A couple of days ago, I posted about a sanity saver tool that I use all the time in my life as a designer.
Here’s another of my
most favorite tools
of the designer and author’s trade.
What is it?
A spreadsheet.
Why is a spreadsheet
such a big deal?
Believe me…
it’s truly one of
my favorite tools for a lot of reasons!
This is the spreadsheet from my latest book: The Woven Bag (the link is to Amazon, but it’s not one of the payback links…. it’s just the only link that I can find to the book at this point…. )
Anyhow…. when I am creating a book, …read more

I’ve been earning my living as a designer,  fiber artist, writer, workshop presenter, and other wild and wonderful ways (professional puppeteer included) for more than 35 years.  Over those decades, I have come up with some handy  ways of organizing my work.
When I am working on a new book,
(like I am right now)
I have dozens of projects in the works all at once,
and each of the projects has heaps of iterations.
I make a project over
and over and over,
refining and honing it.
Lots of the versions will simply
get frogged as soon as I recognize
a problem and note what I
have to do to …read more

The other evening, my daughter in law and I were both busy with our yarn.
She’s knitting some wonderful new bags and  I am working like crazy on new designs for projects for a book I am writing.
One of the things about designing a project is that you just have to be willing to tear everything apart until you get it right. And, sometimes, that means tearing it out and tearing it out and tearing it out.
It’s my job as a designer to make sure that I get the project right so the readers of the book won’t have to go …read more