I’m your resident geek/nerd Joelle. I’m going to show you the geeky/nerdy side of crafting. Don’t worry, we’re lovely. But before we dive into the many and varied waters of fandom I thought we’d start with a little organization.

I get rather geeky about my project and stash organization. But honestly it’s helped me be more productive and enjoy what I’m crafting so hopefully it will do the same for you. So, look around your stash of patterns and yarn? It’s a bit overwhelming isn’t it? Lots of us buy things with no set plan for them. They’re just pretty (in the case of yarn) or we know we’ll knit or crochet them eventually (in the case or books and patterns). I bet you have many projects ready to go than you realise.  

A couple of years ago I married up as much of my yarns and patterns as I could and created a 'projects ready to go' box. Did I only craft from that box? No. Did I stop buying yarns and patterns? No. But it gave me a good idea what I would like to do with all my yarn and patterns. And, being a geek/nerd I created a spreadsheet in Google Drive. Colour coded and everything. As you can see by the grey boxes here I’ve done pretty well this year.

The next thing you can do is use Ravelry’s wonderful notebook functions to track your yarn purchases. I try and do it as soon as I buy stuff. You can then assign the yarn to a project when you start it and keep track of how much you use and what you have left.

And lastly, I adore creating project pages for each of my items. I can note the needle sizes I used which is great for when I make another one, what yarn I used and how much, and any notes on pattern alterations and problems I encountered. I organise my projects with tags so I can find specific things easily. Can you guess which book series I like?

Your notebook also contains a library for any patterns you’ve found on Ravelry. I try and keep this organised but it can just become a dumping ground for gorgeous patterns.