How to Make Your Own Knitting and Crochet Planner

We’ve all been there - whether you crochet, knit or do both - there always seems to be more than one project that we’re busy with at any one time. Keeping track of these projects and the projects you’re planning for the new year is a lot easier when you have a knitting or crochet planner. In this article, we’ll show you how to create your own planner. 

The different types of knitting and crochet planners

Luckily, there are a variety of knitting and crochet planners to choose from and you can make your own bespoke one quite easily.

     Commercial planners

Probably the best known knitting planner is this all-in-one knitting and daily planner. This highly adaptable planner can also be personalized with a bespoke cover and the choice of starting the week either on a Sunday or a Monday.

The Knitter’s Planner describes their planner as helping to “organize your life, make healthy choices, move towards balance, inspire creativity, improve your knitting skills, and crush your goals”.

    Personalized and self-made planners

However, you can also get a planner that is exclusively for craft projects, like knitting and crochet, by making your own. The simplest way to do this, is to start looking at printable pages on your favorite knitting and crochet websites or on Pinterest. There you’ll find planner pages to suit just about every taste!

All you need to do then, is make some printouts and put them in a file. You can then quite easily keep the necessary patterns in the same file with the project page.

If you’d like to make your own project pages from scratch, you can use word processing software and then export the finished product as a PDF. The PDF file is then easy to print out multiple times. 

Tip: Prefer to keep it digital? Then make an editable PDF file and save a separate file or page for each of your projects on your computer!

What does a knitting and crochet planner contain?

Each of the project pages should note at least some of the following:

• Start date
• End date
• Person you’re making it for, if it’s a gift
• Pattern you’re using, as well as the name of the pattern designer
• Yarn you’re using, including: brand, weight, amount, and color
• Size knitting needles, crochet or Tunisian crochet hook that you’re using.
• Photos or sketches for inspiration
• A sample of the yarn you’re using
• Photos of the completed item.

Of course, you don’t need to just add projects that you’re already busy with - plan ahead or let your imagination run wild for that extra special fancy yarn that called to you the last time you visited your yarn shop!

Keeping track of your stash and patterns

Besides keeping track of your projects, you can also keep track of your yarn stash, knitting needles, and crochet and Tunisian crochet hooks.

This can be especially handy as you will then know whether or not you need to stock up on a specific yarn or color for your next project. It can also help you to de-stash and get rid of unneeded yarn that you can give to charity or use for charity makes.

Here are three ways to keep a handle on your stash, tools, and patterns.

     Ravelry

If you’re a user of Ravelry, you can keep track of your projects, your stash, and your patterns on the website itself.

     A spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is very handy as it’s easy to update and keep in order. Plus, certain spreadsheets can be viewed and edited on different kinds of devices. This makes it easy to carry around with you when you go to your local yarn shop or even when shopping online.

You can also use a spreadsheet to track how much yarn you’ve used during a specific time period, like Mina Philipp from Knitting Expat. This will also give you an idea of whether your stash is manageable or whether it’s time to scale it down.

     A Notebook

A notebook or file can also be used to keep track of your stash, tools, and patterns. These can take more time to update, but using an index and bullet journal-style notation, any notebook can become your stash and tools notebook.

What you should list when keeping track of your stash

When listing the yarns in your stash, the following should be noted:

• Brand
• Type of fiber(s)
• Color(s)
• Weight of the yarn - fingering, sock, worsted, etc.
• Amount of yarn by skeins and weight of skeins
• Planned project for the yarn - if any

Now that you’ve put together your knitting and crochet planner and stash and tools tracker, you just need to choose which project you want to finish first!

Show us your planner and tracker — and don’t forget your work-in-progress — on our Facebook Group.