Tonight I am learning about the science of chocolate making. Should be a great First Friday, even with no art involved (actually, fine dark chocolate definitely qualifies as art in my book). I hope you have some First Friday events to attend!
Since we’re in Finish Yer Dang Projects mode, I thought a good topic for this month would be getting more crafting done. It works well since I had found a MAKE magazine article by Pam Harris on this very topic back when I was researching December’s First Friday post. In fact, it appears to be an expansion of a post linked to in the December First Friday, also by Pam. The article is mostly about making sure you keep and can find all of the ideas you have or run across, and then schedule time to actually work on your favorites.
There are a few aspects to getting more done, of course. You can make more time, make better use of the time you have, or simply work faster. I won’t repeat all the general productivity advice out there, but here are some more craft-specific pieces of advice:
- Progress is progress, no matter how small – although there is often time needed to get started and stopped in each work session, even 15 minutes usually allows you to make progress. Set a timer so you’re not late to your next obligation, and then you won’t be distracted by clock-watching.
- Reduce your sense of obligation – projects you don’t want to do but have begun (or even just purchased materials for) can often sit in your mental space, blocking other work. If there is something you don’t want to do and there is no genuine obligation to do it (e.g. commission or promise), dump it. Reclaim what materials can be reclaimed and pitch the rest.
- Figure out better and worse spots to leave off – and make a lot of notes and labels to increase the number of better spots. Determining what the heck you were doing when you left off can eat up time.
- Leave yourself presents – I don’t like cutting patterns out of fabric. If I get in a mood to do it, I cut as much as possible. Between cutting and sewing is an excellent spot to leave off, and later on I get the boost of being able to sew immediately.
- Work to reduce errors – the extra time to stitch a gauge swatch is less than the time to re-knit or re-crochet a sweater that is far enough along to reveal incorrect sizing. The extra time to start and stop when using 2-foot lengths of embroidery floss is less than the time (and aggravation) to repeatedly untangle longer strands (not to mention that all the trips through the fabric wear the thread a bit thinner).
- Assembly line whenever it makes sense – I find it easier to separate the strands of embroidery floss standing up, so I try to do it in batches. Of course you can only sew at the sewing machine and iron at the ironing board, so try to consolidate those as well.
- Get things finished – when I have a lot of works in progress, I find a decent amount of time is eaten up simply deciding which to do next. Prioritizing bulkier projects increases how much you feel like you’ve gotten done, too, by freeing up a lot of space at once.
The tips above are what I think getting more done is all about – they don’t try to speed up or take away the enjoyable parts of crafting, just fit more of them in and reduce the less-fun parts. However, I also tried to find advice online for simply working faster in specific crafts (aside from practice, practice, practice). I avoided advice to simply choose simpler projects in easier materials – that’s definitely not what this is about.
There was an abundance for sewing, but only a Crochetville forum thread for crochet. Here’s a video of Lisa Gentry crocheting ridiculously fast in case you want to time yourself. Materials make a difference, of course. I crochet fastest with hooks that have points at the tip and end of the hook (Boye style), but others crochet fastest with inline hooks that are blunter at the end and have a broad end to the hook (Bates style). Style matters too: as far as I can tell, the current record holder for speed knitting knits continental style, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be faster in a different style – at least in producing the items you care about. Small motions are faster than large ones, and any posture that is awkward or cramped will slow you down in the long run by reducing the number of hours per week you can work. Even how you hold the yarn can make a difference, and I continually forget that strong light can help even when I already have enough light to see by.
For sewing, I’m going to defer to the aforementioned links. Historical recreation is the place to look for hand-sewing tips, such as The Dreamstress and Extreme Costuming. For machine sewing, especially garments, my favorites of the pages I found were from Lladybird, Boppingbeth, and The Coletterie. Lladybird’s is more about high-level process and organization, whereas the other two are about techniques for the actual sewing. There’s a lot of overlap between the two but they’re written differently enough that it’s worth reading both if you’re looking to sew faster.
Let’s see how much we can do in three months – my bet is, it’s a lot!