I Hope I Don't Wind Up On Hoarders...

Last week I mentioned that knitting while at work was sort of difficult for me. So obviously, the next best thing to do is knitting-related things. Sometimes I listen to knitting podcasts, and sometimes I peruse the forums on Ravelry, but my favorite thing to do is check out new patterns. Ravelry makes this easy by listing the newest 50 pages of patterns added to the site right on the Patterns tab. I also check out the newly added patterns on Knitting Pattern Central every Monday and Thursday morning. As I come across patterns that appeal to me, I hit the handy little print button, and stick that sucker in my backpack to bring home for my collection. But it turns out that doing this leads to piles and piles of patterns. A normal person would just add these patterns to her Ravelry Queue, instead of killing trees. But I'm not normal, and there are two reasons that I find this difficult:

1. For reasons unknown to myself, I have the same instinct regarding my queue as I have with my email inboxes... and that is to clean it out. Keep only what is needed. And it turns out that when you're mentally all over the place all the time, "what is needed" varies on an hourly basis, at best. That means I have a tendency to delete a lot of things, and regret it later. Instinctively, I print out patterns knowing that it is harder for my to throw away a tangible object than a representation of said object. Funny side note: Almost everything in my queue was added from my home computer, which (until recently) was a real bitch to print from (bring laptop upstairs, wait for slow printer to warm up, listen to horrible noises from old printer, watch as pattern emerges full of streaks, disconnect, return laptop to comfy living room). Now we have a super awesome, fast, and quiet printer/copier/scanner with wireless technology!!1!

2. The queue is pretty much just a fancy way of bookmarking something. A lot of the patterns I get are found free online, usually either on a yarn manufacturer's website or somebody's blog. There is no guarantee that a pattern in my queue is still going to be there a year from now when I finally decide to knit it. Sometimes things get deleted, websites disappear, servers go down... there are a whole lot of things that could make that pattern unavailable. Or what if I want to start knitting a pattern from my queue during a power outage? But I think the only thing that would make my printouts disappear is a house fire, in which case I'll have bigger problems to worry about.

So here I am, with a crapload of patterns. Work has been slow for most of the past year, and I've been keeping the laser printer busy all along. This leads to my 2010 dilemma. Last year I felt I had too much yarn, and worked to keep the stash under control. This year it's patterns. Don't get me wrong- I don't think one can have too many patterns, and my goal is not to whittle them down by any means. The dilemma is that I no longer know what I have, and everything (magazines included) is divided amongst several piles in my knitting room. My goal over the next few days/weeks/months is going to be getting them organized. I need to get them arranged for easier browsing and searching. I'm thinking this will involve a system of binders and those clear insert thingies.

I actually just thought that I'd run off to Staples right now and get started, but then I looked out the window. It's rainy and gray and icky- definitely sit inside and knit weather. Maybe tomorrow.