Writing a knitting pattern

is not easy. It also takes time. I do not like doing it.
I have been writing one of late. It is for a simple "beanie" (woolly hat without a brim) with a pattern of koala bears around the edge. 
I had to knit  the hat of course. This is one of the things that makes writing a knitting pattern so time consuming.
Before that I needed to design the chart I used to knit the koalas. Now I know what a koala looks like don't I? It should be easy shouldn't it?
It wasn't of course. I had no idea where to start. I looked at photographs of koalas. Yes, I did know what a koala looked like. I thought about it as I shifted the hose, cooked meals, pedalled to the library and more. I charted one and knitted a sample. No, not right. Why? 
Koala paws are important. Paws with claws are what help koalas climb to the very top of their gum trees. The paws were not right. I tried again...and again. 
Eventually I managed something I thought would work. I did what I always do and reversed the image. If you do that it will often tell you if something is wrong. This time it told me something else. I needed the koalas to "look at one another". It doubled the size of the motif. Was it going to be too big?
I did the arithmetic. Knitting involves quite a lot of basic arithmetic. (I keep telling the Senior Cat this when he thinks I have done something clever. It isn't clever at all. It is a matter of doing the arithmetic.) I sent the chart off to my friend L.... in Scotland. She played with it and came up with another idea. I liked it but the chart was too wide for what I had planned. We agreed and she set to work to write a different pattern. (It's lovely because she added a kangaroo and a kookaburra - something you can do if the yarn is finer.)
I knitted the hat writing down what I did as I knitted it. I wrote it up. I emailed my good friend W... who knits a great many hats. I asked her, "Could you possibly look at this?"  W....did better than that. She knitted another one.  
I am off to see a friend this morning. She is good at photographing knitting. Hopefully we will have a picture of two hats. 
And we might need it because while I was briefly out yesterday P... left a message with the Senior Cat. I called her back and we discussed something unexpected. It involves using the hat pattern. I had better have it absolutely right.
I think I have said something clearly but it always amazes me how someone else can read it differently.
Pattern writing is not easy.