UFO Experiment Time!

I bet you thought I was going to talk about litle green men that came down to Earth in their space vehicles, didn’t you? Uh, no. I’m talking about the thing that EVERY crocheter and knitter has (and if you say you don’t have one, you’re either just starting out or you’re lying to yourself)…

UnFinished Objects.

I see status updates from various pages on Facebook asking fans to comment on how many UFO’s they have. I don’t even go there. I haven’t counted. I’m going to have to dedicate some time in the new year to get these altogether.

I think one of the percieved barriers of finishing up those projects is that there is a chance that you have used the yarn in another project. Or you varied the pattern in your head. Used a different hook and can’t remember which one now. I’m working on a way to overcome this.

I have started to write stuff down in a journal. I actually started that a year and a half ago. Thank goodness I have! When I work on something, I’ve started to make notes in a journal and there have been a few times I have been very grateful that I did. Take for example today… A friend of mine had ordered a couple of hats awhile ago. She said that the ones she ordered for were small for their age. I looked the measurements up online and it seemed that there was about 1″ difference between sizes. So I went with the smaller size against a gut feeling. A couple of weeks ago, my friend asked me if I could make them hats for Halloween. I said I could squeeze them in. This time I went with my gut and went with the bigger size. I wrote that info down. I found out today that the orignal hats were too small (and my gut called it!). So I told her I would make the next size up for her. She told me that the other ones fit and she thought they were the same size. Nope. So I’m going to refer to my notes so that I will get the size right. YAY ME FOR WRITING IT DOWN!!!

I’ve also started something else. Sometimes when I get started on a project I haven’t worked on before, the sizing comes out wrong. So rather than rip it apart, I just set it aside (this is why I have so many UFO’s floating around here!) I’ve noticed the UFO’s getting out of control. Why is that? Because I didn’t have notes for them. When I tried tweaking a pattern recently, the results came out too big. But it looked good. So I wrote my notes down on a piece of paper along with the hook size, type and brand of yarn and colour. So when I get a day to work on UFO’s, I will be able to do it more efficiently.

I think one of the keys to this line of work is doing things as efficiently as you can. I think this is one of the things we can do to contribute to that. Feel free to add this to your bag of tricks.