Day 75 & 76 Includes A Day or Two in the life of a Crochet Designer!

This is a photo from a lovely lady on Twitter that is trying to learn to crochet from a book

And these photos were also sent from a Twitter lady who has enrolled on my eLearning Course

Can you spot the difference?

I rest my case!

Do like the lady who sent me the picture on the left did and enroll today!

Now for

A Day or Two, in the life of a Crochet Designer:
Being commissioned to work a specific piece to the requirements of the commissioner.

You get the call or the text / email & you get excited.  A million ideas start whizzing through your head & if you are not next to your crochet hook & stash of wool at the time, you start mentally crocheting a design in your head.  Once you are united with your wool & hook you get to work!
You may make 5, 7, 10, 12 or more mock ups of your idea, submitting the best ones for approval. Then you either get a "no" which is when you go back to the drawing board, or you get a "yes" so you await the arrival of the wool or yarn that your commissioners want you to use.

Work starts again in earnest & photo's are taken along the way & emailed off.  You get emails back saying "FAB" or "Wow, that's wonderful", so you forget the housework, forget to eat, forget to walk the dog & try to arrange your day around your commission, dedicating as much time as you possibly can to it.

You steam ahead, trying to either meet or beat the deadline you have been given, working perfectly and with the greatest precision and you start to put your piece together, still taking photo's & emailing them across for approval just in case!

The approval comes & you smile contentedly with less fear and more of a glow - you are there, nearly at the end, with only a few more bits to add and finishing touches to make when you get an email out of the blue.....

"can you possible try XXXX with this colour scheme please?"

and this email arrives last thing on a Friday night when you had the whole weekend more or less free to work on dotting the I's and crossing the T's.

ARRRGGHHHHHH

So the project goes on hold.
There is NOTHING you can do.
There's no point it trying to finish off as it might be your time and their wool / yarn wasted as there may not be enough wool / yarn if you DO have to start over!

If you do have to start over how do you fit it all in to your schedule AGAIN?
You get paid £x amount for
Designing
Pattern Writing
Pattern Proofing
Double checking the pattern proofing (as you start to doubt yourself & you can't get it checked as the project is top secret!)
Making the Piece &
making sure it gets to them via Special Post

If you have to start again you still get paid the same amount!

I mentioned pattern writing.  This can take an age in itself.  You scribble notes as you design your piece, so you are crocheting and note taking at the same time, which is not an easy task when you hold your hook & pencil in the same hand!

Once you have a thousand scribbles on your page, you then have to type up a word document.
You try to make sense of your scribbles which DID make sense when the pencil hit the paper, but you take a deep breathe & type away, trying to remember everything that you have to include like the wool / yarn used - did you list all the colours? did you add the hook size, what stitches are you using, have you explained any special stitches you might be using - tension - will tension apply? The list goes on!

You then read and re read the pattern and as you can't get it checked by another crocheter, you then have to follow it yourself as if you have never seen the pattern before, as if you were following someone else 's pattern from a book, the internet or a magazine.
So you start to crochet YOUR pattern as if you're making it for the first time and you then find the errors - no matter how careful you've been there's always at least one, you get to the end and with a satisfied huff, you take yourself away from the computer, the crochet hook the wool, the table you have been sat at for hours & go and make a cuppa to get away from it all for 5 minutes.

You return to your "spot" and feel that you have to go through it again just to be 100% sure so you do.

So there you have it.
The project in question is now on hold, when I could have been finishing it off today and popping it in the post tomorrow.

So now I am waiting for "that" email to come back to me.  Fortunately my contact is a crocheter and she understands exactly what I am saying e.g. I can't just snip bits off and change the colour as the yarn (cotton) will snag.  She said she'll speak to the "boss" and see if her explanation will help.  If it does, I can crack on tomorrow, finish the project off and post it on Tuesday.

Then I can start on the next project, which is even more colourful, which is great, however it's for the same people!!!

So there you have it - a day or two, in the life of a crochet designer.  It's not all a bed of wool you know!

As you may or may not know, I am a "glass half full" not a "glass half empty" girl, so my silver lining to this cloud is that I have time to tidy up my hook case......

And make my Squares for days 75 & 76

That's all folks

&  remember

If you want to crochet like this

&
Not like this

Then you need this



And the first 10 people to use BLOG10 promo code, you'll get 10% off
There are no time limits
You don't have to leave the comfort of your living room
You can work at your pace
and have fun Crocheting your time away!

If you know the basic stitches then why not try Course 2 which is now available