Design vs Personal Projects

On the left: Join The Crew Cowl. On the right: Sunwalker Shawl by Melanie Berg

As an avid knitting, and someone who has also caught the designing bug, I'm always trying to balance design knitting and personal knitting. There are so many patterns in my Ravelry queue and it can be difficult deciding which of those to work on next. At the same time I have so many design ideas, that I wonder if I'm going to get to make them all.

Over the weekend I was catching up on podcasts, one of them was Joji's Journal, hosted by Joni Locatelli. She talked about how she always had one project on the go which wasn't a design project as she doesn't get much time to work on personal projects.

This got me thinking about how designers divide their time between personal and design projects. I tend to do the opposite to Joji, and mainly have one design project on the go. Should I be doing more?

It makes sense because it means I'll have produced more designs, but it also means more work. I currently have four patterns which are waiting to be written up. I normally prioritise design projects when knitting, but tend not to do the same when it comes to writing up the pattern. Maybe this is something I need to change, maybe I need to invest more time in my designs, including writing up the patterns. If I want to be a knitting (and crochet) designer extraordinaire, maybe design projects have to become the main projects I do.

What do you think?