Quickie Question: Epic Crafts Failure?
By Twistie
(Illustration via Holly’s Arts and Crafts Corner, where you can read the epic tale of this disaster… and how she salvaged it in the end)
It’s happened to every single one of us, if we’re honest. We had great ideas and the best of intentions. We worked hard. We went in with such optimism… and then disaster befell us anyway.
Maybe we read the directions wrong. Maybe we chose the wrong materials to work with. Maybe we experienced equipment failure. Maybe we just honked off the crafting gods with our hubris. It doesn’t matter how it happened, it only matters that it happened: we wound up with crafting disasters.
The first one I remember dates back to when I was seven years old and my mother was trying to teach me to embroider. I did just fine with satin stitch and back stitch and cross stitch and the lazy daisy. I was feeling pretty chuffed with my little self. And then she tried to teach me the French knot.
Again and again I tried with all the concentration my eager little soul could muster – which was actually quite a bit for an active seven-year-old – and did precisely what I thought my mother was doing with her needle and thread. Clearly I was doing something wrong. The dratted thing unraveled itself and turned into a French Entire Lack of Thread on the Fabric. It’s been more than forty years, and yet to this day I find myself constitutionally unable to make a successful French knot.
So what about you? What’s your crafting Achilles’ Heel? What massive goof have you perpetrated on the world of craft? Did you ever manage to make it better?
I’ll definitely miss you and your take on the world. Best of...
May 8th, 2012 at 3:48 am
There may have been a paint-by-number incident back in the 80s. We don’t speak of it.
However, now I’m DYING to meet you face to face and see if I can help with this sad French knot problem.
May 8th, 2012 at 2:37 pm
I long ago came to the conclusion that paint-by-numbers incidents are generally best not dwelt upon.
If we ever meet in the too, too solid flesh, I would be delighted to get a French knot tutorial from you.
May 9th, 2012 at 1:46 am
My flesh ain’t all that solid. It’s delightfully squishy! I have a French knot trick that I stumbled upon in my own French knot toils and troubles. The secret is – don’t put the needle QUITE back in the same hole it came from. I know it’s not canon, but doggone if it don’t work! Needle up, wrap thread ’round right near the fabric, needle back down, but a couple of threads away from where it came up. Works every time.
May 9th, 2012 at 3:36 am
Well, there was that papiermache duck……. which was the bane of may days, a monstrous thing looking down at me from the bookcase and waiting to be finished. I finally threw it into the recycling bin and am a happier woman since.
Also, sweaters. They come along quite nicely, but I get bored by sleeve one, and when I’m ready to continue knitting, I’ve usually forgotten the pattern, lost the papers or can’t find the already finished parts. Or the moths have eaten the cashmere.
And the time I tried to make jewelry from painted joghurt cups and ruined my mom’s best cookie sheet is DEFINITELY never to be spoken of!