Cat Bordhi + Cast On Podcast + Caffeine = Inspiration

It's been an interesting day.

When I went to work this morning, I had a killer headache, so I took some medicine. Medicine with about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

This was a risk, as I am very sensitive to caffeine. If I eat too many m&m's, I will get a caffeine buzz for a little while, then get tired, restless and be unable to relax.

To help me feel better, and since I'm lucky enough to be able to listen to music at work, I turned on the new episode of Cast On. And Cat Bordhi was the guest. If Cat Bordhi is the mad scientist of knitting design, then Brenda Dayne is the Kung Fu master of podcasting.

With this perfect storm of energizing forces and creative genius, I had quite the rush of designing inspiration at work. A few new design ideas came to me, and I had a couple of break throughs in some of the older ideas I've had bouncing in my head.

I couldn't justify sketching at the office, let alone play with yarn. Believe it or not, I was actively working. Frustrating!

And even if I could have sketched, I don't have an organized way to keep track of these ideas. Even more frustrating!

So I'm starting a design journal.

And yes, I'm talking about designing, which isn't something I've ever really talked about here. Recently I've been almost exclusively using other people's patterns, perhaps playing with yarn choices. But I would like to start designing more of my own projects. They may not necessarily be published, but if they are, I have some ideas, especially for online publishing. Think of a sweater pattern in a worksheet, where you input your gauge and desired dimensions, and customized instructions are automatically calculated. No math or spreadsheet prowess necessary. If you can type in a few numbers, and hit print, you have your very own custom pattern.

Also, I've been making progress on the Ravelympics project.



This is how it looks right now. I'm not going to post every day's progress picture, because they all look pretty similar. They can be seen at my Flickr page

This energy has made me overly optimistic about what I can accomplish this evening. My to do list is ridiculous! I just hope I don't crash.