Creative Blog Tour

This weekend I was tagged by Tahnée of Woollen Wilderness, to take part in a creative blog tour. I'm not a big fan of random blog tags, but when I read the questions for this one, I knew I had to participate. 

1) What am I working on? 

Right now I'm working on soooo many things, both personal and for the blog/micro business. 

On the personal side I'm spinning a yarn for my mum for Christmas and knitting my dad a pair of socks. 

For the micro business I'm just about to release a pattern for charity, which always takes up a good deal of time. Then I've just sent a pattern into test knitting, so I have to tend to that every now and then. There are blog posts to write and I'm in the process of finding people to feature for 2015. I have a pattern yet to be written up and another to put finishing touches on. I need to get to all that if I have hopes of publishing my collection in 2015 (and I do!).

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre? 

I've thought long and hard about this. I know what the answer is for the blog: I try to be transparent and share the design process and its ups and downs. As for the designs themselves? I hope I'm coming into a certain feel. I want to design a wast scope of items and that means I'm dealing with a lot of 'firsts' at the moment. My design philosophy is 'simple with a twist', hopefully that shines through in my work.  

3) Why do I write/create what I do? 

Because I can't help it! For years I said that I would never design. Why would I bother when there are so many great designs out there? Well, I just reached a point when that no longer mattered. I had to design. There was this creative force inside me screaming to be let loose and play. Often I feel the same when I write. Actually my best pieces (in my humble opinion) are the ones where I just had to share what was on my heart. 

4) How does my writing/creative process work?

This is a difficult one because I don't think I have a process. Instead I have many, depending on the project. Sometimes I cast on a swatch, play with it and there is the idea that sparks a design. At other times a design is fully formed in my head before I even find needles and yarn to swatch for it. Sometimes it takes me no time at all to write and knit the sample. At other times a design spends months in the naughty corner, just to be finished in a matter of days once it has returned to grace.  

What I can say is that my process is very dependent on how busy my other occupations keep me. Being a full time student with a couple of part time jobs doesn't leave a lot of room for creative endeavours, so vacations seem to be my prime creation time. 
I keep a log of my blogposts and things to be done for the business every month in my bullet journal, which helps tremendously. There are other parts of the process I would still like to streamline though. That's a project for 2015. I'm still learning every day I work on something and I've made a list of a few things I'd like to implement in 2015 for the business. Maybe I should share those with you soon?

That's what I have to say for now. I think I'll continue to mull over these questions as they are great questions to ask yourself to further your business or hobby. I'm nominating my dear friend Zoë to take up the torch.