I was thinking today about how we go about starting and finishing things. It’s kind of curious and fascinating, don’t you think? How do we decide exactly what to do first, and how do we know when to stop?

This was prompted because I’ve started a new project in the last few days. I’m making a large body suit, and it has some mechanisms that have already been made, which I have to integrate into it. It’s a one-off, no prototype, so nothing to really draw on, and I anticipate quite a lot of problem solving.

Although this character has been discussed and planned on paper for a while now, making a physical start feels like a challenge, and I’ve been circling it at a distance, and doing ‘busy work’ around it. It’s rather like when you see someone swirling their pen in the air a few times before actually being able to sign their name, or like a dog going round and round before being able to settle down to sleep. So today I have been to the fabric shop to see what is available, and I’ve measured things and had lots of cups of tea. And I fiddled with some parts of the mechanism which needed bulking out, because that was a fairly straightforward thing to do. Tomorrow I will make a small plasticine model to make a pattern from, and then after all this nibbling around the edges I can probably make a more convincing start.

In the past I’ve regarded this phase as procrastination, or just something silly I inevitably do, but today I have shifted and decided that instead it must be a necessary and positive part of the process.

Finishing is equally as interesting. In this case, though, the exact finish will likely be dictated by a deadline!