Post PGDIP, post Xmas post....

The last month has been both busy and exasperating. The presentation was fine and I now have a PG DIP.

So only another 7 months, a little luck and a lot of work it will be done and I will have the MA.

Christmas was a difficult time so far as making physical progress on work was concerned, I also had Flu so that was two weeks of very little....however I did account for this in the period leading up and it is sometimes useful taking the time to step back and just think.

Since returning to Uni I have been trying to focus on getting the Rosette fabric correct...[ at times I did wonder if it was possible.....]. The amount of time both Sharon and I have spent fretting about why it wouldn't knit and searching for a possible programming fault is rediculous. Had I known at the beginning it is entirely possible I may of done something else ....but I did not so after about 7 weeks of banging our heads against the desk Sharon tried processing it on another computer and it worked first time. This means that there must be a factory preset in the system on the computer we usually use that was preventing it being processed, there was no mistake in the programme and we weren't doing anything wrong....

Part of me could cry....time is so tight and even though I believe my timeline will hold I really don't want to waste a single moment BUT to put another spin on it it has proved a point I always believed to be true....while computers have made so much possible they are very limited when not in the hands of Technicians and Designers who are willing to question what they are saying. It is in someways like dealing with a petulant child......you have to find a way of communicating the child will accept and sometimes you are not doing anything wrong it is the child at fault...and the child needs to learn. So that puts the ball back in your court.....  This experience has at least given me the chance to think again about the idea of the trilogy of understanding I thought about in my initial proposal and how agnostic thought and gnostic thought have to be brought together in order to achieve anything close to the best outcomes in the design context.

I am now past the tipping point in this project. The research journey out has been gentle and unplanned, I have developed my work through a combination of wandering, reflection and practice. It has been successful in more ways than I could have imagined. My work is now my own, my choices and experiences have made it such . The early influences are there however I have molded it through the experience of questioning it. The path back is much more structured, I am drawing the threads together and I think I am in a position to say I have answered my question to an extent I am ready to pull it together.

That isn't the end though....I am now addressing how this will be used in my future career, how I can show others in a way that might engage them in my work so it goes on ....as always.