Tidy mind, tidy stitches

I store most of my yarns in plastic bins. I have one big bin full of acrylic yarns to knit for family members I can't give hand wash items. My wools are stored in a couple of smaller bins. I also have a bin that I was using for Christmas gift giving. I pulled the yarns and printed patterns for the intended projects and then had them in the bin so that I could pull them out as I was ready to knit them. Last year's bin got put on hold due to depression from losing Nessa, then adding Leeloo there was less knitting. I have them for this year, because many of them still apply or can be shifted to another person on my list. I should probably shift some of them to the smaller bins and put all my wool in it, but haven't gotten to that yet. (It sprang to mind as I was typing this...)

I do make sure that if I add any new yarns to my stash that I photograph them and put them into Ravelry. I've also pretty much tied all of my stash to intended projects in my queue. There's now an ability to sort by yarn weight and we've had the ability to separate out handspuns, but I'd like to be able to find out if a yarn doesn't have a project linked to it.

My queue is then organized into different tabs - socks, shawls, sweaters, baby/toddler/child, etc. I have way too many items in my queue just to page through and hope that I find a pattern that I thought I put in there! ;-)  I'm up to 22 pages in my queue - oh my!

Putting projects on the main page into their own tabs by year or 'gifts' was something I started doing as soon as I figured out we had that ability. This year, since I'm participating in different year long groups for specific knitting, I have have tabs for those as well. The ability to organize the Project page and Queue pages has been a sanity saver! 

I found myself on someone's project page and noticed that they had tabs for socks and shawls and I thought that was a pretty cool idea. So I added those also. That way if someone finds themselves on my project page and just wanted to see the shawls I've knitted, they don't have to scroll through all of the projects I've done, unless they really want to do so. I know I've gotten additions to my queue by looking at people's project pages from looking up a pattern and seeing what others have done.

I try to remember to add the right kind of tags when I add to my queue, so I don't lose a pattern, but I also try to go through and delete things as my tastes change. Have you ever put something in your queue and then later wonder what were you thinking when you added it?  22 pages, I may need to do some cleaning. LOL

Did you know that Casey has added, what I think is a cool feature, on a pattern that you are looking at doing - go to the 'projects' tab, then from the drop down menu (2nd from left) select 'friends projects'. This will then show if any of your friends have knit that particular pattern. You can either be the cool kid on the block and be one of the first to knit it, or join in the viral experience. (Speaking of viral, I'm still resisting Clapotis. I have no idea why, but I am. What are you resisting to knit that's gone viral?)

My actual knitting projects, I try to keep together in project bags in one main basket. I do try to only keep one project at a time going but there are times when more than one happens. Sometimes you want something that doesn't take a lot of concentration to take to knit night when there's chatting going on. So another project gets started or picked up again. I do have one project that has languished for a month or so from when it was started, that I've picked back up worked on it, then put it back down. It will get done, but not this month! 

I don't think I'm over-organized, am I?