making time for making
Each Wednesday, I take stock of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at.
My primary focus for this week has been getting the new schematics for the Shawl Geometry Books finished, and diving headlong into laying out all of the patterns.
This may seem a little bit backwards – laying everything out before editing. But I find with knitting patterns that the clarity of a pattern is rather intrinsically tied to how the information is laid out. How the graphics, text, headings all interact with each other is just as important to the readability & understand-ability of a knitting pattern as the knitting pattern itself. And laying the pages out in something approximating their final layout, lets me treat the pattern (including the intro, instructions, photo, schematic, and tips) as one unit rather than many.
So a lot of my time this past week (and this coming week for that matter) was (and will be) spent staring at a computer screen. When this happens it’s super-much important for me to block out time for making this with my hands – something that exists outside of a computer screen – if I don’t, I end up a little disconnected from the world around me.
Luckily I have my summery wardrobe infusion to work on. I’ve been blocking out a couple evenings a week and in my calendar labeling them “making time for making.” Kind of like how writing goals down really does help you achieve them – making time for making really seems to help me get things made. (There’s a part of me totally rolling my eyes at myself over this.)
I re-drafted & tested my racer back tank top pattern, plus printed and taped out the Anna Maxi Dress pattern.
However, in light of yesterday’s rememberings that I don’t really like dresses. I’m revamping my plan for the Anna Maxi Dress. It’ll still be a dress, and still be a maxi dress, but I’m completely re-drafting the bodice. Once I have more of a solid plan, I’ll write about it in detail – but right now I’m at the totally legit post-it note math stage.
My new racer back tank top pattern has just a couple teeny tweaks I want to make, but other than that it’s good to go.
And I finished knitting my no longer neglected laceweight sweater over the weekend (totally winning a game of yarn chicken!), and just waiting for me to weave in the ends and give it a nice soak. Like I predicted, our weather here in NYC turned from rainy-spring into sunny-spring right around the time I bound off, so huzzah! for sunny spring weather. Maybe I’ll weave in the ends and give it a soak this afternoon?
