The other day, I was listening to Episode 3 of the Uncut podcast which was all about finding time to craft. With limited free time and seemingly endless projects I want to tackle, this is something I think about a lot! My Strickplaner really helps me make the most of snippets of free time — today I’ll share a little bit about how I use it to organize my craft time and life more generally!
If you’ve not come across the Strickplaner before, it’s the brainchild of Martina Behm who, with the folks at Weekview, has developed a journal with the goal of helping you find more time to knit. The idea is simple — you identify what’s important to you, and by breaking big projects into manageable chunks (and with the help of tracking features) you stay focused on efficiently completing what needs to be done so that you end up with more free time for what you want to be doing (knitting, of course!).
At the heart of the Strickplaner is the weekly spread — this is definitely where I spend the most time in mine! On a good week, I like to pull my planner out on Sunday evening or Monday morning and take 15 or 20 minutes to think about what’s happening in the week ahead. The left side of the page spread has three list sections. The first two — “Urgent and Important” and “Important” — are where I record and prioritize the Big Things I want to accomplish in a given week; in my planner, these tend to be a mix of work tasks and craft goals. In the third section, “Other,” I list smaller tasks and errands that need to get done. The right side of the page view has the week broken down. Here, I note down any meetups (Zoom or otherwise!), events or appointments that the week holds. With these two things done, I can then look at the week and start to think about where I’ll have time to accomplish the Big Things on my list.
This past week was dominated by the release of the Conviviality Cardigan! I’ve been making progress on my own version of the cardi and am oh-so-close to finishing a sewing project, too .. both appear in the priority lists on the left.
I really like that the weekly spread is pretty roomy — there’s space on each weekday for tasks + appointments. I also often end up using the blank space under the weekly list to jot miscellaneous notes and reminders that don’t belong somewhere else on the spread — this past week (above), it was to make quick notes of some makes I’m planning for autumn!
A weekview from a few months back — I love when I remember to use my Strichmich! stickers! They make the page so cheery.
That’s how I use the weekly spread at the best of times. Some weeks though, I just don’t have the mental bandwidth to prioritize tasks — this was particularly true when I was starting back work after maternity leave and as lockdown came into effect here in the UK. So I ignored the left hand side of my spread altogether and simply wrote tasks as they occurred to me down the right hand side, checked them off as I completed them, and migrated any unchecked ones at the end of the week to the next week. As life has started to return to some new form of normal and days have stopped blending together quite so much, I’ve gone back to my weekly and daily planning!
This quarter, I included knitting and sewing goals, house projects and Something to Knit Together projects — including reminders about pattern releases (and drawing weekly prize winners) and my progress on my own ST2K knitting, the Bonhomie Wrap and Conviviality Cardigan. A combo of stickers and notes help me chart my progress.
Two of the other features I’ve enjoyed using lately are the Quarterly Overview and the Lists and Notes in the back. Above’s my Q3 overview. You’ll see I delved straight into projects this quarter, without outlining my “Goals and Motivations” — some quarters, I really like doing the top down planning that the planner imagines. Other quarters, like this one, I go for a more “bottom up” approach: looking at my projects though, I could now very easily articulate some goals for the quarter. Being a detail-oriented, rather than “big picture” person, sometimes this sort of reverse-engineering of my planner works well for me!
Notes for my Conviviality Cardigan … I’ve also cut out the charts from the pattern and attached them with washi tape on the facing page for easy reference!
I’ve also been experimenting with using my planner to help with pattern management. I often knit from digital patterns, stored in my iPhone library, making notes on my Ravelry project page if I remember. With lockdown though, I’ve been spending a lot more time on my phone — which is fine and expected as it’s been my primary means of keeping in touch with family and friends! But I have a little one who is getting very interested in devices, so if there are tasks that I can move off of it, I think that’s a good thing — never mind the fact that tracking things like pattern repeats is pretty awkward on an iPhone! So for my Conviviality Cardigan, I’m using the notes area of my Strickplaner … I’ve recorded all the information that will ultimately migrate to my Ravelry project page (garment and needle size, etc.) on a notes page in the back of the planner and have jotted down notes as needed. Now that I’ve begun the yoke increases, I’ve used washi tape to attach the handy yoke chart the pattern includes so it’s to hand. When the yoke is complete, I’ll be able to easily take it out (oh the wonders of washi tape) and carry on with the rest of my notes for the project.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek inside my Strickplaner! It is jam packed with more features than can reasonably fit in one post. You can read more on the Strickplaner site and also check out these previous posts from Jen to see some of her favourite features. One of the things I love best about the Strickplaner is it’s like a big organizational toolbox. While I don’t always use every tool it has on offer, the ones I regularly use work wonderfully, and I pick up and put down different tools from it as I need them! 2021 Strickplaners will be landing in the online shop very soon (along with lots of fun extras!), so keep your eyes peeled and make sure you’re signed up to the A-C Knitwear mailing list if you don’t want to miss out on snagging one of your own.