I fell off the blogging horse…or something. The fact is, I’m terribly busy and have let many things slide, including posting to this blog. I’m climbing back up on the horse now, although I’m not making any promises!

I’m in MD now, preparing for a school visit to Havre de Grace Elementary and the TNNA trade show in Columbus at the end of the month. I’m looking forward to both. Yesterday, I created an introductory slide show to the real slide show for the school visit. Got that? I’m fairly certain I won’t use it, even though it’s good and interesting. Time is short, and I suspect that when all is said and done, I’ll cut it. But I still had to make it. It was part of the process, and I was reminded recently that I must honor the process. So be it.

When I got tired of school visit prep yesterday, I switched to laying out the pattern for the first Needle and ThREAD bookmark. I’m working on a separate logo for those patterns, and the Needle and ThREAD program in general. I barely know how to use my drawing/photo-editing software, and it took a loooooooong time to cut out an image so that I could put it on a transparent background which I can then use in various ways. I was trying to do the whole giant thing at once in such a way that the tiniest mistake ruined all earlier work. It was like setting up a huge domino course without using stops in case one should fall over. Well, I knocked my huge domino course over multiple times before I figured out a way to create effective stops. On one hand, it was a great learning experience, it was fun, and I’m proud that I figured it out. On the other hand, it’s not an efficient way to get the necessary work done. Honor the process…honor the process.

I also wrote instructions for finishing the bookmark, reducing, reducing, reducing them to fit available space. Should I shrink the patterns a bit to allow more room for instructions? Are the instructions useful without accompanying images? I can put more detailed instructions on the web site, complete with color images. Do I “waste” a line to tell people to visit the web site for further instructions?

So many choices! The answers will present themselves as I continue to work on the layout. I’ve got a great start.