So it turns out that during all those years I was writing methodical steps for technical How-To materials, there was one crucial bit missing in my understanding of the ‘user’. What if the user obsesses in such fine detail about accomplishing the thing, and has spent so long drifting off to an imagined future where she’s doing it, that she’s too consumed with longing to be trusted to follow methodical steps?

I am that user. I want to reach for the pattern to follow which can guide me in how to complete this project and yet I know that there isn’t one. I have to trust that my knowledge of the stitches, the drape of the yarns and feel of the needles will allow me to navigate  my way through the absent instructions. It’s not methodical but it is a method, and somehow in my jumble of dreams, box files and paint pots, the wool shop-shaped hole in Lower Clapton road is getting filled.