Published!

Usually we talk about things I do or am thinking about, but this post is going to introduce you to my behind-the-scenes brain.  Not actually mine, that of my assistant, Wendy.  She is brilliant; just super-smart, and focused in ways I am not good at being, and good at things I am not good at.  Otherwise, we’re a lot alike.  We’ve been working together about two years, and I have the utmost admiration for her, and am so reliant on her it is scary.  Really.

She is happiest when I give her a bunch of charts to do, and she is now able to take charts and turn them into written instructions, and vice versa, which saves me untold amounts of time!  Plus, she is very detail-focused so she makes really beautiful charts.  She also goes through everything we do and makes it consistent.  For example, we started putting arrows into schematics to indicate the direction of knitting and she goes into every published pattern as she has time, and adds this in.

Wendy lives in Pittsburgh, so we do everything via computer.  I scan documents for her here and put them into a Dropbox file, we exchange questions and task info via Evernote, and we chat via Skype nearly every week.  Winters are long in Pittsburgh, so when she was approached by a former literature professor about doing reviews for him, she took him up on it.  Her first review appeared Sunday (2 months late)!

Wendy writes all the good stuff here (except for my blog); if a pattern description sounds tortured, you may be sure I wrote it.  She often drafts the newsletter for me, or if I draft it, she edits it.  It occurs to her to do things with words that would never occur to me.  And she is much faster than I am because she is so much more skilled with them.  As a lifelong reader, I am envious of anyone who can write like this and am happy to put her skills to good use.

Now we can all look forward to the next review.  Her editor/professor was delighted with what she delivered, so I hope he gives her more.