This is sort of upside-down from how I expect things to work. Ritual is supposed to be good for creativity, right? How many times have you been told that to (for example) write well it is helpful to write at the same time every day or at the same desk or to always brush your teeth first or some other variation on the theme that if you arrange your body properly your mind will follow? Half a hundred, I’d guess. Possibly half a hundred this month alone, if you hang out with the right folks.

There is no denying that you really can affect your creative mood this way, or that you can help yourself through small rituals to slip into the flow just as you can help yourself drift off to sleep with some of the same tactics. You also run the risk, however, of not being able to work without the creative equivalent of your favorite teddy bear. This is the problem that I’m having right now.

If this and that and the other thing have to be right before you can start, and you have a full-time job and three kids and relationship issues and money problems and all of the other things that most of us deal with in one combination or another, those required conditions can be paralyzing even if your required ritual is something as simple as brushing your teeth.

So I’m trying something new. I’m trying to learn to just jump in.

This post is an excellent example. The idea was at the top of my mind, and I wanted to write about it. Usually before I work on anything I feel like I have to have my morning ducks in a row; I’ve showered, had breakfast, checked around the internet for anything really exciting (OMG R. Lee Ermey with knitting in his hands!) and because feeling like I’ve caught up clears my own mental state up a bit for some reason. (I’ve been reading blogs in the morning for ten years or so now. It’s a terribly ingrained habit. Sort of like the overuse of parenthesis.) I used to have a cigarette or three. By the time I’m done with all of that, it’s either time to rush to work or time to hang out with the kids, and I don’t ever get to the important part: the work I’m doing, the work I love and feel like I never have time for. By the point where I feel I can really settle in and get something done, the launch window has closed.

So this morning I got up and took a shower and instead of making breakfast I came right in here and wrote about what was on my mind. And you know what? It felt good. Sure, I’m a bit hungry, but what’s a brief delay in breakfast versus spending a little time doing something you truly enjoy doing?

I think I’m going to spend a little more time breaking the tyranny of my rituals. I have the feeling I’m going to surprise myself.

This is a collection of my previous dishcloth patterns. I’m thrilled to be able to offer them in a set and at a discount from the individual prices!

Buy at Etsy or on Ravelry or here on the site (patterns are served through Ravelry, but you don’t have to be a member to buy!).

Simply Square Log Cabin Dishcloth (Ravelry Pattern Page)

Hope you like it!

Coming soon: pattern release, finally a Peaches & Creme review, and more. Stay tuned…

Work continues to be a bit of a living nightmare. Home Office keeps adding things to the must-do list while cutting payroll. I know that a lot of folks are in the same boat with this right now, because employers are well aware that they’ve got us trapped. They’ll no doubt be surprised when their best people leave as soon as things pick up. It’s part of the cycle of corporate life.

I have a pattern ready to go to testing. It’s been a 5-minutes-here, 5-minutes-there thing, with the day job having to take precedence, so I’m wicked excited about the possibility of finally getting another pattern released. Hopefully that will happen in the next couple of weeks.

Spent last weekend in Maine, trying to relax and pretty much failing. It was gorgeous, though, and the company was good. We went to see X-Men First Class at the drive-in…I don’t think I’ve been to a drive-in since high school, and the movie was fantastic. Crazy fun!

I made an addition or three to my growing stack of dishcloths this weekend. School is inching closer to getting out, and the summertime is adding a level of chaos to the kids’ behavior that’s just a tad exhausting. It was 90-odd degrees today, so they’re even nuttier than summer normal. Lovely New England weather, lol.

And that is, I think, about it for the moment.

And then I realized what my block was: the design that was almost finished? I didn’t like it. And I figured I had to finish it first, since it was almost done, and I didn’t want to because I didn’t like it the way I really *needed* to like it to put the rest of the work into it and send it out into the world.

So I killed it. And I feel a little more free.

When I first started designing I was totally on fire. Everything I did seemed to get me somewhere, most every design I tried to put to yarn and then to paper worked, and I thought it really was that easy. I was wrong. Dead wrong. And now that I inhabit a space where 4 of 5 of the ideas I have don’t work out, or have been done, or fail to excite me for one reason or another, well…I love it just as much. But it’s slower and sometimes pretty frustrating.

Once upon a time when I was chasing an MFA in Creative Writing, one of the books I read about writing talked about how difficult it is to deal with the phrases and sentences and even whole passages that you absolutely love but have no place in the piece you are writing. The author referred to the process of weeding these out of a work as, “killing your babies.” And that’s how my design process has been running lately.

More than likely this will change again, and I’m putting my head down and slogging through until I hit that energy again. And trying to kill what I need to kill in the meantime.

I have to fight the feeling that I’m still working too slowly, but that’s ok. Life is here, and sometimes demands my attention. This window with this new post sitting in it, for example, has been open for 2 days while I’ve dealt with other issues.

I’m seriously considering reopening the Etsy shop. It sounds like they’ve made some upgrades that will make it a little easier to run that I’ve found it in the past. It was fabulous for selling physical objects, but not as much for patterns. That may have changed and may be worth trying again. That’s another window that’s been sitting open for a couple of days now.

Anyway, onward. There’s laundry to do and a promised project to finish and kids to herd.

This afternoon I have the house to myself and in the absence of three small loud children I’ve been working again on a new pattern template. Nothing elaborate…I’m not in a good place right now to purchase or learn anything more elaborate than Word, but I’ve managed to jazz it up a bit all the same and I’m pleased with the results. I also set to writing the pattern that I think will make its debut the soonest. It’s been pulled from the pile of swatches and scraps and will shortly, with any luck, be made to behave.

I have no FO to show for this weekend, but the scarf project I’m trying to finish right now should be all set by the end of the week. Yay!

Got no pictures, either. I can be incredibly lazy sometimes, and moreso when I’m tired and bouncing between happy and cranky. On the plus side, the boyfriend gave me this to keep my moody self out of his hair, and I’m finding that I quite like it so far. So a book may actually get read around here for the first time in ages. Exciting stuff.

Ah, well. Back to the pattern thing. I have to do this writing in little pieces or it wouldn’t get done at all. Watching a design grow under my hands is easy. Writing it out so someone else can follow it? Not so much.

I’m only bringing two projects, but it will only be a 28 hour trip, lol. If I do it right, one WIP will be a FO by the time we get home. Pics if I remember to take them before we leave tomorrow. The light up there is gorgeous. So tempted to do my next pattern photoshoot up there…but I hope to have something finished before spring, lol.

I’ve also decided that I’d like to rework the samples for a couple of them, and redo some of the photography now that I have a camera again. I need to build myself some sort of setup where I have consistent light. I used to have one, but my reliable lamp died and hasn’t been replaced. Oh, the joys of a tiny budget…

Anyway. Making progress. Pleased with that.