Friday, August 6, 2010

The Seasonal Crafter - Laying Out the Plan

OK, so here's my plan. Three months at a time, I'm just going to focus on one aspect of my craftiness. This will allow me to work on my skills, really challenge myself and let everything else fade to crafty background noise for a little while, without having to completely give up on anything. Maybe I'll find along the way that I'm not as fond of some things and that I'm fine with just doing the occasional project. Maybe I'll find that once I can settle down and open myself up to just one thing, that my projects will start speaking to me again, and I'll find the thing I was meant to do. Maybe this is all a huge mistake and I should just take up carpentry.

Back to the plan. First the rules. (Gotta have rules, right?)

1. For starters, while I get this going I know I have projects in various veins that are on a time constraint and need to be finished regardless of the season I am in. These will still get done. (Most of them are swaps, because Swap-Bot ate my brain and I can't have it back just yet.)
2. To help with my focus, anything I'm not currently working on gets relegated to the basement. Yes, I know this also means that once every three months, I'll be this crazy unpacking monster while I change gears. This will turn out to be a good thing. Trust me. And it will get the random piles out from under my kitchen table and behind the couch.
3. I'm not going to be uber-strict with this. Just because it's yarn season doesn't mean I can't take a weekend off here and there to make a card for a birthday I forgot about or maybe knit a washcloth during paper season. Just - not so much.

My seasons of crafting:

* Spring (February - April): Fabric. This is perfect because it lets me get started on all the fun summer dresses I'd like to make for the girls.
* Summer (May - July): Paper. Cards, altered books, envelope madness, drawing and painting, all here.
* Fall (August - October): Yarn. Here is where the knitting and crochet go and also where I will start this mad experiment.
* Winter (November - January): Finishing. Here's where it gets kind of weird. This season, with the end of the year approaching and a new year welcoming all sorts of crafty mayhem, I'm going to devote to finishing projects. I'll pick one from each craft (yarn, paper and fabric) and work on finishing it. This would also be a good time for a mass destashing and cleaning out my supplies.

Well, that's it. My plan is laid out and I have a lot of cleaning up to do. Plus, I get to start in Yarn season.

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