and an emergency knitting in the car, blanket by the couch, scarf in the kitchen (think of knitting while your waiting for water to boil, but keep it away from fire), hats with the camping stuff, mittens in your purse and shawls with your iPod.
If you get bored with one rotate it to another place, like the kitchen. If you’re bored with it then knitting it in small doses is your best option to still get it done. I can’t stand knitting the cast off edging to the Girasole, so now it’s in two area, my dining room for when I’m cooking, and my car for when I need to just wait a few minutes for something.
So tonight finish up your list and get organized. Tomorrow we’ll discuss horror stories and if you would like to share one please email it to me or include it in a comment!
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