E is for Excel Spreadsheet

English Diamond Quilting Pattern
From A Treasury of Knitting Patterns - Barbara Walker
A Slip Stitch - has possibilities, but tricky to stop it curling up

  E is for Excel Spreadsheet
(part of the A-Z meme for An Accidental Knitter )

Now don't get alarmed.  It's not as bad as it sounds, this won't be a spreadsheet tutorial.  I am finding that I love Slip Stitch the more I do it and have started a collection.  I have set up an Excel spreadsheet with the following headings (I'd love to hear if you think any other information would be useful) :

Reference No. - Yep, a reference no. and each colour variation on it has a subset no. (001a, 001b)
Name  - I am finding stitches without a name, so that's interesting too
Source - Where I found it
Pattern Rows Repeat
Stitch Multiple
Notes - just thoughts and ideas it generates
Date I swatched it -
Swatch details - Yarn, Needle size and no. of stitches cast on
Date I blogged it

Where the source is a bit obscure and might get lost I type out the stitch instructions into a Word Document headed with the reference no.

I photograph the swatch and put the reference no. in the file name

And I put the swatch into a binder, so I can touch it and love it.

Weird Huh?