We get up at "o dark thirty" even during the summer (year round school for one child, although right now it is Summer Work Program for two).
We do at least a load of laundry a day. (I hate doing laundry, it is a thankless job, no matter how caught up you think you are by the end of the day there are four more changes of clothes to be cleaned!)
We usually eat an Italian dish on Monday and Friday is always something that can be thrown together quickly.
The fridge gets cleared out on garbage night.
I am trying (maybe successfully) to set up a routine for writing patterns. Each step has a day of the week assigned to it, and I am far enough into having dug myself a hole of patterns that are in various stages of development I need a longer work week! (You know what they say about being "self employed", you can work any 18 hours a day you pick...but I don't have an extra 18 hours each day to pick!)
Step One - decide which of the bajillion ideas running around my head to work on. (This is harder than you think. Things, people, random comments, all keep insisting on giving me new ideas, and we haven't even mentioned that ones that the yarns have been whispering in my ears....seriously can I turn it off???)
Step Two - Chart it and Write it. Maybe that should be two separate steps, but I usually have a word doc and an excel chart open at the same time.
Step Three- Knit it myself. Ok that one is easy!!
Step Four - Check the knitting against the pattern. Well, actually this gets done during the knitting but to double check it is always a good thing.
Step Five - put it away for a day or three. This is important because I always know what I meant to say, not always what I actually said.
Step Six - Pull that pattern back out and read it again. Does it still say what I thought it meant when I put it away.
Step Seven - Photographs! (Although that will be easier now that I don't have to wait until I have suitable bribery to give the models....I was saving three or four things to photo shoot for the same t-shirt, now I can just whisper Pokemon, or Pokemon Stop, or Pokemon Gym. LOL)
Step Eight - Edit, edit, edit, edit....tech edit, grammar edit, photo edit. The list goes on and on!
Step Nine - Test it. Can somebody else create the same thing I did from those charts and words?
Step Nine is complicated. I am now at the point where a couple of test knitters see it is me and jump on the chance to try the pattern, but they are used to the way I write and breeze through what should be worded differently...but what a relief to be able to just say something along the lines of "ready for another one?" and have them say yes rather than just waiting for random strangers to volunteer in testing threads...so I still put things in testing threads hoping for that random stranger.
Step Ten - data collection from the test knitters. I keep a spread sheet of all the input and if it comes up more than once, or if the post gets lots of "yes, that" or "agrees" I try to put it in. But, that can end up taking me all the way back to step Eight and more and more edits.
Step Eleven - friends! Usually somewhere in here I will send the pattern out to a select group and ask their opinion.
Step Twelve*- put it away again. Yep, I give it at least another few days before hitting the publish button. One more read through on my end, usually by now I have forgotten my original knitting and it is worth asking, could I or would I knit this again based on the pattern in front of me? Honestly a couple of things have come to a grinding halt right here. If I wouldn't knit it now, why should anyone else? If it isn't a grinding halt then it is time to push the "publish" button.
I finished knitting my CMS2016Number3 on May 1st. Here we are in July and not only does she have a name, but she is in Step Eleven!
What do you think? Is she worth heading to the very end of Step Twelve? Cast your vote by leaving a comment. (Please, leave a comment, sometimes I think I am talking to myself! But my stat counter says otherwise!!!!)
*And for those patterns that are possible to put in print format there are even more steps for bringing the pattern to you!
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