sock club + librarian = TT825/746.43

I’ve been ruminating on the idea of a personal sock club for a while.  Nearly a year ago, Kristina pointed me to a blogger (sorry, can’t remember which) who dived into her own sock yarn stash, matched up skeins with patterns, and packaged them together in brown paper bags.  Each month, she planned to pick one at random and be surprised by stuff she already owned and loved.  (By the way, it turns out this was a huge trend in 2009 – I found a lot about it on blogs and Flickr.)

I sort of liked the idea, but the brown paper bag was a dealbreaker for me.  I have my sock yarn in a glass-fronted cabinet in the living room, and I love seeing it all the time.  I back-burnered the idea.

Then the Harlot revisited the idea just last month, and what she said made so much sense to me.  I have yarn I love.  I have patterns I’ve been meaning to knit but haven’t gotten to.  Why not put it all together?

But because I’m a librarian, a system can always be improved upon (and I’m not even a cataloger, people!). I have now tidied up my Ravelry queue and am using the tags.  Every sock in the queue has the tag “socks” (duh).  In addition, it has one or more of these tags:

• office – this means dead-easy knitting, appropriate for the office
• medium – this means start the sock at home, and it may become office knitting (or not)
• challenge – this means it will be knit at home with minimal distractions (complicated charts, for ex)
• stranded – self-explanatory
• knee – self-explanatory

I also used the tag “sock yarn” for other things that might be made with sock yarn besides socks.  Of course, Ravelry reads that as “sock” and “yarn,” which is really annoying to one who wants to “bind the phrase” (sorry about the librarian jargon here, non-librarians), but that’s why the sock patterns use the tag “socks” instead of “sock.”

Now I’m at the point of prioritizing patterns and either matching them with yarn I already own, or obtaining yarn that will work with them.  I do have many patterns queued for which I do not have appropriate yarn (gasp).  I think Phase 1 of this mania should deal with projects for which I already own the yarn.  Acquisitions for Phase 2 can be spread out into Festival Season (peaking May 1-2 at MDSW).

I think I will proceed by selecting one project each from the “knee” and “stranded” categories, and two projects each from “office,” “medium,” and “challenge.”  If you have any suggestions, feel free to send them my way.  Otherwise, I will report back soon!