using evernote to organize projects

i'm a bit of an organizer, and have always loved keeping scrapbooks full of ideas, related to fashion, sewing, knitting, cooking; binders of all of my patterns; folders stuffed with inspiration photos; and notebooks of my handwritten notes when i'm constructing a pattern. and while it's nice to have a physical, tangible thing, i feel like there is finally a program good enough to make the switch to electronic.



i've been using evernote for the past few months and think it is the best thing out there. i've been telling all of my friends and family about it, like i work for them or something. i really use it to organize everything in my life, but much of it is devoted to my project ideas.

when you first start, it's a little daunting, because it's like a blank white notebook, and you don't really know where to start or how you're going to use this thing. to get you started, here's a glimpse at mine...



basically, you create a notebook for any category, and fill it with pages or items of relevance. for instance, i have a 'knitting & crochet' notebook (notebooks are listed over there to the left), and within it, i have a note for every pattern that i own (all of icons on the right of the page). within each note, i put a picture at the top, then just put a copy of the pattern (pdf or text) below it. then, when i open evernote up and look at knitting & crochet, i can see pictures of all of my patterns. and each pattern is tagged with the appropriate garment types so that i can easily search for 'scarves' or 'pullovers' or whatever.

and it has some really useful features. like the web clipper. ohmygod, i rely on this thing. anytime i'm on a website, and i see something inspirational, or if there's a pattern, i just highlight everything i want to save, and press the clipper button, and it automatically sends it over to my evernote account. let's see...some other fun stuff....you can take pictures of things, and if there's text in it, it will automatically scan it for words, and so you can search on it! it's pretty handy when i'm at a store and can take a picture of their business card to get their name/address and link it to fabric, or yarn or whatever i like that they're selling, email it to my evernote account, then that store name becomes searchable.



when i first opened my account, it kinda just sat there because trying to come up with a structure was too daunting. but, if you start with one notebook, more and more uses will eventually come to you. in addition to knitting/crochet, i have a sewing notebook, with all of my electronic patterns, and my garment ideas. i have a fashion notebook, to clip photos from webpages that are inspiring. a notebook for recipes, from the web as well as photos of my favorite hardback recipe books (and the ingredients are automatically scanned in and are searchable). menu pages, to-do lists, project ideas, healthcare info like my glasses prescription, or my dentist's name/number, shopping lists, making travel plans, e-books for studying foreign languages, etc, etc....

do you use evernote? what kinds of things do you use it for?