When things don't go to plan!

Hello, Well my title does say it all at the moment, my plan at the start of the year was to write a blog post every week and here I am writing my next blog post a month after my last.. What is it with good intentions? Life just get’s in the way. I can’t even really understand why I haven’t written anything, yes my life has been busy but that’s not unusual it just seems to have slipped to the bottom of my ‘to do’ list, so here it is being pushed to the top.

So what have I been doing the last month, well we had Easter, which was lovely but very late this year and the children’s schools had the Easter break before the big day for two weeks no less!. So we had the excitement of Easter prolonged. By the time Easter Sunday came it felt like Christmas in our house, then straight after Easter Monday the kids went back to school, no enjoying there feast of chocolates everyday watching films, straight back and into ‘the virus’ This has been a strange bug that seems to target your weakest point. We have all had in some shape or form and it really wiped us out. I took my little girl to the doctors after a week of swollen tonsils and a nasty cough, the doctor was sympathetic but said it’s ‘a virus’ and many people are having it for up to a month…Oh Joy :( Anyway we all seem to be recovering now.

This time of year, for ‘work’ me it’s all about developing new products, specifically Christmas, but that also is not going to plan. I thought I would ease myself into this process by creating a small knitted pot cover not for Christmas but as a teachers present, this certainly has not gone to plan and I am going to shame myself by showing how wrong it’s gone. I just can’t quite understand it, it should have been so simple. I had imagined a small knitted pot with the personalisation ‘Mr Smith, thank you for helping me grow’ and to source a succulent plant to fit in it, so what went wrong?

Firstly, I am very conscious of the yarn we use and wanted to use a ‘sustainable cotton’ Hobbii & ‘Wool & the Gang’ are good sources for sustainable yarns but as this was a sample I have used some cotton yarn that I already have, then the pot. I dislike plastic pots but needed to keep the overheads reasonable so went with plastic but they have a raised lip around the top which makes knitting the shape harder, which means the pot cover slips off. I have not even got to sourcing the plant yet as have been quite disillusioned.

But the one thing I have learn’t over time is to persevere if something doesn’t work try again and again, I will succeed and it will become a product. However if I concentrate too much on Teachers presents I will miss deadline for Christmas, yes really so what to do? The answer is to do both, it’s tricky and may not go to plan, but then that’s life!

Until next time,

Jan