Another WIP Bites the Dust
The Making of a WIP Snowball
On this week’s YouTube episode (Ep. 6–How I Dave Ramsey’ed my WIPs), I shared with you how I dealt with a disaster. Thankfully, it was a manageable problem, and made completely of yarn and needles.
WIPs. Works In Progress. We all have them. Whether they are knitting projects, school research papers, home renovations, or batches of your favorite homemade cookies, everyone knows what it is to have a “work in progress.”
One key to a relatively peaceful life is figuring out how to manage all of the projects. If you are a crafter, you have probably gone about casting on new projects like a kid piling desserts on a plate at a buffet. (I’m pretty sure “castonitis” will be included in the future DSM-6.) Unfortunately, after a cast-on binge session, you are left with a pile of WIPs, and often no real plan to complete all of them.
Those poor projects, once a twinkle in their maker’s eye, get tossed (or stuffed or buried) in the Works in Progress Purgatory Pile.
In January of 2022, I couldn’t say for sure how many WIPs I had on the needles; what seemed like an infinite number were stuffed in boxes, bags, corners, shelves, drawers.…
I decided that I couldn’t end 2022 in the same state of stress over my WIPs as I was beginning the year. So I hunted and gathered all of the WIPs I could find. Then I typed up a list, organizing them into project types: Blankets, Sweaters, Shawls, Socks, Accessories, and Repairs/Finishing.
I ended up with 24 WIPs on my list.
Like any successful conqueror, I devised a plan. Granted, it wasn’t really my plan. I swiped Dave Ramsey’s Baby Step 2 (aka, the Debt Snowball) and altered it a bit to fit my needs. Enter, the WIP Snowball!!
If you aren’t familiar with Dave Ramsey or his guidebook, The Total Money Makeover, here’s a bit of background. Dave Ramsey is a guy who wants people to win with their finances. He has produced a number of books and podcasts, plus a network through his umbrella company, Ramsey Solutions, to help people be as financially successful as possible.
I consider him incredibly entertaining, inspiring, and knowledgeable.
But back to Baby Step 2…. The Total Money Makeover walks readers through Dave Ramsey’s seven step plan (or, “the Baby Steps”) to achieve financial freedom. Baby Step 2 addresses the process that will lead people out of debt.
But why apply a get-out-of-debt plan to my knitting projects???
Because I felt the same emotional stress about my unmanageable amount of WIPS as a person feels about debt.
Yes, I know that having “WIP debt” doesn’t carry the same level of magnitude in the process of life as “financial debt.” No one was going to lock me in the Tower of London because I didn’t finish my projects by a certain date. However, the emotional stress that accompanied the undefined, no-plan-for miasma of WIPs hung heavy like dusty velvet drapes along the periphery of my mind.
So after creating my list of 24 (Known) Works in Progress, I chose the one that I believed would take me the least amount of time to finish. A few hours later, that WIP became an FO (Finished Object), and I checked if off my list. I decided what the next “least amount of time to finish” (LAOTTF?🤔) project was and got to work on it. The next day, I marked if off my list as well.
The first nine WIPs took relatively little time to finish—maybe three or four months. (Keep in mind, I continued to cast on new projects and design new patterns throughout this process. Monogamous WIP’ing would have taken less time.)
Marking off a project that had been hanging over my head for months or even years felt more incredible than I can describe. No amount of alliteration or hyperbole can demonstrate the sensation of pure elation that I felt every time I crossed off the next new FO.
That feeling carried me through the longer-to-finish projects. I knew that if I just kept knitting, I would continue to cross off projects.
By the end of 2022, I had finished 14 of the original 24 WIPs on the list. The remaining 10 projects were nearly all rather large in scale—7 blankets, an intricately cabled cardigan, a Shetland lace shawl, and a beaded lace shawl. Of those 10, only two of them—the beaded lace shawl and one of the blankets—could possibly be done in a month each. The rest were long-term projects, even if I worked on them “monogamously.”
But true to the plan, I am actively working on both the blanket and beaded shawl (my next LAOTTF projects!).
I like to believe that Zelda was a knitter, and that Fitzgerald originally intended to close The Great Gatsby thus:
If you are looking for a new cast-on (because who isn’t looking for a new cast-on?!), check out my patterns on Etsy and Ravelry.
For more fun pictures and videos, check out Mountain Song Designs on Instagram and YouTube.
And until next time…
Slàinte mhath, and happy knitting!