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Episode 38: Exploring the Creative Process
148 Plays1 year ago
I explore ways to boost and view the creative process and how it applies to fiber design. I also look at my own struggle with creativity and how in recent months I have worked to improve it.
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Transcript
Introduction to Craft, Design, Edit, Sleep, Repeat
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to Craft, Design, Edit, Sleep, Repeat with hosts Lisa Conway and Nikki Jensen. Listen as we take a deep dive into the business of fibercraft design.
Lisa's Vacation and Advance Recording
00:00:38
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Welcome back. We certainly do enjoy every time you come to visit with us. A little housekeeping before we start. Nikki is still on break. She's attempting to see whether the fall and her child going back to school might allow for a little bit of time to record with us once again.
00:01:04
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In the meantime, I hope she knows that we miss her. And a bit more news from me as you're listening to this. I am on vacation. I am getting to go on the trip of a lifetime. So I'm recording this in August for release in late September.
00:01:27
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I will be recording with friends while I'm away and sharing those with you. But in the meantime, all of this is pre-scheduled. I am hoping that while I'm away, I will experience a little bit of what I'm about to talk to you about today.
Exploring Creativity: Connecting Experiences
00:01:52
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And that is creativity.
00:01:57
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I want to share with you a quote I ran across.
00:02:02
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It says, creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it. They just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. Steve Jobs.
00:02:33
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What does he mean by that? What does he mean by connect their experiences and synthesize new things? I think he means that they looked at their lives, things that they've done and heard and read and listened to and found ways to use those things
00:03:01
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to come up with new ideas. They saw a problem and they found a solution. And that solution came from the accumulation of ideas and experiences that they'd had throughout their lives, that nothing was left behind.
00:03:28
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Well, hopefully they've left any poor experiences behind, but you know what I mean. Maybe some of those poor experiences gave them the choice to move forward and to use the good to create, use the bad to create good. But our ideas come from the lives we've lived.
00:03:57
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Our creativity is just part of our experience. I
Struggles with Creativity and Overcoming Criticism
00:04:03
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don't feel like I'm a terribly creative person. I know I'm not great at art. I can't really write a good creative story. Unlike my child who is fabulous at creative writing. She really loves it.
00:04:27
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I'm not there. I've never been there. Something in my life stopped it at an early age. I think somewhere along the line, someone told me that's not good enough. I know that when I was in college, I wrote a story that I was extremely proud of and the teacher berated it because I'd not written it to his standard.
00:04:56
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And I always felt disappointed that he could put such a subjective opinion on something that I was so proud of and so pleased with, on something that I'd written in a way that felt right to me and he felt was so wrong.
00:05:22
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I've lost that paper, unfortunately. I had meant to keep it. I had meant to rewrite it and not reword it, but to put it in a different typed format. And I have always wished that I could
00:05:50
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re-experience writing that story. I've always wished that I felt more creative, that I could find within myself the freedom to find new solutions.
Creative Breakthrough with Double-Knitted Brioche
00:06:10
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I'm experiencing a little bit more of that these days, thanks to encouragement from friends,
00:06:18
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I do have one released pattern and soon to have three more that will be coming later this fall. I experienced a real moment of creativity in this most recent pattern when just lying in bed, thinking about what was I going to do today? What new things should I put on my needles as I'd recently finished multiple projects?
00:06:50
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And I had been reading about the new double-knitted brioche by Nathan Taylor, the socmetician. I suddenly realized that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I suddenly knew that this new technique was exciting enough to want to share it with you all.
00:07:17
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I knew how I wanted to make it happen. And quite frankly, both the first and second samples literally have flown off the needles. It's taken me less than two weeks to accomplish knitting the entire thing.
00:07:39
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And the only reason it took me that long was because I had to stop and wait so that I could record the videos necessary to go with the pattern since these techniques are so new and very few of you will actually know how to accomplish them. But it just came. It was so easy.
00:08:04
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I felt truly creative for one of the few times in my life and it made me wonder, how do you find that creativity? How do you know that this is the thing you want to do, the thing you want to create? You just see it, apparently, and know.
00:08:30
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Or at least some of you do. I'm hoping some of you are challenged the way I am, that you have to really try to be creative.
00:08:43
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On the other hand, I hope you don't have to try so hard. I hope you don't have to work to be creative. I hope it comes easily for you and that you have lists upon lists of ideas and it's choosing the ones that you really think are worth bringing to life.
00:09:06
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Because yes, we do have more ideas than we have time for. And yes, not all ideas are worth sharing with the world. Let's look at what I found to be an explanation of the creative process.
Preparation in the Creative Process
00:09:24
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Because this is where I hope to start living. This is where I hope to spend more of my time.
00:09:34
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Preparation is always the first step to any creative process. That preparation could be anything from finding the new yarn and seeing what it might become to thinking of a stitch that
00:09:54
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you saw once upon a time but weren't quite sure how to make happen and Digging through books to find how that stitch is created or even creating it yourself Preparation is the inspiration phase where you can observe and jot down your ideas and
00:10:19
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This is where we should spend a good deal of our time and we should make list upon list of ideas, even if they don't always come to fruition. Step two is incubation, thinking about it, absorbing it, processing it.
00:10:43
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letting our subconscious do the work. And I think that's where this latest design really feels creative for me is it literally came out of just relaxing and letting the thoughts run around my head and seeing what came of them.
00:11:07
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Step three is insight, that Eureka moment, the moment I said, this is what I want to do and this is how I can do it. This can also be called the illumination stage, the stage where we realize exactly how something can happen and how it's
00:11:34
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available to us. Sorry, got distracted. The illumination stage where the idea takes shape, where we decide
00:11:51
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I want a shawl. I want the shawl to be lacy. I want the shawl to have beads. I want the shawl to be triangular or rectangular or whatever shape you are thinking about. This is where the project is visible in your mind, even if it's not yet on needles.
00:12:22
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Then
Evaluating Creative Ideas
00:12:22
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we go into the evaluation phase, the putting your idea through the ringer to the test. We look at has someone done this before?
00:12:36
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Well, in many cases, the answer is yes. There are dozens upon dozens of rectangular shawls out there. There are many of them that are done with lace. And even more of those, or I should say some of those at least, will have beads.
00:12:54
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But has it been done your way before with your particular lace and your style of beads and the way you place them and where? How can I do this that it hasn't been done before is probably the most important question at this stage. Looking at how you can make it yours.
00:13:26
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Will I actually enjoy this? Is it something that I will actually want to wear and use? Because if you won't like it, neither will anyone else. Why does this idea matter to me?
00:13:47
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That's a really big question sometimes. And with my latest design, the answer was easy. It matters because so few people are aware of what's happening in this world of double knitted brioche. And I wanted to create something relatively easy to create, something easy to knit so that you could learn how this process was done.
00:14:14
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to hopefully inspire you to look deeper, to maybe buy Nathan's book and examine how he has expanded the process in a way that is so new and so beautiful. And lastly, am I challenging myself? Am I doing something?
00:14:41
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that is expanding my own skills. And with this project, yes, most definitely, not just because the double knitted brioche was brand new to me and I'd only done a swatch or two, but because I was pushing my boundaries of creativity, I was examining how I can share that part of me that wants to create.
00:15:11
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Sometimes in this process, it's important to gather information or feedback from others, especially family and friends. I, of course, shared my idea with Nathan and our group of friends and everyone was very enthusiastic. And Nathan has really cheered me on in this process, something that really helped my creativity.
00:15:39
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And
Elaboration Stage in Creativity
00:15:39
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lastly is elaboration, putting that idea down on paper or actually knitting it. In this case, we have to knit something.
00:15:53
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as well as write it for it to come to life. We have to create that sample, whether we do it ourselves or write the pattern and have a sample knitter that does the work for us. It's important to make sure that all the parts and pieces fit. And the only way to do that is to actually create it.
00:16:21
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I hope that my examination of the process of creativity is helpful to you in figuring out how your creativity works. Is it something that's easy for you, that it comes naturally, that you, like Steve Jobs says, can just see it and come up with something new because of it?
00:16:48
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Or do you find yourself a little more like me, someone who has to really look at how do I make this happen? How do I find that part of me that is unique and new and creative?
Encouraging Listener Interaction
00:17:11
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In the show notes, I will share links to both the creative process as well as articles and videos on boosting that because they might inspire you in a way that they inspired me.
00:17:29
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You all have a very great day and I look forward to a return. Do feel free to continue emailing or posting comments or sharing in the Facebook group. I get so much inspiration and creativity from the love that I received from you. So keep on sharing and we'll see you again soon. Next time.
Upcoming Interview with Jackie Doyle
00:18:00
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I will be sharing with you a part of my vacation when I share the interview, the chat with Jackie Doyle of Tasmania. Have a great day and happy knitting.
00:18:17
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Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you listen and join the conversation in our Ravelry or Facebook groups.