String Revolution

I think it’s fair to say that we stringy types are somewhat prone to Languishing Project Syndrome. I certainly am (as a look at my recent on-the-needles post will attest – for a start).

You know how it is – you bounce into a new thing all fresh-faced enthusiasm – you’re bright-tailed, bushy-eyed, the works. You lope along, sun on your face, wind in your hair, and every seam or row or round or cut seems to proceed from its own little pocket of joy.

And then…

Something changes.

Perhaps it’s tangible: there’s a step coming up that you’re not quite sure about. You’ve never done a two-piece sleeve before, as it might be. Or fairisle. Or foundation piecing. Or simpler – you’ve made a mistake of some kind, and now you have to decide whether to undo your work or forge ahead.

Perhaps it’s internal: you fall out of love. Some other spark catches the dry kindling of your creative mind. You begin to suspect that this time, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. You start mixing up your mountains with your molehills. You get bored.

Either way, the project … slows … slides … grows sluggish … stutters to a stop.

Often, of course, it doesn’t matter. The piece you’re working on is for yourself, or for someone who isn’t waiting for it. This year, next year, it’s all the same.

Other times, well, it’s different. There’s a special occasion in the offing. A deadline. (That one in late December springs to mind…)

In this situation, you generally have two choices

You can abandon all thought of finishing in time, and – gasp! – buy something in a shop instead. (And startlingly, the world doesn’t end. So far, at least.)

Or – and this has been my own traditional approach – you can pull out all the stops.

You’ll inevitably end up cramming most of the work into the final seventy-two hours. Hemming your ball dress with grim determination as the taxi idles outside. Furtively slipstitching the binding on a king-size quilt at the back of the church while its intended recipients utter their vows. Staying up frenetically stitching until 6:10 on the morning of the deadline (by which point you’re so high on lack of sleep that you’re pretty sure you can hear your project muttering about you), and being barely able to speak for two days afterwards.

But it’ll be worth it. Won’t it?

Let me come straight to the point: I think I can help.

Specifically, I think I can help you get that project finished, in time for that deadline.

And I don’t mean “in time” in the sense of “didn’t miss the event and am not actually dead”. I mean genuinely in time. In good time. With time to spare.

The fact is, I’ve learned a few things in the past three-plus decades of making stuff. I won’t say I’ve beaten the procrastination monster (we don’t beat our monsters around here – that would be cruel), but I have methods. Strategies. Bits and pieces, culled from all sorts of sources, and collated into a sort of mental library, flexible enough to adapt to circumstances, focused enough to produce results.

I’m ready to share that with you.

Here’s what we’ll do

1. We’ll talk – over phone, by video chat, or failing those, on plain old IM. We’ll have an initial half-hour session in which you’ll tell me about your project and we’ll discuss what’s been stopping you from getting it done.
2. We’ll identify the flavours of procrastination at play, and I’ll let you in on an outrageous truth about behavioural change that has made all the difference to me.
3. If your project is in one of my areas of stringy expertise, feel free to ask for practical – i.e. string-related – advice. I’ll help if I can (no guarantees).
4. We’ll make a concrete plan for your project during that initial conversation. I’ll e-mail you a summary so you’ll have it to hand.
5. You’ll implement the plan, and we’ll check in by e-mail twice or three times during the time period we’ve agreed.
6. At the end of that agreed time period, we’ll talk again. Maybe we’ll have nothing to do but swig champagne and squee about your marvellous finished piece. Or maybe it’ll be more of a progress report and an opportunity to map out next steps. Either way, it’ll mark the end of the process.

That’s it. With uncharacteristic directness, I’m calling this service Get It Done. And I am open for business, oh yeah.

Details, details

I’m in Dublin, same time-zone as London, and I can generally do calls in the late evening (9:30-11:30pm) any day except Wednesday, in the morning (say 10:00-12:00) on Monday or Tuesday, or during the day at weekends (depending on other commitments).

The whole Get It Done package – the initial call, the e-mail summary of your implementation plan, two or three further e-mail exchanges, and the concluding call – is priced at a highly introductory $63 (that’s sixty-three of the finest US dollars).

OK, you’re up for this. Hooray! Here’s what to do next

1. Click the Buy Now button below and pay me via PayPal.
2. In the comments section of the PayPal form, tell me what days and times suit you for our initial call.

Small print: If for any reason you have to cancel your Get It Done package at any time up to our first session together, I’ll refund your fee in full.

I’ll be in touch to arrange our first session. I can’t wait to hear about your project!

Here’s the button. Click it:

PS: I can’t work miracles, obviously. (Fifty hours of work in two days? Not going to happen.) But I bet I can help you get clear on where your project is at, where it’s headed, what’s been stopping you, and what to do about that. Give this a try – it can’t possibly hurt.

Oh, my friends, I have such an unruly mob of posts clamouring to be written.

My poor brainchildren. I didn’t think they’d have to wait this long.

August into the first part of September was a jostling, sprinty, headlong dash, with four separate trips away, house guests, several birthdays, creative feats ranging from a Master’s thesis (Niall) to a short film (the Oyster, with a little help from his friends), a work trip (Niall) and a choir trip (me).

Lots of firsts, for me. I went to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. I taught classes on embroidery, Shiva Nata, and gender normativity (severally, not jointly). I did paintings in acrylic and oil. It was marvellous, and I’ll tell you all about it soon.

And then there was sadness. My grandmother, who turned 91 in May, was admitted to hospital at the beginning of August, suffering from pneumonia and the effects of a minor stroke. She rallied, and was doing quite well, but then her younger sister died, which shocked her profoundly, and she began to decline again.

Meanwhile, Niall’s grandmother also died, and we travelled to Belfast for her funeral last Tuesday.

I was worried that my grandmother would die while I was away, but she hung on.

I saw her twice more. She died yesterday, peacefully, surrounded by her family. (I wasn’t there, but I had seen her earlier in the day.)

I am very sad.

I will be back here as soon as I can.

When I was writing my 100th String Revolution post a few weeks ago, and looking back over the first 99 posts, I was struck by the fact that this used to be a much knittier blog than it is these days.

I haven’t written about knitting in ages. There are all sorts of reasons for that (most notably: I’ve done barely any knitting in 2011 so far…), but I’m going to set them aside for a moment and just write the bleedin’ update, already.

Works in Progress

That up above is my Elizabeth Zimmermann open-collared pullover, which I laid aside late last year, and didn’t pick up again until June. It’s really very nearly finished.
Continue reading On the Needles

This is the 100th blog post here at String Revolution! Whee! Celebrations!

I’ve been looking over the 99 posts that got us here, trying to read them with a bit of perspective – wondering, what sort of blog do I write?

It’s evolved, certainly, from that first hello. Internally, I’ve shifted focus from the simple presentation of projects, stash, and techniques to a more reflective approach. I still write about what I’m making, but the posts I’m most excited about tend to be the ones with a strong political or philosophical slant. This suits me better than [what I think of as] the standard “craft blogger” mode: since I produce work very slowly, I don’t have the output to sustain a purely project-based blog.

(If encouraging comments are anything to go by, it seems to suit you fairly well too!)

Favourite Posts

Your favourites among the first 99 posts – measured somewhat crudely by the number of comments – have been these:
Continue reading One Hundred Acts of String Revolution

That cluster of beading I showed you, from the Cork workshop – what did I do with it next?

It became the lid of a little box, which holds some earrings I made for my mother’s birthday.

The outer part is made of high-moral-fibre organic fair-trade cotton velvet, and the box is lined with some silk that I bought at that same event in Cork. I used two weights of card for the structure: some thicker stuff from the box our new router came in, and some thinner stuff from a cereal packet. Each piece is separately padded and glued, and they’re then sewn together.
Continue reading A Beaded Box