Monday, March 15, 2010

Transitions - becoming a full time Designer



March 5th was my last day at work. I feel totally elated to be viewing these days as "the first of the rest of my life".

My husband pointed out to me that I need to take some time and enjoy the transition so I spent my first week off knitting, reading, surfing the net and doing some clean up at home that I simply haven't had time for lately.

It took until Thursday before I realized how tired I was. My last two weeks of work ended up being very stressful and on my last day I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Today I'm having a celebratory lunch with two of my closest friends and then it's time to get to work. (My new work that is). I have so many ideas for projects that I can't get them down on paper and onto my needles fast enough. Since I started publishing I've been working through and developing my design process. I've also been teaching myself software and learning how I best work to be most creative.



I'm fighting the urge to multitask as that's the way I usually have to live to get everything done but I know that total focus is the key to producing really good designs and patterns. Having said that I also know that jumping from one project to another often allows my brain time to work in the background and solve specific problems or invent solutions that I wasn't even looking for.


I have my next pattern almost completely written. I'm finishing the samples and then I need to sit down and clean up the pattern before it goes to my tech editor. I've also found that if I start working on a new project long enough to forget the previous one when I go back to proof read again I catch errors or poor wording that I missed while I was actively knitting and writing the first time. In a year I plan to reread these early posts and review what I've learned along the way.

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