Dear Voyagers

Welcome to Friday! We are now around about the halfway mark through Module 2, but don't stress, there is no 'getting behind', some people like to pace things out evenly and others prefer to do a whole bunch at once, either way works in this Journey.

This week I have a treat for you, its a special technique that I use to help me plan my yarns (and actually anything else too!). I have made a video to go with this email, please read through the mail first and then you will find the link at the end. I would love it if you don't share this link, my technique is meant just for us to share as fellow Golden Fleece crew!

So what is it?! Mindmapping. Yep, been around forever :) Its a form of brain-storming, and as a visual person (and I think you probably are too) I find its a fantastic way to get all my ideas onto one page, linked up and categorised so I can start to formulate a cohesive plan for my creation.

I use this technique because it helps me:

-explore a subject or inspiration on several levels
-organise my sometimes chaotic thoughts
-identify the different elements that I think will be important to the design
-get unstuck when I am not sure how to approach my inspiration subject
-create a story in my design

There are a couple of really important things to keep in mind when doing this task. The process and the plan is the goal, not making a pretty mind map or something that looks planned itself. Think about your brain, how it works.. all those neurons and pathways linking them up. Thats what a mind map is, the connection of ideas that together make something you 'know'. It might be chaotic, messy, have extra bits squeezed in here and there because you thought of them after. It will have scribbles, lines going all over the place. Its all good. The real goal is thinking about your inspiration and how to represent that, not in a mind map, but in your yarn. 

Here are the steps I follow, and you will see this during the video.

1. in the centre of the paper, write the name of the inspiration you are basing your design on. It could be a place, a season, a person, an emotion, doesn't matter, write it down. 

2. Write down your 'categories',  these are like sub-headings around your inspiration, link them to the inspiration block with a line between. Most likely with yarn design you will choose categories such as 'colour', 'texture', ideas or concepts' and 'structure'

3. start adding ideas to each category, these do not all need to be included in your yarn design, right now you are just looking for a bit of a brainstorm around each category. For example -for colour, find a pallet that represents your inspiration and write them down, or paint the colours onto your mindmap, or use paint chips.

'Texture' is all about the kinds of textures you see in your inspiration, these ideas will be the starting point for thinking about what materials and fibres to choose, so think about this a while, what do you see in your inspiration, how does it 'feel'.

In the structure section you can expand on the textures you identified, start translating them into materials, for example, in my video, I identified jagged peaks, and thought a good structure for that could be using long uncarded locks. This section will give you your materials choice guide.

The ideas section includes impressions and concepts you want to include, for example I thought of 'wild' and 'adventure' representing my inspiration, so my yarn will be a bit uncontrolled and crazy to represent that. I can link that up with the use of the locks, and adding extra plys.

4. Once you have all your 'categories' expanded on you can start to see your design ideas as a whole, each aspect part of the complete picture, yet in more detail than a general 'thought' you might normally start spinning with. Usually the process of mind mapping itself brings up a whole bunch of ideas I wouldnt have otherwise thought of.

5. Spend a bit of time with your mind map, looking at the categories are you starting to get some connections happening between each one? While I was doing my video I developed the understanding that in fact, I had three different aspects within this one yarn that I wanted to bring together - the lake itself, blue and big and calm, the surrounding mountains with their wild snow capped peaks, and within that the golden autumn leaves on the trees that grow between the lake and the mountains.

You will see in the video what materials choices I made related to the structure section. Then I put it all together into a spinning plan. This is a much more cohesive and deliberate plan than I would have been able to come up with if I hadn't used the mindmap. That yarn would have been probably the same colours, but more impressionistic, less constructed. 

There is of course a time for everything, and unplanned impressionistic yarns are also wonderful! However there are certainly times when we really want to 'say' something with our creations in a way that takes a more deliberate approach.  In terms of the actual spinning, this method also helps with the essential forward planning of some of the crucial elements of multi-plyed yarns, and that is knowing when to add extra twist! If you have pre-planned your design, you will never end up with a yarn thats falling apart because you decided halfway through to add another ply.

Now I hope you enjoy the video :) If there was anything unclear in my description here it should all start to make sense as you watch the process as I made my mind map start to finish. 

I have made two links, one to a version of the video that has my first choice of background music (because you might have noticed that music is a big part of my creativity) however it MAY be blocked in your country, in which case please go to the second link for some equally cool and 'permitted everywhere' musical backing from one of my best mates from NZ (Roy Brown - oddly no relation :D ) in which we get to hang out on the back porch just like we did in the old days.