Do They Match?

During knitting and crochet blog week, I created this infographic:

As you can see, it shows the breakdown of my crafting - from the 96 items in my queue and the 76 items in my stash, to the finished objects I have made.

What I thought would be interesting is to see if the types of projects I put in my queue are actually the same types of projects that I actually make *laughs* Do they match?

[Just a note - in case you don't know/use the queue feature in Ravelry - essentially if you spot a pattern you like you can add it to your "queue" - you can assign the yarn you plan to use, which is a useful feature, and you can set a deadline to make the item, which is not so much a feature I use!]

So, from the stats above (I have actually made a lot more than 58 things - I have 99 projects loaded into Ravelry, I just picked out the most common types for the graphic)...

20% of my projects are garments
25% are pairs of socks
35% are accessories (mitts, scarves, hats, etc)
19% are "other" (shawls, dishcloths, blankets)

I now have 100 items in my queue (yeah, I've added a few in the last week *laughs*)... Incidentally, it makes working out the percentages easy!

So, of my queued items:

15% are accessories
39% are garments
17% are socks

As for the "other" category - well, I have become a lot more interested in knitting shawls lately, so even though I didn't have enough finished to justify a category in the graphic, I have so many queued that I think they deserve their own figure, as they now represent 22% of my queue!

So, what does this tell me?

Well, I clearly queue a lot more garments than I actually make *laughs* Obviously garments can take a bit longer than other items, which does contribute, but reviewing my queue has given me a bit of a push back towards the garment projects.

I knit more socks than I queue - not surprising as I tend to knit plain socks and rarely pick up a more complicated pattern. But I do have some cool sock patterns queued, so maybe it's time to branch out a little more ;)

I'm becoming more drawn to shawls, so my sock yarn stash now has more options *laughs* I don't queue nearly as many accessory patterns as I make - I think because when it comes to accessories I tend to have the yarn first and then go searching for a pattern to fit. All of the accessories I do have queued are linked with the yarn I tend to use, which confirms this.

On Disappointment

After my post on Friday, about my disappointing socks, I started to muse about disappointing knitting.

I am quite lucky, I have been delighted with most of the projects to come off my needles. I've certainly had projects that I never finished because they weren't turning out right, but very few that I consider truly disappointing FOs.

My Brown jumper is, in hindsight, a little disappointing. The arms are too long, the neckline is bodged, the colour of the yarn is overwhelmingly samey and the body is a little short. But, and this is an important but, it was my first jumper/sweater and therefore those faults aren't so much disappointments as learning experiences. I keep meaning to go back to it and see if I can fix it to be more my liking though *laughs*

The very first garment I made, which was supposed to be a capelet type thing, came out completely wrong. My gauge was pretty far out, and I was a little saddened, until I blocked it to within an inch of its life, and ended up with a cute shrug that I prefer to the cape *smiles*

Now that I look back through my projects, there are some that I love, some that I like, some that I like well enough but don't seem to wear... But nothing that is really disappointing.

Recently I ripped out the back and half a front of a cardigan I had started, because I knew it wouldn't turn out right at all. I am learning more and more to see when a project just isn't going anywhere - which is something I didn't do well at first. I have other projects that I never finished, but I always felt a little guilty about them.

Of course, finishing something only to be disappointed seems like a much worse fate, so I am happy to have learned when to say enough *laughs*

Musings on Labels

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see what I post about most often. So I changed the settings on the widget that shows all the labels I use for posting to also display how many posts are in each category (I then changed it back straight away because I found it a bit cluttered, but I kept a screenshot *smiles*)

From this I can see that I have accidentally got two labels for Ooops, one with 3 "o"s and one with 2 *laughs* The irony is not lost on me ;)

I can also see that I have clearly forgotten to label a few things - because I only have one post tagged as "handspun" despite completing more than one skein.

I'm quite amused that I have 41 posts tagged as "New Yarn" and only 16 as "Stashbusting" *laughs* Doesn't that show my priorities rather clearly?!

Unsurprisingly "Knitting", "FO" and "WIPW" are the top 3 tags - as this is a knitting blog that participates in WIP Wednesdays and FO Fridays, I think that is pretty self explanatory!

I was slightly surprised that the next highest result is "Socks", though perhaps I shouldn't be. I never set out to write a sock knitting blog, but apparently I am on the way to having one anyway *laughs* Not a problem of course, I love sock knitting and my handknit socks are the items that get the most wear out of anything I have made.

This might be a feature of the tags I am using of course, "socks" seems to be the only project specific label I seem to use. Food for thought...

So, I have a question for you - do you ever look at the tags on blogs you read? Either on posts or on the sidebar? Do you click them, or use them to see what sort of thing the blog covers (garment knitting, sock knitting, crochet, cooking, etc) or ignore completely?

I'm trying to work out if I want to update tags on older posts, making them more useful, or if people aren't that fussed about them and I just shouldn't bother *laughs*