It’s time! The Yukon Quest starts today, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Ravelry, it’s that sporting events make for good project planning. Here’s the general idea: 1. Sport event that you’re going to be watching/ following, regardless of just about everything else that’s going on in life, 2. Project that you’ve been working on/ that’s been languishing/ that you’ve been meaning to start, 3. Time (a lot of it) during which you’re going to be staring at some sort of screen. All of these add up to one thing – the end of your procrastination.
Here’s how it works. First, you choose a project. Then you make the project during the duration of the sporting event, using the start and end dates as your deadlines. (If you’ve never needed a start deadline, then I envy you your ability not to plan!) The whole thing is more fun if other artists are following the same event, and crafting along with you. And it’s even more fun if it’s a racing event, and the exact timing of the deadlines is a bit unknown. For example, in the Yukon Quest sled dog race, weather is a major factor, and not every team that starts the race may cross the finish line. How much can you get done before your team completes the next leg, before the race is halfway over, before the first team crosses the finish line, before the last team comes in?
Naturally, this set-up can also be applied to more mundane tasks, like laundry, paying your bills, doing the dishes, or preparing your taxes, for example. We’re not fooling anybody though – we all know we’re going to save the To Do List for the commercial breaks. Besides, you can pay your bills any old day of the week. What you want to do here, is give yourself a reason to pick up that project you were going to do “eventually” – and run with it! If, like a lot of the crafting world, you need your hands to be busy while the majority of your attention is focused elsewhere, and if you also happen to have a project list a mile long – well then, your opportunity has arrived!
For this year’s knitting during the Yukon Quest project, I decided to use my handspun yarn from the Corgi Hill Farms SAL/KAL I joined to make this Baa-ble Hat colorwork pattern, an item that seemingly absolutely everyone has been knitting. There are already 4,200+ projects listed for this pattern on Ravelry! (Thank you Shetland Week, for a great free pattern!)
Of course, a colorwork pattern requires more that just one type of yarn. The cute parade of sheep mired in falling snow suggested all kinds of possibilities for creative play, and this, is where my sticking-to-The-Plan resolve crumbled. I decided I absolutely needed, needed!, to make the entire hat with handspun yarn. This meant spinning an additional good amount of yarn – which, of course, wasn’t in The Plan for this year. It also meant spinning it rather quickly – which in turn meant temporarily setting aside other ongoing projects (see the trap there?). In the interest of completing the KAL portion of the challenge I joined, I decided to do it anyway. Where my sticking-to-The-Plan resolve held, was using existing fiber from my stash to spin more yarn. Thankfully, my gifts-of-fiber-past cooperated, and my stash coughed up 15.5 micron white merino, snowy Australian corriedale, white Mulberry silk, and (halleluah!) plain old sparkly white Angelica. (I did go out and get some really nice 100% silk thread for the boucle core and binder, but we’re not going to dwell on that.)
I love working on projects that let me learn something specific in the making, and this project has loads. I’m spinning for the first time: boucle yarn, self-wrapped yarn with a commercial thread binder, and a sheep breed I’ve never tried before, Black Welsh Mountain. The problem is, my starting date has arrived i.e. the race has begun, and I’m still spinning the yarn. So my actual cast on has been somewhat delayed by my hands being occupied with flyaway silk and tangling threads and singles.
However, if there’s one thing this modern age and the internet in particular is good for, it’s giving you access to a lot of information and photos while you’re doing other things. While I’m spinning towards a cast on, I’ll be checking in on an event that’s happening several thousands miles, and a good 4 time zones, away. If you’re interested in what the Yukon Quest is, or if you like to look at beautiful photos of the northern lights!, I recommend checking out their Facebook page, here. And if you’d like to take advantage of the sporting event /project planning phenomenon, I’d suggest the Iditarod, Tour de France, and Olympics as starting points. Like-minded crafter groups for all of these events can be found on the now ubiquitous fiber arts crafting site Ravelry.com.
