On sunday we had a small(ish) summer party to (sort of) celebrate the upcoming arrival of our first child, or Bock! as I have taken to calling the bump recently.

I made cake…

(terrible photo of the cake, taken with my phone, at the dark, northside of the house)

…W made beer, and a good time was had by all. I thought I might show you the presents we got: Firstly – people made stuff, which shouldn’t be shocking at all, given the amount of crafters in my life. But seriously, people made amazing things:

The mohair hat was made by Lara, and the slipper socks were made by Clare. They are both incredible, and match the colourful swedish babygro that our friends F and J bought for us.

(Plus, as I told Clare earlier today – after thinking i was done knitting stuff for the bump for a while, I’ve found a second wind, and i’m inspired to knit slippers to go over sleepsuit feet for when we’re out walking, but it’s too warm for the snowsuit. So there are a few pairs of Magic Slippers in the works. And maybe some for me too!)

My sister, Kim had been itching to make a hooded baby towel pretty much since she found out she was going to be an auntie. Hooded towels are a big deal to her, and she wanted to make sure to pass that on.

Look what she made! And she used Heather Ross goldfish for the binding! (She knows my love of Heather Ross’ work, only too well. :)

She stayed up WAY too late the night before the party making slipper. Cute!

Ellen made us a Montessori treasure basket, and that, plus a conversation about Montessori for babies, has me hunting for more information. It think it will really work with our general mindset at home, (even if we don’t end up sending bump to a Montessori school later on down the line…)

I already know exactly where this basket is going to live – the lowest shelf on the bookshelf in our new day room. I think – in a year or so – it’s going to be a godsend. :)

There were bought presents too, all of which were just as thoughtful:

Jaq gave us this cool dangly pram toy. I LOVE the colours.

Lovely Babs gave us this really cool trees and snails babygro, and duck towel. (I’m loving that none of us know the gender of bump. It’s making people really creative. :)

Kim also went ‘a bit nuts’ (her words ;) at People Tree, which is very cool. (I’m glad their kids stuff looks like it’ll fit actual people, unlike their adult stuff imho.)  All the orange and green makes me very happy. :D

Liz kinda blew me out of the water with this cute baby set. There are cute cows, and chickens…

…and sheep!

*beams*

Huge thanks to everyone who came to the party. I had a great time!

The thing about working from home, is that you’re available. Or you seem available.

I’ve found this has massive advantages:

Packages can actually get delivered, rather than picked up at the depot.

I can arrange my monday morning schedule so that all the food shopping gets done in one go, at a quiet time of day, when the shelves are well stocked. And I’ll be in when they are delivered to our door.

I can take a friday off (to go to the Quilting Festival for example), and I don’t have to convince anyone to approve of me being allowed to do it.

This are huge things. Privilaged things, and I try hard to not take them for granted.

However there are also downsides:

I don’t make a huge amount of money.

I don’t have an actual boss looking over my shoulder, making me work harder to make sure I still have a job. (I construct my own bosses though – my clients for the web design side of things, and my customers and potential customers for Oxford Kitchen Yarns.)

I have to be self motivated to have a hope of getting anything done.

I have to do the jobs that I don’t like doing, or aren’t very good at, as well as the jobs that got me into these lines of work in the first place, since there is only me.

I am at home, and it’s hard convincing various people in my life that that doesn’t mean i’m just sitting in front of the tv, thinking about what bit of the house could do with a good vac. This means turning people down when they want to visit during the day, (though obviously it’s also nice to be able to have the flexibility to re-arrange things so that I *can* see some people occassionally.)

And turning people down, means saying no to people I really like, which I find really, really hard.

I mean, what if they need me?

So this bit in ‘One Clear Line‘ – part 3 of Making Time to Make really struck a nerve:

I think it’s critical to set reasonable expectations about how, when, and where people can expect to have authentic, honest-to-God contact with us, and here’s why: if you leave every channel open to everybody and anybody, all the time and without limit, you necessarily prevent yourself from ever stepping away from the fray for long enough to focus. You’ll never make the time that it takes to produce the sort of good work that theoretically made you so appealing in the first place.

And, perhaps as importantly, you also can never devote your undivided attention to the biped mammals who are breathing air in the room with you. Here. People. With faces and hands. Not “friends,” but friends. Real people. Because, if total focus on the known important stuff in your life has to battle with a never-ending doorbell attached to your brain, it’s hard for me to imagine how your work, or your family, or your sense of who you are, alone in a room without the ringing, can possibly thrive.

For me that means cutting corners, sometimes in the middle (even though that doesn’t make sense!) – external stuff takes up time, and life stuff takes up time (since I make sure to finish work at around the same time W does – we’ve spent far too many years commuting, and being ships that pass in the night as it is), and the thing that gives in the middle is how much work I (can) get done.

Which means there has been a gulf between ‘what I actually do’ and ‘what I want to do’.

And that is the thing I’m really addressing right now with all of this.

What I need is to learn skills that allow me to get into my ‘work head-space’ far more quickly, and efficiently. If I’m only going to get odd snatches of time with children around for the next few years, and I still want to continue these businesses (which I really, really do), then I have to work out how to make the most of the short periods of time when they appear.

(I already manage to do this with my knitting. Waiting for something to load/boil/finish/someone to be ready to leave the house – knit. Even if it’s for 2 minutes. That’s probably a row or two and it all adds up. Stuck on a bus – knit. etc etc. Of course knit is made for that. Work isn’t. But planning what needs doing – breaking down the elephant – might be. And armed with a list of manageable tasks at least I’d have a good reference of ‘things that need doing’ to work from.)

I still don’t have answers to the questions in this next quote. I’m not sure I will have the answers until after the baby is born. But I’m thinking about them now:

Decide what it means to be “available” versus “not available” at a given time. How long can your world tolerate your absence, and what does it look like when you re-surface? What needs to change in order to minimize stress and drama?

Mann suggests the working equivalent of a safe word, and the need to give at least someone the ability to punch through your ‘i’m working now’ space when they really need you. Obviously, for me that’s primarily going to be W. In my head it’s W with a hungry baby in his arms.  So flexibility is obviously going to play a huge part in this.

But that also encourages me not to take over everything – not to ’show W how it’s done’ -  (Right, like I know any more than he does right now.) If we’re equally confident with the baby, then we can each take charge some of the time, and let the other person have a bit of space to pursue non-baby things.

So what does this mean for everyone else?

Well weirdly, I think it’s going to mean that some people actually hear more from me. If I set a small amount of time to – for example – read a handful of blog posts via googlereader, I’m more likely to comment on those posts then I ever was when I gave myself constant access to them.

If I give myself the last half hour of the day to deal with the emails that have come in, then responses will actually get written, rather than dithered and thought about, and put off till the next day because something else needs doing.  So I might actually seem far more around, and reach out far more often than I did before.

Which is a good thing. Obviously.

But I’m also going to have to say no to some people I really like.  Or rather I’m going to have to make phonecalls shorter, and re-arrange some of them entirely because I’m in the middle of something. I’m going to have to resist dropping everything the moment the external world asks me too, in the way I would if I were in an office, and couldn’t just take off for a hour in the middle of the afternoon.

And that’s going to be really hard, because I find it really hard, and I can’t blame it on my boss, or the way the company I work for opperates, because I’m the boss, and I’m the one who has to set the rules.

I’m going to have to have faith that I won’t just flat out piss people off. That actually they can cope just fine, and that they’ll understand.

And i’m going to have let go of the need to apologise for all of the hours I kept my friends on the phone, when I worked stupid hours at my old job, and was miserable, and just needed someone to complain to.

(I am really sorry though.)

And of course, when I’ve done all this, and given myself this extra work space, then I have to actually keep regularly throwing myself into that ‘work head-space’ and get a ton of work done. When you clear the decks, you’ve got to actually do something with them!

And that is both scary, and exciting. Let’s see what I can do…

In the last couple of days I’ve been reading ‘Making Time to Make‘, a short three part series at 43 Folders.

Given that my brain is still ticking over what I hope to get done next year, due to all the changes that are about to happen in my life, (ie. becoming a parent for the first time), the articles really got me thinking, and wanting to change how I do things.

For example:

Thing is: if the amount of time you devote to lite correspondence with individual people exceeds the amount of time you spend on making things, then you may be in a different line of work than you’d originally thought you were. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But if you’re feeling off your game, it might be a good time to ask yourself whether you’re primarily a writer of novels or of email messages. Do you generate more IMs than comic panels? Have you drafted more web comments than scenes in your screenplay? Or, for that matter, do you find you’re taking more meetings than photos these days?

I’ve spent this year feeling incredibly busy, and – actually – getting alot of stuff done. But not always getting the stuff I really wanted to get done. Not really pushing things (my work, decorating, the jobs that need doing, and have needed doing for a while now), as far as they could go.

I don’t mean in a perfectionist way, I just mean in a way that means I can look back at the week, and see what I’ve done with it, as least a decent amount of the time.

Personally, for me, it’s less about randomly communicating with people (given that I’m quite shy in some respects, and naturally tend to hold back – which is why I never really hang out on forums), it’s more about ‘finding stuff out’ and reading things.

Consuming information.

One thing that I’ve really been aware of – given that I work from home in front of my computer for much of the time – is that there have been far too many tabs open in Firefox, and for far too long. They have sat there temping me to check my email (again), spend 30 seconds seeing if anyone has queued something new in Ravelry (again), see if google reader has collected up any new content (again).

None of these things take very long, and I can still get stuff done, but I know I’m wasting time that I just plain won’t have available to waste in a couple of months time.

Basically I have to cut out the vast majority of the faffing that I do.

(When I start getting annoyed with other people’s faffing, then that’s a big honking sign that I’m faffing too much too.)

So this is what I’ve done:

• I’ve shut down my IM (which I was only really using as a way of seeing a preview of my emails as they popped up, but was also sending a sign to a handful of people that I occasionally chat to, that I was available to chat, when really I wasn’t – how the hell were they supposed to know that?)
• I’ve turned off the new email alert on my other email programme, and I just go and check it at set points during the day (although those set points are still in the midst of being organised.) Both these first two things are helping me to break my usual Pavlovian respond to email pings that really don’t need to be check the very second they come through, especially when half the time they are bumf emails from various companies who want me to buy more stuff from them – oh and I went and finally removed myself from those email lists too, so that that would stop happening.)
• I’ve separated my current tabs into bookmarked folders – ‘things to read and think about (when i have a few spare minutes)‘, ‘things I need to respond to‘, ‘recipes to try‘, and a folder for the tabs needed for each part of my working life. Everything else is in an other separate folder that I can slowly start going through and cleaning out. (Or, if I don’t get to it in 6 months – straight deleted.)
• I already had all my regularly used links as part of my firefox tool bar, but now I’m using them everyday. So, for example, gmail isn’t left open in a tab, I load it up, use it, and then close it back down again. (This might sound obvious, but it’s a massive change for me.)
• Whereas before I would have had (as a minimum) the following tabs open: gmail, googlereader, ravelry, wordpress, and lj open, PLUS work tabs, AND ‘tabs that I need to go back and sort out or respond to, but haven’t yet’. (Added bonus – firefox is no-longer sucking all of the life out of my CPU.) Now I have whatever I’m working on at that given time. So right now I have wordpress (obviously), and the third part of ‘Making Time to Make’ to refer to. It’s like working at a clear tidy desk. I didn’t realise how much I needed that to be able to think straight.

Why am I telling you all this? – mainly because I thought that other people might be struggling too, and might find the articles useful (as I have.)

Also because getting it written down is helping me to really think about what I want to achieve, and how I might go about getting things done in a way that makes me feel better about everything.

Also it’s cathartic.

I have a bit more to say, but I’m going to leave that for another post, since I’m straying (and may already have strayed) into TL:DR territory.

On friday my mum, Kim (of Little Green Bees), Jaq (of Confessions of a Slack Knitter), Liz (of Thomasina Knits), Ellen (of Frog Princess), Ruth (I need your blog address – gimmeh gimmeh!), Jacqui (who I don’t think has a blog… yet), and me (obviously), went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham.

Much fun was had. Much fabric was bought. Lots of walking was done by all. (I am SO TIRED today.)

But let me tell you what I bought:

There is always one stall that becomes my favourite of the day. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but when I find it I find I’m drawn back to it again and again.

Yesterday it was TheButtonCompany.co.uk

I think I love them.

Firstly they had some of the cute japanese fabrics I have been kinda drooling over for a while now.

Cute waffle farmyard fabric! How lovely is that?

I think these are destined to be at least one pair of cute pajama pants for the bump, though I got a metre, so there is definately enough for at least two sizes, should they prove popular. Of course I might just hang it on a clip hanger for a while and just look at it’s loveliness. :)

So much JOY here! There is kitchen fabric (for ME!) and Amy Butler spots to go with it, plus little red riding hood fabric <3 and lime and orange robot fabric.

Actually let me pause for a minute to tell you the robot fabric story.

My sister – Kim – made an amazing bag with the blue version of that robot fabric. (I’m very proud of her.) Anyway, she was using it yesterday, and while we were at the stall, talking to one of the women running it about the fabric, Kim mentioned her bag, and held it up. And all hell broke loose in the best way! The woman had never seen the fabric worked up into something before. She wanted to fondle the fabric, and was amazed at how soft it got when washed. She wanted to show the other people behind the stall, and so – in the nicest way – ran off with it, to show them, and then brought it back to say that the other people were going to come over and have a proper look, and could Kim stick around. Hilarious. I think that’s when I fell in love with their stall.

Anyways it’s also important to point out the fabric being used as a back drop to the lovely fat quarters.

Wool felt.

Thick, amazing wool felt from france that The Button Company now stock.

(They have ordered 90 colours, and had the first 50 at the show. It was £15 a metre but they would cut from the fat quarter upwards. I would suggest calling them, and making an order, since they were pretty sure that availability was going to be sketchy for a while, while they and the tiny french company who makes it, got into a rhythm of ordering a supplying.

If I were you I’d keep a close eye on The Button Company Blog, and The Eternal Maker Crafts Blog, since there is a bit of a debate over who gets the stock all that loveliness. ;)

So yeah.

Another stall of note was Oliver Twists.

They had silk.

Hand dyed silk you could spin with.

£12.50 for the 130g above.

And frankly these days there were more spinners in our group than quilters.

So yeah, that came home with me too, and I started spinning it last night while watching the replay of the Men’s Track Points Race. (GO CHRIS!)

(Don’t know why the morning light was screwing with the colour – obviously it’s way more blue/green than that.)

I think I can get about 350m of 4ply equivalent (14wpi, and actually 3ply).

Oooh! And British people can now get iron on plastic for making ordinary fabric into oil cloth. (Kim has been lusting over US crafters who do this for a while now.) I got a metre for £3.50 from www.nid-noi.com. It’s called Lamifix.

Lastly we got to meet Amy Butler at the Rowan stand. She is lovely.

I – naturally given what is going on at the moment – bought her bookfull of useful patterns for baby things. (Actually Kim and mum – as eager aunt and granny in waiting insisted we went thirds on it.) And Amy put a lovely message inside, and managed not to get influenced at all when my mother decided to bring up a mortifyingly embarrassing story about how I apparently justified changing the spelling of my name, when I was 11 – nineteen years ago! :| Thank alot mum.

The pattern wasn’t available at the show, but I’m also looking forward the Birdy Sling bag (though I see that UHandbag have it in stock, so I’ll get my bum in gear and get it from there instead. :) (Ruth – thought you might want a heads up about that too. :)

So yeah, all in all a great day.

A Small moan that you should probably not read, especially if you have a happy glow from all the fabric loveliness above:
If – however – I had one criticism, it would be that, on mass, thousands of women in the fifties and sixties aren’t actually very considerate at all. i’m not talking about stall holders. All the stall holders were wonderful. I’m talking about the other event goers. I can’t count how many times I was bashed into – and yeah, i’m a bit sensitive about getting bashed into right now – how many times people suddenly came to a halt right in front of me in the narrow isles between the stall. How many times people blocked said isles while they made up their mind whether it was worth moving the couple of feet to the left or the right to actually stand *in front* of the stall they were looking at.

Lots of people had drag-behind boxes on wheels, or cases (I think for sewing machines, which I assume they needed for some of the classes. And, you know, fair enough.) But it would have been nice if they’d remembered that having them meant that they were taking up twice as much room when they stopped short, and at a really good ‘knock you off your feet’ height.

(The people in wheelchairs, scooters, and pushing buggies – all used to being ignore and complained about – were naturally not a problem at all.)

By lunch time – only a hour or so into the event, my mother – who is smack bang in the middle of that demographic – said ‘i’m not sure I like being around so many other women’. Which is very sad.

But frankly there were people there who needed a telling off, rather than the tuts they themselves were doling out. *sigh*

***

Which is a miserable way to end a post so full of great things.

But it’s worth pointing out that I’m definately glad I went, (as I was last year) and I hope to go again next year, so nothing was able to get me down too much. :)

Hi, just a short note to let everyone know that I’m definately not going to be able to have a stand at the IKnitLondon show next month.

It’s sad, especially since the show last year really launched Oxford Kitchen Yarns as a business, and I had a WONDERFUL time there, but it’s a huge amount of work less that a month away from my due date, and what I really need to do in concentrate getting the shop stocked, and getting some rest (while I can.)

It’s sad, but there you go.

Hopefully I’ll get to do some shows later on next year.