Planning Your Crafting Year
The beginning of the year is the perfect time for planning your crafting year – all the things you want to accomplish in your creative life before the next calendar year arrives. The first thing I want you to consider is your Why.
Why do you want to plan your crafting year? We all have different reasons. Perhaps you want to prepare handcrafted gifts for a family event or holiday. Maybe you’re ready to replace parts of your wardrobe with unique, handspun pieces. Or perhaps you want to improve certain skills to become a more proficient spinner. Understanding your Why will help you plan and adjust your year. Plan your year so your crafting reflects your Why and maintain flexibility for any life changes.
Spinning is a unique hobby because the end product, yarn, is just the raw material for another textile craft. As a multicraftual maker, I include using beautiful handspun yarn in my crafting year. As a spinner who enjoys working from raw fleece, my crafting includes picking and scouring fleece, fiber preparation, and sometimes dyeing.
Make a wish list
I use two tools for planning my projects: a wish list and make nine. Grab a notebook, pencil, and your favorite beverage. If you already follow a bullet journal practice, as described by Katherine Mead in the “Journaling to Grow” article, reserve a place in your journal for your crafting/creative wish list. This allows you to add items as they come to you and review them when planning your year.
Some examples of a wish list:
- Create a winter wardrobe for me
- Create a summer wardrobe for a significant other
- Spin a collection of 2-ply handspun yarns in the same weight (sport, DK, worsted) for use in various projects
- Create warp and weft yarn for two stoles
- Spin the box of summer dyeing fiber
- Spin full commercial hand-dyed braids (fractal, gradient, rill, raindrop, and marled)
- Spin complementary colors for a colorwork sweater to be knit with commercial yarn
- Spin two braids of fiber for an accessory
- Become proficient with the dizzing-off-the-hand-carder technique using five different commercial braids or wool breeds
- Prep fiber and spin the pound/half a kilo of scoured fleece from last summer
- Spin with my spindles at least 15 minutes every day
- Practice fiber preparation with the Lock Pop and drum carder
- Scour one or two pails of raw fleece from the last fleece auction
- Spin through the Fiber Club braids received every three months
Adding items to your wish list doesn’t mean you’ll tackle them all this year. This is just the first step.
Choose a theme
Along with your Why, choose a theme for your crafting year, such as His Wardrobe, My Summer Wardrobe, or Intentional Learning from Stash – whatever resonates with you.
Draw a grid with nine spaces and title it with your chosen theme. Fill your make nine grid using your Why and wish list to guide your decisions. Here’s an example of my planning for the next 12 months:
I want to spin beautiful yarns compatible with colorwork projects, improve my proficiency with fiber tools like the drum carder and the Lock Pop, and keep practicing my fiber prep skills with hand cards and blending boards. My make nine projects align with these interests and the crafting I enjoy. Note that I’ve included three works-in-progress. As spinners know, our craft is slow, and projects often carry over from the previous year. I also left one square open for any inspiring project or make-along I encounter during the year.
Find your tasks
Filling the make nine grid with attractive projects is satisfying, but it won’t become a reality if you keep it tucked away. New projects will fill your time if you let them.
List all the tasks needed to make your crafting list a reality. Identify the roadblocks for each project. For example, scouring fleece or fiber dyeing may be seasonal tasks best done in warmer months. Account for fiber prep time before spinning the singles or sampling time if that’s a roadblock for you. Add each task to a checklist you can mark off as you complete them.
Once I have my grid and checklist, I print the page and add it to my bullet journal. You might choose to stick it in your crafting area. Place it somewhere visible where you can check off tasks as you tackle them.
Craft your year!
For critical roadblock tasks, I schedule them on my calendar as I would a work meeting, ensuring I reserve time for them. I also add monthly tasks to my journal to stay on track with project progress. I enjoy photographing the process and sharing moments on social media. Reviewing these photos later inspires me and helps me remember successful processes.
Two or three months before the end of the year, I reassess my crafting progress and celebrate my successes. I also reflect on any projects left unfinished and consider whether I was too ambitious, failed to account for roadblocks, or got distracted by new patterns or spin-alongs. I include this reflection in planning the upcoming year to better align with how I like to spend my crafting time.
Planning my crafting year helps me be intentional with my projects, crafting garments that complement my daily life and ensuring I incorporate learning into my making. I hope what I’ve shared helps you start planning your crafting year too!
Greta lives in the Greater Vancouver area, Canada. She enjoys sampling and planning her crafting time. She loves being the Education Program Coordinator for the School of SweetGeorgia, where she is lucky to make a career of her passion. She shares life with her husband, five kids and a house full of wool, good food, coffee and tea. She may be found at the SOS forums, knitting, spinning, or walking with her family.
Words and photos by Greta Cornejo
