It's Day 19 of March Meet The Maker and the theme is: Helper.

As an independent designer I mainly work in isolation with occasional assistance from pattern testers and a niece who assisted with beading kit packing and then there is the wonderful Mr Jean Power who designs my website, listens to my complaints, puts up with beads taking over our house and ferries me to and from the airport as I head off to travel - he is a true life and sanity saver and the phrase 'helper' goes no way to sum him up.

But as I said I mainly work by myself which has its pluses & minuses.

A big plus is I love is not having to wait for others to hurry up and do their work! I work quickly and know how important meeting deadlines and sharing workloads is but it seems not everyone understands this. It's endlessly frustrating when people miss deadlines or don't do any work. That impacts directly upon me and usually means working through the night as I try to take up their slack rather than let a project fall apart or let a customer down.

But a minus of working alone is not having someone to throw ideas back & forth with or have someone to help out when I'm working 20+ hour days trying to get everything done.

But at the end of the day I love my work and helper or no helper I'm gonna keep on keeping on.

Today is our first full day in New York and we cram in as much as possible. Between shopping, pounding the streets of downtown Manhattan & strange things perusing we build up quite an appetite which is suitably satisfied by a visit to one of my favourite places in the world for long-awaited sliders and a Guinness milkshake.