A crafter in need. Help!
September 21, 2012
I am a total wreck these days. I am not able to divide my time properly. I am backed up on school work and I started several (too many) knitting/crochet projects. So many ideas turning in my head it is driving me crazy and I really didn’t think that grad school would be that hard. Maybe I need to give myself some time to adjust to the whole thing but right now both my hobby (which brings me extra income) and school work seem to be slipping away.
So I need some help fast: How do you guys make sure that you allocate enough time to your knitting projects without losing touch with the other important stuff you need to get done?
Thank you!
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Tifoli 
I completely empathize! I work full time, go to grad school full time in the evenings, and run an etsy shop!
The best suggestion that I can give is that I make sure to take the last 30-45 minutes at the end of the day for myself to knit. I sit down with an old sitcom (going through Frasier right now) with my fiance, and just knit for one or two episodes. In the scheme of the day, it’s not a lot of time out of it, but it’s SO important because I get to just do something for myself!
1h per day is enough to put products on your Etsy shop regularly? I am planning on opening an etsy shop soon.
The 1 hr per day is just for my personal knitting, not for my shop 😛 What I do for my shop is devote a few hours each weekend to it, and dedicate to making at least one new item a week.
Also, to prep for school, I did a TON of work on my shop over the summer so it could be more self-sufficient when school got crazy 🙂
Great advice!
It’s so hard juggling it all. I don’t know if you commute, but I get a fair amount of knitting done on the train. Recently, I was similarly backed up with too many projects I HAD to work on right then because I was so excited about them all & it was difficult to manage them with my work schedule, so I ended up not making anything. I found it helped to make a new project that I hadn’t been dying to work on, but had used the pattern for before. There was no guess work involved & I could just focus on the process. Or, setting aside time after dinner or before bed to work on a project can help.
I do have a long 1h commute to school 3 days per week. I realized the other days I can’t concentrate on school readings the train so I think I am going to get back to what I used to do to pass the time : knit. Thanks for your advice
When I was in grad school, I would keep simple projects in my lap while I read articles or wrote, to knit on when I needed a brain break.
I like that idea but I probably would end up just stopping the reading. Knitting wins most of the time 😉
P.S. Hang in there! It will all settle into routine.
These days, most grad students do not live on their parents’ largesse: often they work, have children, have committed relationships, etc. So when I teach grad seminars, I organize the assigned reading in 3 tiers – the way I grouped my own reading when I was a grad student, working, and a single mother: (1) reading assignments to read very closely, (2) assignments to read through much less closely, and (3) assignments they can browse through while attending children’s soccer games, etc.
Thanks for the advice Karen! A friend of mine told me not to assign too many different things in one day. Have days for not more than 2 heavy items and 1 light. Example: Monday work+school+group study, Tuesday Work+school, Wednesday Micro study+Public policy readings etc. I kinda like that idea…
I used to start tons of projects at once and would just loose complete track of everything else. Now I just sketch out my ideas first before sketching them out. I also have a sheet where I right down my ideas, how much it will cost to make them, how much time I’ll need to make them, and the materials I’ll need. It does help a bit to get all this down on paper first before getting started.
It’s a great idea. I sketch too but I have trouble resisting other beautiful yarns not part of any projects 🙂
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