My Knitty life - lessons learnt so far

I’ve been knitting, creating and designing now, sort of full time since giving up my full time job in June 2014. 

I was thinking about the things I had learnt, not just knitting skills but what life skills had I learnt / improved upon.

1. Making friends:

I met 2 other on-line yarny friends back in summer last year and we have stayed friends on-line every since. They both have helped me with my confidence, tested out my patterns, helped me with my knitting problems and with my challenges (see below). I now feel quietly confident to join in knitting forums on sites such as Ravelry, ask silly questions and give others advice.

I feel like now is the time to find a local knitting chatty group, see people in real life, show off my knitting to others. I can’t wait.

2. Challenging yourself:

Challenging yourself is all about picking something out of your range of abilities or something totally new. Every week I seem to pick something new to knit ,something out of my comfort zone,some new technique,some new stitch and yes its a little challenging , but I think that's just a way of improving my knitting skills.The main challenge for me recently was deciding that I was going to get some of my documented knitting patterns properly tested and published on world wide knitting pattern sites. I learnt loads about the process,about how to think like a knitter whilst writing the patterns ,how other knitters will literally pull your pattern apart before your very eyes if you let them.

3. Working out and sticking to deadlines.

I was always the one at work, that left things to the last minute, enjoying the pressure, but now in the knitting world you can’t really afford to leave things til the last minute. If you are working to publishing timescales then you need to ensure that the knitting garment is finished , blocked , photographed and out of the door in good time. And well knitting something is always unpredictable , how can you estimate how many times you need to redo a piece because it doesn’t quite fit like you wanted and if you try and knit under pressure well you are bound to loose a stitch or two on the 1st few rows.

So for me, when I knew that my pattern submissions to the Knit Now magazine had been approved I set aside a whole week alone where I would work on the knitting and writing up the patterns. My family were great about this, they knew how much it meant to me, and they knew how grumpy I would get if I was stressing out as the deadline approached.

I hope to continue learning more of these vital life skills.  If you are a crafty person, what life skills are you learning whilst your are crafting, I would live to hear.