Planning only takes you so far.

This post is a diary entry. A visual reminder for when I inevitably forget this stellar piece of wisdom. Which I will. I seem to forget it periodically, and get stuck in the planning phase of a project. Stuck going round and round and round in my head.

So let's put it out there - into the bloggisphere (spelling anyone?) - where I will inevitably run into it when I am wandering around in past posts trying to find the one where I mentioned some "useful" thing. And here is what I want to say. 

“Planning only gets you so far because you cannot plan the PERFECT outcome. You need to MAKE it to see if the materials, design and form you have chosen work together. Or not. The making is where the rubber hits the road. Pre-trip planning will help but really you need to be on the road to know what the conditions are like and what it feels like to be there. ”

— Felicia Semple - just now.

I'm trying to gauge swatch for a second Colourwork Cardy; a few of you have mentioned that you wouldn't mind a pattern? So I'm going to try to make some time to do it. I have a simple plan to make another but I have sat on it for a good while. I already have the pattern - cause I wrote it as I was making it. I have materials - I purchased some naturally dyed yarn in an assortment of colours when I was in the UK last year.  And there the project stalled.

You see the colours, well they aren't quite the same. They are pretty and I thought they might work. I've put them next to one another in the shop. Next to one another in my sewing room. I have put them up against the last Colourwork Cardy, and then up against a picture of the last Colourwork Cardy. And they are similar but different. I have sat them all in a row. I have sat them in piles. I planned and thought. 

Then there was the matter of gauge. The yarn from the prototype and the yarn I'm using are both DK. Should  be easy but I was worried as they had a different composition. Would they work or wouldn't they. 

What happens to me when I'm not sure if something will work is I come down with a massive dose of procrastination. A terrible illness to befall a maker who really wants to make a thing. The not-knowingness causing the not-makingness which in turn causes the not-knowingness. And there I sat. Convincing myself that what I was really doing was planning. 

The more I want to love the project, the more I'm excited about it, often the longer I procrastinate/plan. 

Until I realised. No more planning was needed. No more planning would help. The only thing to be done was the making. 

This week's example - colourwork Cardy Mark II

To make a pattern for the Colourwork cardy I need to gauge swatch with the new yarn. So I'm doing that by knitting some hats. The first on 4mm needles and the second on 4.5 to see if I can match the gauge of the last cardy while still liking the fabric it creates. 

And then there is the colours. Piles of colours only help a little. Until I actually start knitting with them I have no idea how they will combine. In a ball they are super saturated. Knitted up they have light yarn between them and a whole lot of negative space. And they look totally different. Sometimes a colour sits beautifully next to another and makes it sing. Other times, not so much. Making actually allows you to see the subtleties of the colour combinations - not only are you asking if the colours go together, but how should they go together. An intense colour used too thickly can look too heavy. Too heavy and it makes the whole hat seem more contrasty than I want it to look. I can't see this in the planning.   

So I made the first hat and I'm not thrilled with the result. It's OK. I can see it has potential but I need to refine. The bright red is too bright (it isn't in the pictures of all the yarn above). I need to mute the whole thing down and just have one or two hero colours. The blue and maybe one other. I've swapped the red out for another couple of colours I thought wouldn't work in the planning phase.

Trying to mute the palate down by using a mushroom instead of the blue at the edge. This didn't work either ;). One thing that had to go was the brightest red, which softened the whole thing up. 

Combination of colours and patterns get refined each time I them. Yesterday's example was the crown shaping; I wrote out a shaping idea and started knitting it up. It was awkward and lopsided. I ripped it out, did another chart, and then another chart and started knitting again. Again it didn't work. I realised while I was knitting, that the blue lines were going to be a much bigger feature than the decreases, which was the opposite of my plan or what I thought. I knitted it up and then colour weighting was wrong. I ripped it out, did three more charts and then finally knitted what you saw in the instagram photo. I still think the blue lines are too heavy but I couldn't rip again. This version is done. It is a sweet hat for a small person. I am however going to try something different on the Colourwork Hat Mark II to see if I can crack it. I've planned it, charted it and now all that is left to do is the making; the only way to tell if the planning is sound or not. 

Charts 4/7 and 5/7. 

Chart 7/7 that I modified even as i was knitting it. 

 

THE MAKING FEEDBACK LOOP OF LEARNING
 

So the important takeaway that I need to remember is to….

“Plan, then make, then revise, then plan and then make. And continue until in the feedback loop of learning until the project works. ”

The whole process has simply reminded me about how important it is to get things out of my head and into my fingers. I can think and think but there is something about watching a physical product come together that solidifies an idea or shows you where the flaws in your design are.  The making provides the essential link in the feedback loop of creating something I will love. 

Do you get stuck in the planning? or are you more like my friend Jenn who just makes?

Felicia

Going against (my) nature.

People don't normally quilt with linen - and there is a good reason why. It shifts in all directions; it has movement and lacks stability. It's structure is not fixed - like a cotton. When we painstakingly cut our shapes out for a quilt pattern, what we are normally looking for is precision. Using linen distorts your pattern - your straight lines end up a lot less straight.

I'm a fan of precision. I have an undergrad degree in measurement. That is why (as Anna pointed out to me this week!) my urge to quilt with linen is so interesting. Our nature is part of us; our tendency to do things in a particular way and look for certain qualities in what we are creating. A big part of mine is about loving order in what I make. Loving logic and maths and symmetry. I struggle to create things that lack these qualities - unless I have purposely decided before I begin that it is a hack job type situation. 

What Anna pointed out to me while we were basting this quilt was that I seem to be pushing against my own nature. Looking for ways around my nature - creating disorder out of the orderly process of putting together a quilt. And through the process, maybe learning how to live with me-created wonk. Or even better yet - maybe learning how to embrace the wonk. 

The linen/cotton mix of the denim stripe has a more fixed structure - so two corners of the quilt have straight lines. 

Anna is smart - just have a look at that first image on her website! She is an artist and an art teacher, is very thoughtful and she often has words for things I struggle to explain. I talk and talk, and she turns my curly thinking into something I understand. And I love her for it. Working with her to baste a quilt, either hers or mine, is one of the simple joys in my life. We have done it before and we will do it again. One of the things I love most is the process of putting a quilt together encourages discussion about the big stuff; life, love and ideas. The basting providing time and space to discuss future projects, and ideas, and allow them time to take shape. We are often discussing craft as we baste; it's value and meaning in our lives. The way it allows us to see and understand more about ourselves and what makes us tick. The way craft can make clear to us, through all the tiny choices we make as we create, what we value and who we are. 

One idea that has come up over the years is that what we are attracted to in other people's work is sometimes what we ourselves would struggle to create. If you look at my craft-textiles board on pinterest you see two very distinct types of quilts. Those that are incredibly precise and ordered, and then those that are abstract, loose, improvisational. Order and precision I can do. But, while I adore improv and looseness, the idea of doing something like that myself makes me feel kinda stressed (what do you mean the corners wouldn't line up?) . 

“There’s a sunset and a sunrise every day. You can choose to be there for it, you can choose to put yourself in the way of beauty.”

— Cheryl Strayed’s late mother Bobbi, from Wild

Ever since I saw the film Wild with my women the other night, I've been thinking about the idea of "putting yourself in the way of beauty". Making a choice to live beauty, to make beauty. By choosing materials that work against my (strong) instinct to control things it's almost like I'm forcing myself to create something that I would consider beautiful. I love the looseness but if I tried to create it I would just keep making things neat. I almost can't help it!  If I hadn't made the choice to use those particular materials I wouldn't be able to create it - the looseness that I think is beautiful. The materials themselves are choosing the shape of the finished product and it's one I have little chance of controlling.

This quilt has involved so much fudging! Fudging to retain my strong straight-line design while accepting in part that I can't achieve it in linen. So many contradictions. I've wanted to pull it out and start again many times - but I didn't. I decided to go with it, fudge a bit and see where it lead. By using the materials I've used, I end up with a finished product I am proud to have created but that doesn't come naturally to me.

Stash Less - Why Restrictions Rock - has then stretched me even further. By creating a rule that means that I can't just buy more of the dirty blue linen, I was forced to (shock, horror) improvise and use some denim linen cotton to fill in the gaps when I ran out.  

By nature I would have created an orderly two colour design - the second blue gives the quilt some interest and some depth. What the process has produced is something that is more beautiful than I would have created if I had made it as designed with one colour blue and straight perfect lines. 

I totally fudged one side of the centre by ironing it when we were basting and hand sewed this extra flap down. You can see why in the photo at the top of the post on the right hand side of the main square. None of it is square.

That isn't camera distortion my friends - the corner of the quilt that is totally distorted. 

To use linen in a quilt and then to not follow it where it leads seems to me to be going against it's nature. But the fact that I chose it, and the fact that I am following it's lead, making the piece it wants to make is almost going against my nature.

That said (and again as Anna pointed out to me ;)) part of my nature is to challenge my nature! 

Have you ever intentionally or unintentionally worked outside your comfort zone? And did you love the result?

Felicia x

I'm not creative.

I have been lucky over the last month to be asked to talk to some really interesting people - I've taken part in not one (the Woolful podcast I mentioned last week), but two podcasts. The second podcast was released on Saturday and can be found here. I was talking with Helen of Curious Handmade about Stash Less* as part of Helen's Simplify and Declutter month. But before we got to Stash Less, Helen and I talked a little about creativity. I've been thinking about it a lot since we spoke and I don't think I articulated my thinking about it as well as I could have. As creativity is something I've pondered a lot over the years I thought I would have a go at doing it here. A bit of thinking out loud to see where we end up…..

For years and years (like 20 of them) I walked around saying "I'm not creative". Over and over again. There was a mix of reasons. I saw my mum as the creative one in our family - she taught me sewing and quilting and she could draw - drawing seemed to be very creative. I did science and maths at school and for some reason I saw science and maths as being factually based and not at all creative. When I was in high school I saw myself as being a scientific type. I loved the fact that science and maths had facts to back everything up. It wasn't subjective. It seemed logical.**

But there was another reason why I said I wasn't creative. I think I said I wasn't creative because I felt like to say you were creative kind of meant that you were saying you had talent. I felt that the two of them were linked; creative people were talented. The idea of me being creative felt wrong for two reasons. One I didn't feel like I had talent creatively, and two, because creative=talented I felt like if you were saying you were creative it meant you were saying you were good at something (which culturally isn't that done in Australia).

I'm not 15 anymore and I've read many things since. I wrote here about how I don't believe that you need to be talented to make things but I want to take it a little further.  All that reading has lead to a shift and because of that shift I'm about to state the obvious - I believe that everyone is creative. We make a zillion different little creative decisions in our everyday life. How to wear our hair. How to move. How to arrange our table. Putting a towel on a towel rack. Creative thinking is one of the things that makes us human.  

Kids show us this. They are fearless at two and three about how they draw and paint and put things together. They are creative all the time. Their clever little brains are constantly solving problems and learning things along the way. As we get older it's the judgements that get made about our creativity (combined with our individual personalities) that can then lead to us freezing up and starting to view ourselves in a different light. A great example of this is a kid I know well. She loves art. She loves creating things but she totally gets stuck if there is any kind of pressure on her - and often that pressure comes from inside her - to make something that is perfect or realistic. Her judgement that it won't be "right" means that sometimes she won't even try. She won't draw even though she loves it and the pressure seems to be coming from inside her. 

Knowing that this was how I thought, and then seeing the flaws in that thinking and the damage it can cause, is part of the reason I think I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about talent now. I want to distinguish between creativity and talent. Not because I don't think some people are talented. I do! But I don't think you need to be talented to make things and I think that to be talented you need to put in the hard yards.

The idea of talent - that some people have it - those creative people have it - can lead us to feel like it's not worth trying or even to the point where we think/say things like "I'm not creative", when maybe that is not what we mean. 

Talented….well that is just a judgement about creativity. When a group of people judge someone's creativity as good then that's when the "talented" thing comes into play. For the most part it's subjective. I might think someone is talented and you might not see their appeal. Generally someone is only given the moniker of talented upon presenting their work to people. To create the work that gets called talented is generally the end product of a long process.  What we see as talent is often the product of learning+practice+creativity+really hard work. I feel like talent isn't something that someone has but rather something that someone works for

I wrote about the idea of practicing in the gap here and that is what I do. I don't need talent to make what I make. While it makes me feel happy that other people sometimes compliment what I have made, I make for me and I’m the only one (other than my kids) that needs to like it. Again what I need is the creativity (that we all have within us) – and not talent (the external acknowledgement)  - to make something that makes me happy, both while I am engrossed in the creating (flow) and after it is made. 

Which leads to my next question around this topic - is talent the thing we should be holding high in our esteem, or should we be celebrating the work that goes into it. Or maybe it doesn't matter? 

Here is a quote from one of the many many Brain Pickings articles on hard work and talent in writing.

“Cohen approaches his work with extraordinary doggedness reflecting the notion that work ethic supersedes what we call “inspiration” — something articulated by such acclaimed and diverse creators as the celebrated composer Tchaikovsky (“A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.”), novelist Isabel Allende (“Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.”), painter Chuck Close (Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.”), beloved author E.B. White (“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”), Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope (“My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.”), and designer Massimo Vignelli (“There is no design without discipline.”). ”

— Brain Pickings - Leonard Cohen on Creativity, Hard Work….

I guess the point is that talent isn't this special thing that some people are blessed with. Even those with the talent have to work for it.  (…..writing this I can hear what a contradiction it is…..) And we don't need to be talented to create. 

I want to follow the first quote with a second article - also from Brain Pickings on the Daily Routines of Great Writers. Have a read of this article. In each case a writer who is often held up as being really talented, as a great writer, works incredibly hard at their craft. They have discipline. They show up. They ship. They practice and they write.

UPDATE: This was posted 30 minutes ago but I've woken up and want to have one more go at it. 
When I was younger I confused and interchanged the ideas of creativity and talent. I believed that I made things, but that making things wasn’t the result of a creative process. Rather the making was the result of following or modifying a pattern - which is also true. However, that confusion lead to me denying that I had something that is part of all of us, my creativity. By denying my own creative input into the process – even just choosing fabric for a pattern – something of the joy of making was lost as I was denying my part in the process of making it. 

As I said - I'm talking out loud today - would be great to hear your thoughts and experiences. Do you think of yourself as creative? Have you ever had the thought "I'm not creative" and where does "talented" come into it for you?

Felicia x

* Stash Less now has it's own page which lists each of the posts so far so you can find them more easily than scrolling back through. 

**Obviously this is not what I think now -  scientists clearly need to use their boundless creativity to solve complex problems - and that this how they come up with the aforementioned facts. 

Woolful and a repost about imperfection!

So rather than today's I Made This, I have some news, and a repost!

The news is that I was lucky enough to chat with Ashley Yousling of Woolful for her podcast recently and it went up yesterday! You can listen to it here. I'm featured alongside the lovely Karen from Fringe Association, whose blog I featured way back in the very early days of this blog. Fringe is one of my favourite blogs, always informative and inspiring. And Ashley's podcast is wonderful. If you haven't heard it yet you can get them all from iTunes or from her blog. I feel really lucky to be included in such fine company!

Karen on the left and me on the right.

The repost today is of a post that was originally called Perfection in Imperfection, and I wanted to highlight it because I thought it went along well with the podcast. I Made This will be back next week but in a way this repost is really an old version of I Made This from me (I kicked off the series with this post). There are so many more of you reading now than there were a year and a half ago, so many of you may not have seen it.  

This quilt is one of the things that I am most proud of, and not because it is perfect. Rather it is because of all I learned and also because I love it. Everytime I see it it makes me happy and reminds me that I am able to create stuff I love with really simple techniques.

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So I finished a single bed quilt - it's the sample for the Anatomy of a Quilt class we were running - and after that will live out it's life on my spare bed. It's not perfect. Nor is it what I hoped or thought it would be when I started. But I really really love it!

Which has lead to a very photo heavy post!! Apologies. 

I had this idea when I started it. I had some gorgeous linen from Tessuti* - over two metres of it in fact. It is such a simple beautiful pattern that I didn't want to cut it up - I reckon it would have gone against the laws of nature.

*If you are ever looking for gorgeous linen then check out Tessuti - just stunning!! 

So a whole cloth quilt was the only way forward. I wanted super simple but without too much quilting as I still wanted the linen to be able to move and wrinkle. Nothing better than wrinkled linen. The spare room it was made for is a simple space so i wanted something that would fit. 

I had been practicing my hand quilting by making a few baby quilts for my smallest girl child and I really wanted to try something bigger. That said I didn't have time (and maybe not the courage yet?)  to handquilt the whole thing. So what to do. I haven't come across many quilts that use handquilting and machine quilting in the one quilt but I thought I would give it a try. My idea was some feature quilting in the middle and then machine quilting in off-white around it, so you would see the impression of the quilting lines but they would be played down. I used organic cotton batting which meant I could leave the quilting lines to about 5/6inches apart. Having the quilting lines so far apart meant I got to keep my favourite linen characteristic - wrinkles!!

There are so many issues with this quilt - which is going to make it a great teaching piece - sooo many issues....

But I really want to focus on how much I love it. The fact that it doesn't need to be perfect to be perfect. That it can be beautiful without being perfect. The fact that I learnt so many many things while making it. Things that I actually already knew in theory but I now have tangible proof of. Gotta love some in-your-face mistakes to help you really learn.

It was also a good reminder that even though your initial idea might not work - this looks nothing like what I planned - it can turn out even better. 

Have you had mistakes that turn out better than the original idea?? 

Felicia

Stash Less - I may have figured out the key!

The series where we talk about having a thoughtful stash.

Stash less has been a learning process for me. With practice, and with putting my ideas out there online, I've been able to more clearly understand my own behaviour and triggers around stashing. Over the last week or so, I've had a really big realisation; for me, the key to stashing less is actually a combination of having a budget, and having a plan. And not for the reasons I thought. 

I thought that the budget was a way to control my spending a bit, and my making list was helping me be a better planner. I was planning to ensure I was making the things I really wanted to make and to help me not be so caught up in my crafty whims. But what I've found is that the combination of the two helps to eliminate many of the reasons why I stash.  

Allow me to explain. My Making List 2015 is only a few weeks old, but it changed things for me. The first thing it changed was that I am not making so many random things. I did make some socks* but other than that everything I'm making are the things I should be making. This is unheard of. Often when I get the urge to start something, rather than starting something that needed to be made, I go blank about what to make and start something totally random. Then I feel pressure to finish the aforementioned random thing. Pressure that keeps me away from the things I really want to be making. 

Having made my making list I can see my plans are slightly unrealistic. That is a bucketload of knitting for a person who knits in life's gaps. But knowing that my expectations are probably unrealistic is kinda good. It means that I've gained some drive to stay focused, while being aware it probably won't all happen. I want to reiterate that the list is actually a list of things that I really want to make. These are all the things that I often postpone because I am crafting to my whims. There is still time for whims but by having the list I am making things that will be much more satisfying to me. 

I stated in the list post that writing the list clarified that I have all the materials I need in my stash. Before I wrote the list I was buying materials "just in case I have time" or "because I really want to make X on a whim". This type of purchasing  now makes no sense as I really just don't have time for them. Win! Big win!!

This picture is a combination of a FOMA purchase, using stash that I was saving for "the perfect project" and making from the list!

So I've got rid of many of my reasons for purchasing. I'm not buying for time poverty reasons (to have things just-in-case I get the time) or for perfection (to have the perfect materials) as I know I already have the materials I need for the list. I'm not buying for having the pretty as I can see I have no use for it anytime soon. So the only reason I would be buying for stash would be for fear of missing out (FOMA) - and for me there are only a couple things I worry about missing out on - Nani Iro or Liberty releasing a new seasonal collection - and I'm trying not to wander internet shops so I am less likely to be tempted.

Oh my goodness! The joy of being free; free from desire and free from want!

Now I've heard a few rumblings from a few folks, in comments and whatnot, that a budget isn't for them. That they are the kinds of people that a budget wouldn't work for, that they like their freedom too much. And I'm with you. I love freedom! I love the idea that I get to choose and no one is stopping me. But the thing about stash less is that it is ME that wants to change my behaviour. So I'm the one creating the rules and wanting to put the brakes on. I've already talked about the freedom that has come from having the list, but then you add a budget, and the freedom only increases.

I set my budget at a level that meant there was some room for joyful purchasing, and I said I wasn't going to be super strict. I could still buy a grownup sweaters worth of yarn for myself if I wanted to, but as I can see I don't have time to knit anything for me that requires new yarn, I have extra cash to play with. I would really really like to stick to the budget and that creates opportunity cost; if I buy one thing I can't buy another. Knowing what I have to purchase for the list means that I am aware that I only have about $200 left for the year as a discretionary fund. Yes I may spend more than that. But I want to be really really careful to not overspend just to own the pretty or FOMA. I really want to put thought into it.

And here is the key….without the budget I could justify many many things for FOMA. And for owning the pretty. With a budget I have to make a choice with which kind of pretty I want the most. I need to really really want it for it to fit into the $200. $200 means maybe two purchases this year. And I want them to be for something truly special. I love that it has come to this. That this will be when I make a purchase!

The budget and my making list combined have made the process of stashing less feel like freedom rather than restriction. Freedom I have given myself. Such a useful thing to figure out.

Useful ideas, or not for you? Have they changed what you think about budgets? Or lists for that matter?

Felicia x

Click the link for other posts in the Stash Less series.

*Yes I did make socks. Totally random thing to make as it is the middle of summer here. But they are pretty! And make me happy so play on I say!

PS. There is another aspect of freedom that has arisen from not stashing. In the past I would buy because I wanted to own the pretty, but then it was like a big chain around my neck. I would see a pattern that I really wanted to make and more often than not I didn't have what I wanted to use in stash. Because I had purchased the pretty already I would feel pressure to use it and not be able to follow my creative whims. A big bummer and a clear case where the stashing itself is the restriction.