I work best to a deadline.  I’m not the world’s worst procrastinator, though I would probably rank in the top 10, but nothing focuses my mind like knowing I have to get something finished by a set date.  I was one of those kids in school who did the homework when it was set so I didn’t have to write a 2,000 word essay the night before it was due in.

I am also one of those people who thinks about all about the details.  I tend to want to share *everything* I know, all at once.  If I know 50 ways to cast on, and you ask me how to cast on, I find it very difficult to not tell you all 50 ways right then and there – even though I know that can be more than a little overwhelming for any student of mine.

It’s not wanting me to show off, its how my brain works and how I like to learn – once I’ve heard of something I can file it away and retrieve it at a later date.  I prefer going on courses where I come away feeling that not only have I learnt something right now, but that I also have more I can go and find out myself.  Now, that’s true of any course – but having the right key words to start my searches really helps.  Practising my basic techniques/new knowledge for a couple of months and then thinking “ah yes, the teacher said something about twisted rib” means I might know nothing about twisted rib right now – but I do have the key phrase to help me Google it.  I’d much rather work like this than master my basic skills and think ‘now what?’ and have to trawl through hours and hours of internet to work out what the next step is.

Now that the drugs are working I’ve been able to commit to several teaching dates (yay!), but this means that I want to produce a warehouse full of samples and swatches and patterns.

My problem is that I think of a technique I want to share, and my brain more or less implodes.  Let’s take crochet cables as an example.  I know that I want to have at least one finished project that is some form of useable item.  Easily done.  I also know that I own about 65 individual different cable patterns and the small, mad, uberlord-of-the-universe part of me wants to make a sample of each one as a demonstration swatch.  Which is just insane right?

Cables would be part of a larger course.  One that included texture stitches (now I know I have a couple hundred different stitch patterns for that), lace work (another couple hundred) and colour-work (joining colours – there’s at least 5 ways right there, vertical stripes, horizontal stripes, bias stripes, tapestry work, over embroidery and cross stitch, carrying the yarn, not carrying the yarn… and this is just me thinking off the top of my head).

Suddenly my 1 day texture course has at least 5 finished projects and over 500 swatches.  Obviously the sensible thing to do is group these samples into over-reaching categories and make some swatches do multiple jobs (vertical stripes with carried yarn for example).  Lots of these skills are the same across the principle – once you’ve done a 3 stitch cable it’s the same technique for a 4 stitch cable.  My difficultly lies in deciding *which* stitch patterns to use and which to leave out!

Of course, my own personal headache (and I do understand that this is a monkey entirely of my own creation) is compounded by the fact that I am not preparing for just one course.  Oh, no.  I have to go for four different courses, in four different techniques that need completely different sets of swatches and samples.

I am aware that each of these has its own deadline, that sensibly I have to finish the swatches I need for the first of the courses first.  However that doesn’t stop my brain being distracted from “I need to finish that lace swatch” to “but I could demonstrate cable techniques by crocheting a knee-length Arran sweater”.

Ah, yes.  That’s the other issue.  For some reason my crafting brain seems to believe there is no time between *imagining* a project and it being in existence.  Therefore my brain things it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest crocheting a cable sampler queen sized blanket as a demonstration piece.  I don’t even want a queen sized blanket!  But it would be a cool demonstration piece wouldn’t it?!

Must focus on the smaller projects – I can see me having to design some hard-working, multiple technique garments in the near future!

Right now I’m going to block a project…