Day in the Life of a Full-Time Crochet Designer | Podcast Episode #77

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Looking for a glimpse of the life of a crochet designer?

Dedri from Look at What I Made is on the show today to share her real-life experiences as a full-time designer, mom, and part-time worker. Dedri has a lot going on and somehow she can juggle it all and release some of the most gorgeous designs. One of those infamous patterns is Sophie’s Universe, a CAL published back in 2015 that is still incredibly popular today.

In this episode, I like to think of you as a fly on the wall as Dedri and I chat about our routines, struggles, and strategies. You’ll find that we structure our day and year quite differently but the one thing we do share is the simple fact that we get stuff done. My hope for you after hearing this episode is to walk away with some actionable tips from two designers that you try on your quest to see what works best for you.

This episode is especially relatable for those of you who are designers and content creators, however, we can all benefit from productivity tips to implement in all areas of life.

Episode Transcript

Brittany:
Hhello there, and welcome to episode number 77 of the BHooked podcast. I’m really excited that you’re here with me today. I’m your host, Brittany, and I am here to bring you something amazing.

First of all, before we get started, I want to ask you, have you ever heard of Sophie? Now, if you know what I’m talking about, you know exactly who Sophie is. And no, Sophie’s not a real person. Sophie is a project—a CAL that specifically happened in 2015, and this one project has been one of the most popular CALs I have ever seen. For good reason, too. It’s an absolutely beautiful blanket, and it was designed by one of the most talented makers in this community, Deirdre from Look at What I Made.

I have her on the podcast today, and we go all in. It’s more of a day-in-the-life type of episode. We talk about how she manages her day, her routine, how she juggles being a full-time mom and a part-time job and a full-time designer. This woman has got a lot going on and she’s figured out a lot of things the hard way. And she’s here to share those tips with you today.

And yes, we talk a lot about Sophie, because who wouldn’t want to talk about Sophie? It’s a beautiful project. Now, if you haven’t seen this project—this CAL—yet, just hit the pause button right now and do a quick Google search just so you can see what I’m talking about. You’re going to be floored. I know it.

Okay, so before we get into my chat with Deirdre, I want to take a moment to share with you Annie’s Block of the Month Club. Now, as you know, I’ve been doing a lot of exploring with subscription services. For me, I’ve really deemed those my pudding project. Deirdre and I actually talk about those in our chat today. But it’s really important for me to have a project that I can just deem my own so that I can maintain that proper balance between work and life, right?

When we’re designers, when we do this for our job but it’s also our hobby, we really need to find that balance. And having a subscription service like this has… So the reason why I think Annie’s Afghan Block of the Month Club is so unique is because, well, you don’t have the stress of finishing an entire project within that month before your next project arrives. We’re trying to remove the stress, not add to the stress. And this subscription service does that for me.

Rather than sending you one full project every month, you get a snippet of the project every single month, as well as the yarn, the pattern, and there’s even some DVD videos to follow for those of us who are brand new at crocheting and we need a little bit of guidance.

To learn more about Annie’s Block of the Month Club, you can head over to annieskitclubs.com/bhpodcast. From there, you’ll learn how much it costs each month to be a member, and they’re going to give you 50% off your first month. So that link once again is annieskitclubs.com/bhpodcast. Make sure all of those are lowercase and they’ll know that you heard it from me.

Now, there are a couple of resources that Deirdre and I mention in our chat today, and you can find all of that over on the show notes page. That link for today’s episode is behookedcrochet.com/session077. It’s a great place for you to leave your questions and your comments and learn more about Deirdre. You can see her links. I’ll definitely link to Sophie and some of the other things that she has going on. So just remember, behookedcrochet.com/session077.

All right. Now, if you are ready to just hear from two designers who are really just having a back-and-forth conversation, it’s going to be a lot like you’re a fly on the wall just listening to what Deirdre and I have to say about what it means to be a designer, how we manage our schedules. And you’ll see that there are some differences between her and I. I manage things a little bit differently than she does, and I know that’s going to be the same for you.

The moral of the story is to figure out what works best for you and implement that and do that. And my goal here today with this chat really is just to share some different perspectives with you so that you can think about each of our suggestions and that maybe you can try them out and you can figure out what works best for you and for your own craft business, your blog—whatever it may be. I think there’s going to be some good tips for you today.

So let’s just dive right in.

Deidre, hi, welcome to the BHooked podcast. It’s such a pleasure to have you here today.

Dedri: 5:53
Yeah, it’s a bit of a roller coaster.

Brittany: 5:56
I bet, I bet. First, can you tell me how you began your journey as a crochet designer?

Dedri: 6:02
So my granny taught me to crochet—my dad’s mom. When I was about seven, she taught me to make a granny square and I mastered it and I went, perfect, I can do this. I never want to do it again. And so I didn’t. I didn’t for years and years.

And then when I got pregnant with my second son, I really wanted to make him something, and we were quite skint at that time. We had very little money. So I saved up for months, I think, to buy these five balls of the cheapest, most horrid acrylic yarn I could buy. And I crocheted him a simple linen stitch baby blanket.

Brittany: 6:37
Yeah.

Dedri: 6:37
And then I enjoyed it so much, just the whole thing of, you know, making something for him, being hugely pregnant and sitting on the bed cross-legged and crocheting. And the whole thing—it was very nostalgic for me. So I wanted to do something else. And I started cutting up plastic bags to crochet with, tried experimenting with making newspaper yarn.

And then when things got better, I started buying yarn, obviously. And then a friend of my mom sent me a pattern for the sewing balls—the Amish puzzle sewing balls. Have you seen them?

Brittany: 7:11
Yes, I have. Yeah.

Dedri: 7:13
So she sent a pattern for that, and I was way too lazy to get my sewing machine out. So I thought, I’ll just crochet one. So I made a pattern for that. And it was really popular.

Brittany: 7:23
Yeah.

Dedri: 7:24
So then I just kept—because then I made something up and I was like, oh, look, I’ve designed something. I could do something else. So I kept making things up. And the more things I made, the more ideas I had. And I was dreaming in crochet patterns. I just didn’t have enough hours in the day to make all the things I wanted to make. So that’s where it started—with that puzzle ball.

Brittany: 7:46
Oh, man, that’s crazy. So that was the first pattern you ever made?

Dedri: 7:50
It wasn’t the first pattern I ever made. Before that, I did some little cars as well—some crochet car and a tractor and a digger loader. I did those, but they were not my best work, I wouldn’t say. I mean, they work. The patterns work, but I’m not particularly proud of how well they’re written.

Brittany: 8:10
Well, I’m surprised because those are not really easy things to make, especially the puzzle toys. That seems like a very complex design to even make, let alone design it. So that’s really incredible that that was one of your firsts.

Dedri: 8:27
But I think it helps that I’ve been sewing since I was little, and I like working with paper, constructing things. I can think in three dimensions quite well. So I think that made it much easier.

Brittany: 8:40
Oh, that’s really cool. I think that’s a great tip, too—to be able to take what you know from different hobbies and be able to apply that to crochet. I think there is a lot of overlap there that maybe people don’t realize.

Dedri: 8:52
No, definitely. And I do think people don’t realize because we get so stuck in the way something is. Like if a dress is made in fabric, it needs to be in fabric. Or if I see a design on a cushion, it doesn’t mean it has to be a cushion. If I see a pretty flower cushion that I like, it doesn’t just have to be a cushion and it doesn’t just have to be in fabric.

You could use the visuals of that to make something in yarn—a blanket, on a bag, or something else. Or oil flowers in the road—you know when the road is all wet and the oil drops in the water make these like colorful rainbow blobs. Have you ever seen them?

Brittany: 9:37
Yeah.

Dedri: 9:37
That inspires me. That makes me think of patterns—of crochet patterns.

Brittany: 9:44
Oh, man, that is so cool. So are you working up something right now, maybe behind the scenes?

Dedri: 9:44
Well, I’ve just revealed the thing that I’ve been working on behind the scenes for two years. So at this very minute, I’m just finishing up deadlines for other projects. So nothing exciting.

Well… I’m growing—I started a blanket two years ago. And in a similar vein to Sophie, I’m growing her bigger and bigger and bigger. But because of all the other things and all the deadlines that keep coming up—and this is—I call this my pudding project. It’s the one that’s my reward. I don’t want to rush it. And I need unbothered hours to work on it alone. I need a gap of two hours where it’s just me. I can figure out the maths, I can enjoy the journey, it’s not rushed. So I hardly ever get to work on that, because I very rarely have those two-hour free gaps. I’m still growing her behind the scenes, and I’m excited about her.

And my husband—he keeps saying to me, “Have you done it yet? Have you done it yet?”

Brittany: 10:43
Well, I can only imagine how amazing it’s going to be. I definitely want to talk about Sophie there in a little bit, because—gosh—that pattern, it went viral. And even now, two years later, it’s still one of the most—I would say one of the most popular blankets that is in existence. It’s all over Instagram still, two years later, and it just blows my mind. It’s gorgeous.

Dedri: 11:07
Thank you so much. It blows my mind as well, because I don’t—I think it was just a marriage of many things at the right time. It’s not—I mean, I think it’s a beautiful blanket, but I don’t think on its own it’s beautiful enough to have become as big as it has, if that makes sense.

Brittany: 11:28
Yeah.

Dedri: 11:29
It’s just—it’s gotten a life of its own. I think it’s the community. It’s the fact that there were step-by-step videos, that there were translations in so many languages, that it was free, that people could try a little bit. They’d go, “I could never do that.” And someone goes, “Oh, but I couldn’t—I didn’t think I could.” So they try a little bit and realize they can. Yeah. And their confidence grows and they get so excited.

It’s that whole feel-good feeling. The fact that other people say to them, “Look at this amazing thing you’re creating,” and they feel so good about themselves—which is what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a feel-good, encouraging, and uplifting project. And for them then to feel that they have the skills and the confidence to go out and buy more complex patterns that they never thought they would be able to do—because now they know it’s just a number of stitches. Like, every stitch is just a stitch. And if you take it one stitch at a time, you could do anything.

Brittany: 12:24
Exactly. And they’ve sort of overcame this hurdle that they didn’t think or believe that they could do with this one pattern. And like you said, it’s when somebody has a big win like that, it’s infectious. They want to share it with everybody. And I think that’s a good speculation as to why that pattern is still to this day, one of the most popular ones that you can find online.

Dedri: 12:50
I don’t quite know if it’s that popular.

Brittany: 12:54
I would say it is. I see it everywhere and I think it’s amazing. You know, there’s a lot of the complexity, too, that that’s intriguing to me because it looks from the outside. It looks like a very complicated pattern that there’s a lot involved. And knowing that you have it broken down for anybody, somebody who maybe is an advanced beginner or maybe maybe they don’t have been crocheting for a while, but they wouldn’t consider themselves an intermediate level or something like that, they’re able to actually make that thing. And it’s such a proud moment for them.

Dedri: 13:28
It makes me feel very proud. I feel a bit like Pollyanna.

Brittany: 13:34
I bet. I bet. So take me into the present day. What do you have going on right now? I know you have three boys that keep you very occupied. And I know you’re still designing here behind the scenes. But what is like your typical week look like right now?

Dedri: 13:51
I work at a radiotherapy department. I’m serving Cross Hospital three days a week. So Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, I go to work. And my husband works from home, takes the kids to school. On Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday I work from home—well, when I say work from home, that’s crochet related—and then I get to take the kids to school and pick them up, which is really nice because we’ve managed to move away from having to have a childminder to being able to spend a little bit more time with the boys.

So on those days I would generally get up, I try and get up a little bit earlier depending on what I’m working on. If I’m in the middle of a crochet along or something, then I will get up a good hour and a half before I usually do so that I can go through comments and emails before the day starts, because that takes up a lot of time—admin and troubleshooting and answering questions. So then I would do that, we’d get the boys up, get them to school.

On a Wednesday, I do uniform sales at the school to help them sell uniforms. And then after that, I come back about 11 o’clock. Then I finish some more emails, do whatever I need. Someone said, “Eat the frog.” So I do all the things I don’t want to do before 12 o’clock. And then I will sit down and work on whichever deadline I have going at the moment—crochet projects.

So then I would crochet until 3 o’clock when I go to pick them up again. And then when they come home, they generally play Fortnite or run around in the garden. And then I finish up some more administration. If I have a blog post to write, I’ll sit and do that then, although I’ve not been doing a lot of blogging for the last year. And then it’s dinner time and then they play around some more, a little bit of shouting at each other, me included. Then I will come and sit down and I will work again. I usually work until 11 o’clock, maybe 12 at night.

Brittany: 15:54
Oh, wow. So you have a ton going on. I can’t even imagine how you structure and fit this all in. Have you learned anything over the last couple of years of working? Well, you said that you like to do the things you don’t want to do before noon. That was probably a learning process. Is there some other structuring that kind of goes into your week based on things like that that you’ve learned?

Dedri: 16:21
Well, getting up and doing admin emails first thing in the morning is because if I do it later in the day—or a lot of the times when I go to work—I will answer things or try and write things or crochet on the tube. Someone somewhere said once that it’s a “touch once” principle, where if you pick something up, go put it where it belongs. Don’t put it somewhere else and then later pick it up again, because you just make work for yourself.

And I find that if I do that in the morning—if I get up really early, I come sit down and I do, “Let’s do this,” and I just go through them and I action them—then there aren’t any distractions from the kids. It’s not late afternoon where I’m starting to feel, oh, I could have a nap now.

So that’s my principle. My optimal time is first thing in the morning, like five o’clock, half past five in the morning. So that I’ve learned just from a lot of wasting my own time reading things maybe six times in the day before I actually… and then the problem with that as well is sometimes then when the new emails come in, that one just drops way to the bottom. And then the more that come in, the further along that one gets. And then I lose emails. It’ll be two weeks before I respond to something that I’d really wanted to respond to and I’ve completely forgotten about.

So that for me is incredibly important—to try and, as soon as I open an email, answer it. And before noon as well. That’s just because I just function better in the morning. In the afternoon I need to do more active stuff. Otherwise, I want to fall asleep in front of the computer.

Brittany: 18:18
I don’t blame you there. How many emails do you think you get in a day?

Dedri: 18:23
A lot. Let me think for you. At the moment, my inboxes are on unread emails, but most of them, bear in mind, are website comments, which I’ve already actioned on the website, or things that I’ve just marked as unread so that I can find them easier later. But what I’m looking at now is 1,020 emails between four inboxes.

Brittany: 18:47
Oh, my goodness. That makes my heart race a little bit for you.

Dedri: 18:51
Yeah. And not all of them need to be actioned. A lot of them are people writing to me to tell me that they can make my website better or things like that—things that I don’t… and I can’t screen for because I’ve already set up screens.

So all my Facebook comments go into a specific folder, because I don’t need to deal with them in my inbox—I deal with them in Facebook. But that’s another thing that someone told me to do—to get certain things to go into specific folders so that I can keep them should… I don’t know, the world exploded and Facebook no longer exists. I could see my Facebook comments, but I don’t need to action them.

So to make my life easier by getting rid of all the things that I don’t need to see and don’t need to action. Unfortunately, there are so many things that you can’t screen for, because I can’t help if someone in China emails me to ask me if I want to buy 1,000 baby bibs.

Brittany: 19:47
Right, right. So that’s a great tip—to sort of segregate them or put them into different buckets based on the different need. What email platform are you using that kind of helps you with that?

Dedri: 20:01
Well, I just use, I’ve got a Google account for my, for the website emails. And then I’ve got, I use my own personal email for most of everything else because that’s the one that’s most easiest to access from everywhere.

Brittany: 20:17
Okay. Okay. So I’m thinking I use Gmail myself. Of course, I’ve got the Gmail email address for YouTube because it’s required for that. But then I also have my domain email address. I’ve got my personal email addresses as well. And I use Gmail for all of that. So I’ve integrated all of my different email addresses and they kind of go in the same bucket.

So then I’m able to see everything, but it is separated based on accounts. So I can separate it if I need to. And I know Gmail has the feature to be able to—and I can’t think of the name of it right off the top of my head—but you can filter and stick things in certain… I think they’re called labels. It’s basically like little subfolders. But I’ve never been able to get that set up properly.

I know you can do it based on keywords. If you have something come up in the subject line very frequently, you can put it into one label so that way it doesn’t clutter your inbox. I know for me, if I see a ton of unread emails, it just—my anxiety level kind of… it’s taken up a notch. So I try to avoid that if I can so that I can continue to be productive throughout the day.

Dedri: 21:35
I know. And it’s horrendous. It does chase up your anxiety levels. But at the same time, then my dad used to say to me, “If you’re going to give yourself out for a toffee, you have to expect to be chewed.” So if I’m saying to everyone, “Look, if you have any questions, please contact me,” then I have to expect to answer those queries. And as much in depth as I can, no matter how seemingly simple the question might be.

Brittany: 22:04
Yeah, I think that is a given for a designer of any nature, whether it be knitting or crochet. I feel like there is that expectation that not only should we have to reply to inquiries that come through, but also want to. I think as designers, we want to share these things with people. And we’re not perfect. We do make mistakes every now and then. I cringe every time I’ve realized I’ve made a mistake, but I’m human and I’m grateful that people bring that to my attention. But I really do want to help them. And I know that all designers probably share in that same feeling.

Dedri: 22:45
So that’s just… and that part of it, I don’t mind. That’s the bit that I like. Sometimes I think, “Why did I just spend half an hour answering that question?” Because sometimes that is how long it’ll take me to go in depth into something if it’s complicated to explain. But this is why I write my patterns the way I do. And this is what I do it for.

I can tell you that one of the big things that I’ve learned—because you were asking me before about what I’ve learned from experience—is to say no. And I’m still learning that. And it took me a good two years after learning it to say no properly for the first hard, big thing.

Brittany: 23:29
Yes, that was a big one for me too. I read a book called Essentialism, and if you’re interested in really just simplifying your life, it does address being able to say no to the right things. That was a big help for me. But I’m still struggling with that too. I think we just want to help people, so it’s really hard to just say no. But I think that’s more in terms of not with helping people.

Dedri: 23:58
That’s more in terms of workload—like saying no to opportunities. That you have this absolute fear of missing out if you say no.

Brittany: 24:10
Exactly. I love that you said it that way too, a fear of missing out. I think we all can expect that. So you’re juggling a lot of different things—of course, the inquiries that come in, the questions and comments that come in as a result of your designs—but you’re also moderating and shifting through different opportunities that are coming your way too.

Dedri: 24:37
Yes. And that’s hard because it’s so wonderful to get these opportunities. I think, wow, how blessed am I? Never thought I’d get all these opportunities. And then you have to say no to so many of them. Yeah, it’s tough. Which feels in a way almost worse than not having been asked—although it isn’t. Please keep asking me.

Brittany: 24:58
Right, right. It’s just when the right things align, then we can say no. I know one of the things that I’m really working towards right now is being able to have the opportunity to say yes to something. I sort of got it in my head that it was better to plan everything out for the entire year because then I didn’t have to worry about that anymore. I knew that I was covered. I knew what I was going to be working on for the whole year. I could just be as productive as I possibly could be. But then that doesn’t really leave room for opportunities that come your way to be able to say yes.

Dedri: 25:36
And for spontaneity. That’s the thing is what I find. So I write a column for a magazine monthly. And I love it. And it forces me every month to create something and to write a column. Yeah. But that means that time is blocked out. Because if you think I have Wednesdays, Thursdays and weekends. So the hours I have to crochet or to design stuff, if I do that column and I do the pattern, then I’d say, say six of those days out of the 24 I have in a month, however many I have, 32, I can’t even count now, they’re gone.

So those thoughts are gone. That’s like, say two weeks worth. So half of my Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sundays are gone. Yeah. And then if I… Then when I start doing that and then someone else says, oh, can you design this for us? And I go, yes. And then all of a sudden I have no time to be spontaneous and that is when my magic happens. That’s when I’m at my best is when I can be spontaneous.

Brittany: 26:43
Oh, I totally agree with that too. That is definitely something that I have experienced as well. Some of my better patterns, my more popular patterns were ones that I just– strolled down the yarn aisle and I said, Ooh, that looks pretty. I bet it would be a great scarf and just made something out of it. And then it was, and then it was exactly.

Dedri: 27:04
Yeah. And that’s another thing you’re saying with the yarn and the color. Sometimes it’s just, it’s not even the design. It’s, it’s just the perfect marriage of stitches and color and yarn. Exactly. Like if, if you’ve done it in any other yarn or color way, it, people wouldn’t have necessarily noticed it. That makes sense. And that’s part of the… I mean, it is part of the whole process, isn’t it?

Brittany: 27:30
It is. It is. It feels very hit or miss. I know sometimes I’ll work up a pattern in one set of colors because that’s what I have. But then maybe when I’m filming the tutorial, since I’ve already used that other yarn, I’m using maybe different colors. And the second one that was maybe not planned as well as the first one always ends up doing better. So I’m always scratching my head. It’s really hit or miss. You just never know what is going to take hold.

Dedri: 27:57
I know, I know. Sometimes you look at something and think, oh, this is so pretty. This is going to do well. And then no one likes it. Right. Well, not no one, but you know, then it just sort of like flops down. And then sometimes you make something and you’re like, it’s just a quickie and I’ll post it, like you said, with a scarf. And then people really like it.

And that makes me question myself because then I’m like, do I not have any judgment? Should I even be doing this if I cannot judge if something’s nice or not?

Brittany: 28:26
Yeah, I think these are really important struggles to be brought to the surface too because I know we let people see what we want them to see online. Maybe your audience, my audience doesn’t see the fact that we’re really stressing out by like, oh, we poured our heart into this project. And then it wasn’t nearly as popular as we thought it would be. And so we have a lot of self-doubt over that. And I want everybody to know that that is so normal.

Dedri: 28:58
No, it is. And from, as I’m sure you know, from interacting with other bloggers, or not bloggers, designers, it’s a common struggle. Yeah. Like self-doubt is a very common struggle and people I know and admire and then and they’ll be like I’m not sure if this is good enough and I look at them and go what are you talking about of course it is forgetting that that’s me most of the time as well.

Brittany: 29:26
Yeah I know we focus so much on our numbers our analytics our statistics I mean we have to be in those things as content creators and as designers, but I feel like that puts such an unrealistic, oh gosh, I can’t even think of the word, like that.

Dedri: Expectation?
Brittany: Expectation or it.
Dedri: Perception?
Brittany: Yeah, of what it actually is because maybe those numbers aren’t as high as what we thought they were. We’re using those analytics, those numbers to sort of judge the project and judge the success of it.

Dedri: 30:05
Yes, and I do, I’ll admit, I do stall for my project as well. Like, my self-worth a lot of the time is tied up in how people respond to something, especially if it’s been a big project. Yeah. And it’s taken a lot of, like, it’s not something that I just did in a day. It’s something that I’ve spent hours and hours. Like, Sophie, I stopped counting after 2,000 hours invested in it.

Brittany: 30:35
Yeah.

Dedri: 30:35
In the writing and the photographing and everything. So, yeah, but I look at really, really popular designers and bloggers and I don’t know how they manage the numbers. And then I think, you know, on the one hand, all of us want to be, I suppose everyone wants to be well-known for something, but I’m at a place where I’m very happy with the level of followers I have and because then it’s manageable for me and with the quality of followers I have because more than the numbers there are a lot of people I engage with and people I’ve made real friends with through crochet and crochet designing and they’re incredibly important to me and they’ve like become real life friends yeah yeah people I correspond with like pen pals like One lady sends me photos of her chickens and her sheep, and I love reading about them.

Brittany: 31:37
Yeah, that is so cool. It’s like this wonderful community that you’ve built.

Dedri: 31:43
It is. I really feel like I’ve got a very supportive community, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. And those are not in the thousands. Yes. They are a small and very dear group.

Brittany: 31:59
Well, those are the best– audience members friends community to have right there and it’s definitely a blessing to be able to have those and have those relationships as a result of something that you were passionate about anyways that you were probably going to do anyways but you were able to make a lot of friends in the process.

Dedri: 32:19
Yes and a lot of support as well so and I hope that I support them as well.

Brittany: 32:24
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you do. Now you had mentioned before a little bit about like time blocking or time management. And this is something that I’m working on myself. I am constantly trying to get better at time management. And I love learning how people manage their calendar so that perhaps I can take some of those tips and see if it works for me as well. And I know a lot of my listeners are really into time management, especially this time of year.

We’re all sort of mapping out our 2019, our next year. We’re trying to plan for our most productive year or our best year. Yes. In August, I sit down and I start evaluating the first half of the year and I say, okay, this worked really well. This didn’t. How can I take this thing that didn’t and make it better next year?

So I’ll look at my struggles and my pain points and I want to do less of that in the following year and do more of it in the beginning of the year. But because I really do like to try to stay very far ahead of my calendar, my content calendar, it doesn’t always work that way.

But I like to, at least for the platform like this — the podcast or maybe just an informative blog post — things that I’m maybe not working on with sponsors, I like to do that as far in advance as I can so that I can have more free time to do like my pudding projects, right? So do things that I really enjoy.

So I like to do this in the month of August. I’m encouraging my listeners to do the same thing too because right now, it’s fresh in our mind what isn’t working this year and what is. And if we can just write about it, journal about it, then we can learn from that and we can set goals for next year, too.

That’s a really great idea. And I like the way it’s broken down. I think it’s called the Elephant Planner. And it has a couple of pages in the beginning for you to mind map and just sort of give an overview of how you want your year to go. Of course, it gives you a section to list your different goals. And then it’s broken into like a monthly page, a weekly page, and a daily page, which obviously I won’t fill out any of that now.

But in the back, there’s a big section with just nothing but blank pages. So I am going through all of those blank pages right now and filling in what has worked, what hasn’t worked, some differences that I want to make within the website. That really is one of my big things right now is I want to improve the user experience on my site.

I have hundreds of posts and patterns and it’s not all very easy to find right now. So I’m sort of going through those and mind mapping the user experience on the website side. And, you know, I’m just doing all kinds of things. But in that mix is definitely time management and figuring out, okay, even though I’m tracking my time, I know how much time it takes to work through a sponsored project.

There’s a lot of variability in that. Sometimes it takes me a lot more and sometimes it takes me a lot less time. So I’m trying to find the proper balance so that I can plan for next year maybe so I’m not working so close to deadlines or feeling like I’m stressed or can’t be spontaneous.

Dedri: 36:07
I just have to tell you that you sound extremely organized. And if you saw how disorganized I was, you would probably have a panic attack. Oh, no. Like, I finish deadlines three o’clock in the night before they need to be mailed.

Brittany: 36:25
Oh man, you know, so that really is how a lot is going this year for me. There were some things that happened this year. My husband and I actually relocated to a different location and just having—well, I had a pretty comfortable buffer up into the point where we moved. Then after we moved I started getting closer and closer to the actual deadline and then it was just really hard to make up for that.

We had a dog in the family for 12 years and he got cancer this year and he needed some special care. And so I’m really just on the tail end of like where somebody basically took, picked my life up and then shook it. Yeah. So I’m, I’m, I’m catching up. You know, we actually had to say goodbye to him. He had a very aggressive form of cancer and malignant melanoma and it grew in his mouth and I tell you what I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. It was such a terrible experience seeing him be completely healthy, being a very healthy 12-year-old lab and then, you know, I just happened to see it in his mouth one day and just basically freaked out.

We did everything we could. We had surgery to have it removed and we were hopeful that they got everything, but unfortunately they weren’t. And that is just a very poor diagnosis and a poor prognosis. So about two and a half weeks ago, we finally had to say goodbye. And man, it was one of the most difficult things that we have ever had to do.

Dedri: 38:06
I can just imagine. Yeah. I remember my brother when we had to say goodbye to his family.

Brittany: 38:12
Yeah. I think that’s the good part in the story is that we can come out on top knowing that we’ve learned something from the experience.

Dedri: 38:54
Yeah. I use a bullet journal. Have you ever heard of that?

Brittany: 38:59
I have heard of that and I haven’t tried that but I think I would really love that.

Dedri: 39:04
I think you would really like it. It’s like this elephant one where you have the month and the week and the day except it’s not already blocked out so if one day you have a ton of things to do then you just keep writing and if the next day you only have three things then you don’t waste any space. Yeah, and I think that would be great enjoy. Yeah, and that’s the only way that I actually remember my deadlines because I have.

Brittany: 39:29
Yes, so I know that that’s one thing I always feel guilty about sometimes when I get to my day on like in my actual calendar where I’m writing it by hand. Some days I don’t really have a whole lot to say or to do. Maybe I’m just focusing on one task and I know it’s going to take most of the day. So I kind of feel a little bit guilty or a little weird that I’m leaving that page completely blank. And sometimes I’ll skip it altogether.

I actually use a physical planner that I write in by hand because I just, something about putting the pen to paper, that connection just works for me to sort of—

Dedri: 40:09
It does. I tried, yeah, I tried online things and they didn’t work as well.

Brittany: 40:13
Yeah. I mentioned on the show last week about CoSchedule. That’s the online software that I use for my content calendar management. And sometimes it feels weird that I’m sort of doing the same thing twice but something about that it helps to keep me organized and helps me to not let things slip through the cracks.

Dedri: 40:36
Yeah and this is the nice thing about the bullet journal as well as all the system is you’re supposed to—so I’ve written everything out for today whatever I don’t do today I make a little right pointing arrow next to it and say I’ve scheduled it for the next day and then I write them all out again tomorrow. Hmm. So by the time you’ve done that four times, you’re so sick of writing the thing out again that you just do it so you can stop writing it out already. Like you don’t just leave it on that day. Next day, you write the whole list out again.

Brittany: 41:06
Yeah. Yeah. And that makes sense. I know the more you write it, you commit it to memory. Yes. So I’m curious, do you have any kind of like morning routine or morning ritual and like a shutdown routine during the day?

Dedri: 41:21
I don’t have a shutdown routine. I used to read before bed, which I loved. But the longer I work, by the time I get, I stop working when I can’t keep my eyes open. So there’s no shutdown routine. And that is something that will change next year. I’m committed to finding time to read in the evenings to just have a bit of wind down and me time. But in the mornings I do, like I said, I do, I get up and just read. Nice and fresh, cup of coffee, tackle as much of the frogs as I can.

Brittany: 41:55
I love that reference.

Dedri: 41:58
I can’t remember who said it. It was, is Brene Brown or someone that mentioned about eating your frog?

Brittany: 42:03
Oh yeah.

Dedri: 42:04
Doing the thing you hate, the thing you least want to do. You go through your list and the thing you least want to do, you do that first.

Brittany: 42:12
Yeah. And I think we can relate that to design too. Yeah. I know as designers, we love most of the process, but I’m sure we could probably rate each of those to-dos that is involved in working a project or working a design from start to finish. Sometimes it’s easier if we can just tackle those things that we don’t want to do first. Just get them out of the way and then do what we enjoy.

Dedri: 42:37
Yeah and I can tell you what I have found with the design process is I dislike… having to edit the patterns the most, like to write them in the format, the final format. So I used to just scribble my notes down and then at the end, I’d have to write it all out neatly. And because I write quite long winded, I don’t use the very abbreviated style because I want people to yeah, it exactly as I want it in the final pattern so that I then don’t have that headache of having to edit that afterwards. Oh, yeah. And I find that very helpful. So I do make more work for myself, but I make less stress for myself.

Brittany: 43:46
Yeah, I can imagine that you are saving yourself some time in the process because I can think back to times when I… Now, typically, I like to use Evernote when I’m writing the pattern because I can type quicker than I can write. So I’ll type it as I’m working through it. And if I… if I’m sort of rushing through that process or if I’m trying to meet an aggressive deadline, then there’s nothing worse than getting to the point where you’re either filming the video or you’re writing the final version like on the back end of your website and realizing that something doesn’t match up. Because at that point, then you have to go back and start almost from ground zero.

Dedri: 44:27
Count, just read your stitches. And yeah, and I find that very frustrating. So that’s one thing that I’ve actively tried to eliminate although sometimes when I am really rushed I will still just scribble it down.

Brittany: 44:40
Yeah so do you have a normal routine that you follow or a normal set of like tasks that you work through as you’re going through a design or are you more like just take it as it comes at you sort of approach?

Dedri: 44:55
As in right from the inspiration or just as I’m now going to make a bag and then I start—

Brittany: 45:02
I would say after the inspiration hits when you’re like okay I have this idea in my head I want to turn it into a pattern what do you do next?

Dedri: 45:12
Sometimes I will—okay so let’s run with I’m going to make a bag so I’m going to make a bag. I have an idea to make a bag with diagonal colored stripes. Sometimes what I will then do is I will Google patterns to see diagonal colored stripes, see what is out there, see if anything looks remotely like what I want to do. Because if I Google that and 20 hits already come up on the first page that look exactly like what I want to do, then I’m not going to do it.

Brittany: 45:41
Yeah.

Dedri: 45:43
So then I see, oh, I can’t see anything that really looks like what I have in my head. Maybe I’ll search some stitches, see if there’s a specific stitch that I like the look of. And then I will go to my yarn stash, which is, you know, and grab colors.

And what I find really helpful is, because I use predominantly Srapis yarns, and they’ve released these boxes of cutie pies. So it’s little 10 or 12, what are they? There’s one right here. 10 gram balls of all the colors and I find them very handy for choosing colors so I’ll grab a few of those and then I play around with putting colors together.

And then I will sit down and start with the colors next to me. I will list all the colors that I have first thing I do because that’s another thing I hate is writing all the colors in the proper abbreviations. I will write all the colors I have sometimes I put a little piece of the color on the ball band and clip all the ball bands together so if I later need to reference that I’ve definitely referenced the colors correctly.

Then I’ve got those six or seven ball bands clipped together with a scrap of yarn on them and then once I’ve done that I’ll sit down and I will make my first round and I’ll write it. I’ll make my second round and I’ll write it. If it’s complicated I will often draw out what I want to do so if say I need to create a pattern over four or five rounds and I can’t figure it out in my head then sometimes I will do a little chart or a drawing.

And what I would also sometimes do is I make a little bit of each of those five rounds to see how they work together so I’ll have all these balls of yarn dangling off my work as I try and figure out how the stitches should interact especially if there are front post and back post details things that specific repeats.

So I want to make a petal. How many repeats do I need? Things like that. So I’ll literally do 20 stitches of the one round, 20 stitches of the next round on top of that, if that makes any sense. And then once I know they’ll work, then I write them all those instructions, frog what I’ve done, and then do them all and check that the instructions are correct.

Brittany: 47:57
Ah, that’s really brilliant that you’re just working up like a little piece or a little snippet of the pattern with the stitches interacting with one another and seeing how the colors play with one another.

Dedri: 48:10
And also the stitches, if you have to increase or decrease or if it will work out in the corners.

Brittany: 48:16
Yeah, yeah, that’s really cool. I know that’s one of the things that I dread the most is, well, you’ve got this idea in your head, but you don’t know how it’s going to translate into stitches.

Dedri: 48:28
And if you’re not taking that approach correctly, what you have to do is you just have to work it up and then let’s say the round and then you get four rounds in and go actually this is not going to work.

Brittany: 48:42
Yeah and for people who are really strict about managing their time I mean yes you did learn something in that process but you’re still going back to where you started and having to do it all over again so that’s a smart approach. I’m sure that saves you a lot of time I would say.

Dedri: 48:57
It does. And I would say that’s definitely one of my top tips is if you’re going to design something and it’s complex enough that you need to give out your repeats for multiple rounds at the same time, then doing a corner is really handy. So sometimes I will just do, I’ll start, do the little start corner, do one side and the next corner to check that it’ll work.

Brittany: 49:23
Mm-hmm.

Dedri: 49:24
And then you don’t necessarily have to frog that work either, because if they’re all in different colors. Yeah. Hello. Yeah. Yeah. If they’re all in different colors, then you can just leave the others dangling. So once I’ve done these five, then I can finish the first one, finish the second one if they’re in different colors. So then I don’t have to frog. I’ve not lost any work.

Brittany: 49:43
But I have the opportunity to tweak those corners as I need to.

Dedri: 49:46
And if I then decide, actually, what I did in the first corner really is not going to work, and you do it right in the second one, you can just unpick in reverse the first corner. You don’t have to go all the way back. You just unpick the first few stitches in reverse.

Brittany: 50:01
Oh, so, so brilliant. I’m going to have to try that for sure. I don’t know why I’ve never thought about that before, but yeah, such a good tip. Thank you. So we’ve covered a lot of ground here. I know, so you said up to this point, you get to this step where you’re really just feeling things out, once you know it works, then what do you do?

Dedri: 50:25
Then I complete those rounds, writing them in coherent sentences as I go, like writing the pattern out completely. Okay. I don’t tend to take photos as I go at that point if I need photos as I go because that’s just more extra work that if I then decide actually this really isn’t going to work, then I’ve introduced another step that didn’t need to be done. So I would generally make it once it’s finished and I’m happy with it. I will go back and remake it if I need round-by-round photos.

Brittany: 50:59
Okay. Okay. I was going to ask about that too. That is one thing I do sort of the opposite of that. I do take photos as I go, but I keep them in a separate folder so that I know if it didn’t work out, then I won’t be publishing those photos that aren’t actually accurate anymore. Just because I’m one of those people that I sort of have sock syndrome, what they call sock syndrome. And I love making the first thing. I don’t always love making it again. So I try to get around that by taking photos as I go.

Dedri: 51:30
I do take some photos as I go. I just don’t take step-by-step photos. And by step-by-step, I mean literally everything, showing—so eight photos for one round showing stitch placement, you know, have you seen the Sophie pattern?

Brittany: 51:47
I have not seen the physical pattern.

Dedri: 51:49
No. So there are many collages. Like one of the rounds has like 36 photos. Wow. It literally shows you where to put the hook in, how to pull up a loop. It shows you all the—so that I don’t do. If I’m just making, I’ll make it.

But what you’re saying about not wanting to go back, that’s what I find myself doing now because I have about 14 patterns I can publish and none of them have photos. Patterns written, tested, I just don’t have the heart to go back and make them all step by step. And I don’t know if I should just publish them the way they are because they’re followable. They don’t need step-by-step. But I have created an environment where my followers expect a certain style from me and that is very step-by-step.

Brittany: 52:42
Yeah, that’s an important tip too. Once you start something as a designer… there is some sort of expectation to continue to do that thing. I know for a while I was doing videos every time I could when I really wasn’t doing this full-time and I was still working at my full-time job. I would do as many videos as I could, but I just didn’t have all of the free time to invest in a video. There’s a lot of production that goes into that, but I was still designing and I still wanted to share those designs.

And yeah, whenever I would publish a pattern that didn’t have video that expectation was raised like, “Hey, when are you going to do a video for this one?” So I try to make it a point to only do videos now because that’s what I became known for.

Dedri: 53:31
It is. It is hard when you—what do they call it—buttonhole? What do they call it when you’re cast into a certain role? You’ve caught yourself into a certain role. It’s hard then to get out of it. Yeah, exactly.

I do. And my heart is still for adventurous beginners. But there are a lot of people who started the Sophie journey with me as adventurous beginners and now no longer need that support. So I feel like I want to move on a bit and have patterns that are a bit less hand-holdy, so that the people who need hand-holding can do the patterns that hold their hand. And then the ones that feel they can fly now, they can just go do the patterns that are less beginner-friendly.

Brittany: 54:21
Yeah, it’s almost like a journey that you’re taking them through. You’ve got all of these great things that you’ve already prepared, and they are very beginner-friendly or adventurous beginners, and they’re taking that next step with you. I wouldn’t think that would be too far of a stretch to sort of move in that direction.

Dedri: 54:40
I think I’m going to focus on that.

Brittany: 54:42
Yeah. And the lesson here is, although we never have it completely figured out, I think some planning should go into what you want to be known for. For me, it really just happened that videos were just my thing. I love the production side of that. And for you, you love the step-by-step, stitch-by-stitch, easy-to-follow process, photos, and that’s what’s become expected of you. So knowing that—from two designers who are sort of looking back and saying, “Well, maybe I would have done something differently had I known this”—then I think that’s a good tip for people.

Dedri: 55:26
It is. And I think as well what we don’t think about if you’re going to start out—when I started out, I didn’t think, “Oh, I’m going to have thousands of followers, so maybe I need to think more carefully about things.” I just started out. I just wanted a place to share. But if I could give myself one piece of advice back then, I’d go, “Start as if you have a million followers.” It doesn’t matter if you only have 10, but start as if you have a million and cater for that.

Oh, man, that is so true. Set yourself up. Because I would have done things so differently. I would have… thought a lot more about things instead of going, “Oh, I’m just quickly going to share this, you know, to the five people that follow me.”

Brittany: 56:09
Yeah. Yes. I always had it in my head in the early days that nobody’s going to find this. Nobody knows who I am. I’m just putting this out there for myself and for my mom. And like you, I would have done a lot different had I had that mentality. So I love that tip.

Well, I definitely want to end on that note because I want everybody to remember that. It’s a very important message. But before we wrap things up, I do want to give people a chance to connect with you online and definitely check out Sophie and all of the other amazing patterns you have. Where is the best place for people to go to find more info about you and see what you have going on?

Dedri: 56:52
So on my website is the best place. Well, that’s where all my patterns are. And that’s lookatwhatimade.net. And then I’m also on Ravelry. My patterns are on Ravelry. I have a Facebook page, which is also just lookatwhatimade. And I’m on Instagram. I’m on Instagram as barbitandaisy.

Brittany: 57:11
All right, awesome. And—

Dedri: 57:13
That’s another thing, if I had thought about it.

Brittany: 57:17
Yes, another one of those things. Well, I’ll link to all of that in the show notes because people are usually on the go as they’re listening to this, so they don’t have to memorize any of that. So it will be there.

And do you have any… maybe something exciting coming up that you can tease us a little bit? I know you’re so well known for these cowls. And I’m sure people who have followed Sophie are just like chomping at the bit for something new. Do you have anything in the works? Well, I’m starting a new cowl in September. Ah, okay. So where can people go to find out more about that?

Dedri: 57:56
It’s going to be the official Schipjes CAL for 2018. So that’s been publicized. It’s called Ubuntu. And it’s a big hexagonal blanket with a star in the middle.

Okay, very cool. And that is—they can find out more on Scheepjes’ website, on my website, on Facebook. I’ve seen it pop up quite a few times. Instagram, I’ve seen it pop up a few times as well. But that’s the thing that I’ve been working on for the last two years behind the scenes.

Brittany: 58:31
Oh, wow. Okay. So we’ll definitely link to that too if people are looking for a new cowl to join. That’s definitely a great one to consider.

So, Deidre, thank you. And it’ll—

Dedri: 58:40
Have step-by-step videos as well. Oh, sorry.

Brittany: 58:43
Oh, no, yes, perfect. No, that’s perfect. That’s great for people to know that there will be videos. I know my audience, like I said, you guys love your videos so anytime that I can point you in the direction of a cowl that I did not have two years to dedicate to I would definitely push you in that direction to give that one a try.

So yes, it has been such a pleasure connecting with you. It’s been such a great opportunity to hear how you work and how you get things done. And I’m so grateful that you were able to share that with the listeners here and myself too. I know there are some things that I learned from you that I would love to implement. And I know other people, they took something away from this episode too. So thank you so much for your time today.

Dedri: 59:19
Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Brittany: 59:22
Now, I don’t know about you, but at the end of this conversation, I was just wondering, wanting more. It was so great to talk to Deirdre and to see how she does things, compare that to the way that I do things, all in an effort to try to help you accomplish your goals.

And I know you had some great takeaways from our chat. And so I just want to say right now, whatever notes you have taken, whether they’re mental or physical notes, go implement one of them right now. It’s fresh in your mind. Take action on one of these things and you’ll be one step closer to achieving your goals.

So Deirdre, thank you so much for that wonderful chat. I can’t wait to connect with you again in the future. And for you, my listener, thank you too. You are the sole purpose for what I do here on the podcast and over on my website. I love you guys from the bottom of my heart.

Just know that although I get so many requests and messages coming at me from all different directions, I may not be able to answer every single one of them, but just know that I do read every single request that comes through and that completely shapes the resources that I provide for you, especially here on the podcast.

So if you want to make a request, you can go over to my contact page. Leave me that request there. I’ll read it and I will do everything I can to get it on the schedule. My goal is to help you accomplish your goals, whether that be making yarn into your hobby or your lifestyle.

Now, before we wrap things up for today, don’t forget, please check out Annie’s Block of the Month Club. I think this is something you’re really going to love. And if you just can’t possibly take on another project every month, I totally get that. But perhaps you know somebody who is wanting to learn how to crochet.

This service is really great for beginners because the first couple of months, the pattern is going to be geared towards beginners and you do get those DVDs to help you and walk you through row by row.

That link, once again, to check out Annie’s Block of the Month Club is annieskitclubs.com slash bhpodcast. Once again, that last little bit all needs to be lowercase. And if you decide that this is something that’s right for you or somebody that you know, if you could please use that link and that will tell Annie’s that you heard about this podcast through the show. And because they are a sponsor, that is a big help to the show.

So I really appreciate you using that link, taking action on the things that you heard in today’s episode. And I can’t wait to serve you next week. I’ll see you then. Bye-bye.