So if there’s anything to know about me, it’s that I’m a giant nerd. I LOVE not just the creative side of knitting, but the math side of it too, and I love coming up with data around how much I knit, and using my Excel knowledge from my day job to make my knitting life more fun. I’ve been tracking the # of stitches I’ve stitched every day since August 1, 2020. Yep, that’s right, every single day for more than a year I’ve kept track of every stitch I’ve made and written it down.
When I told this to some family members recently, someone said “let me guess how many stitches you make in a year – one million?” Well, sadly, the answer to that question is no, not quite. In the one year I tracked stitches, I made 964,502 total stitches. That was surprisingly close to 1 million!
So, I’ve set myself a challenge to try and reach a point where I’ve done 1 million stitches over the past 365 days! I’m VERY close to tracking my million stitch (should happen tomorrow!!!!) but I want the satisfaction of doing a million stitches within a year. I need to average 2,740 stitches per day, which is only 100 more than I averaged last year. It will be interesting to see how/when I meet that goal, as some days (like weekends) I knit A LOT, and others I don’t knit at all, so as stitches drop and add it will be interesting. I’m also interested in how long I can keep a million stitches rolling, is it something I hit infrequently, or are there long stretches where I’m maintaining more than a million?
In order to answer all these questions, I’ve made a lot of updates to my yearly stitches tracking spreadsheet, which used to be basically just two columns – date and # of stitches. I’ve put a ton of work into this, and I thought other people might be interested in it. So, the spreadsheet is now for sale on this site! It will be $5.00 until August 21, and then will be $10.00.
I hope you enjoy, and I’ll keep everyone posted on what my goal to $1M looks like!
Very cool! What a neat tool 🙂
I am also an excel nerd so I LOVE this! How fun, how fun, how fun! I can’t wait to follow along 🙂
😂 how fun for you.
How fun! I keep thinking I need to start using spreadsheets to track my knitting in some way. Probably projects, not stitches. But who knows?!
Yeah, I also have a project tracker spreadsheet for each project 😂 but it includes the stitches so I can project when I finish, so then it’s easy enough to keep track of what I knit each day
Wowza so many stitches a day!
What a flippin’ fantastic spreadsheet. While I currently track my daily stitches (thanks to you for the idea), and I calculate a monthly average which then is linked from page to page (each page is a monthly calendar that tracks what projects I’m working on in addition to how many stitches I knit that day) with a section of the calendar that shows the monthly average of the preceding months as well as the current month. I may just have to add an “analysis” page where I make a monthly graph of stitches, and then maybe “borrrow” your idea of tracking by the day of the week. Since I’m retired, I’m not sure if there is a lot to be gleened but you have to look at the data in order to make observations and thus changes. I know on Sunday’s I spend too much time reading blogs. 🙂 I’m kinda liking the idea of setting up rewards for hitting 100,000 stitches, 200,000 stitches, etc. I know your excel skills are well past my crusty old ones. Hmm, need to think on this. OH, you just gave me an idea – can I create an IF statement that if the total stitches are greater than ex. 100,000, that it does something so that I know I hit 100,000?? Sorry for the long rambling post. I just love your mathiness. I suggest you create and sell a knitting/crochet calendar??
I love this comment!! Yep, you could definitely use if statements. Mine uses conditional formatting to highlight the day if/when I ever get to a million lol 😂
I do like your idea of a calendar, but I haven’t needed/wanted to organize my projects like that, but I have some ideas. Definitely more to come from me! I don’t necessarily want to make a lot of $ from this but I do spend a lot of time making the spreadsheets better
OMG … the mathy side of me loves this soooooo much.
You will do it, you’re very determined so I have no doubt! Now I want to make a dashboard to track my projects. I can’t wait to follow along with you. 🙂
Yay!! I’m always happy to inspire people to track their knitting with spreadsheets 😀 my day job is in insurance so I spend a lot of time in Excel and love translating it to my non-work life
Now I have to do it!!!! 😀
Oh wow, this is awesome! If I was better at paying attention to how much knitting/crochet I do, I would be really tempted to start tracking this myself! But I can barely remember to track the amount of time I spend knitting, much less how many rows/stitches I do in one sitting…
I have gotten used to putting in a locking stitch marker to track where I start each day. For projects like scarves and socks where it’s a set # of stitches, I just multiply stitches times rows. For larger projects I also plug in each row in Excel prior to starting the project, so that I can read my knitting and see how much I did. I have references for heeels, toes, and things like blanket squares, so that determining the # of stitches usually only takes about a minute. It definitely requires some dedication to get that all set up though!
Oh, that’s a good idea! Maybe I’ll start tracking stitch count after all. I do love my Excel spreadsheets…
Cheering you on! I’m sure you can hit that goal!
XD That is so you! I love it. How do you track your stitch count per day (I hope that this doesn’t give away too much from your excel sheet) – do you track how many rows you have knit and then multiply the number of stitches per row or round?
No it doesn’t, and I plan to write a bit about it in my next update, but basically yes, if I it’s a tube or square like a sock or scarf I just count the rows then multiply, for other things I generally will map out each row in an Excel for the project before starting, and then I just keep track of where I am and get the counts each day. I’ve gotten very good about remembering to put a stitch marker where I start each day
Thank you so much for explaining this! That is really interesting and I can imagine that it’s motivating as well if you like tracking your progress!
Oh my goodness. This is amazing. I am not mathy but it does sound like fun.
Wow!!