In my last post, I showed you some of my Works In Progress “WIP’s“. You can read that post here. Yes, that was me living my best life.
There is nothing more satisfying to a Maker than churning out one perfectly beautiful piece after another. In fact, we love this feeling so much that we all have list upon list of ideas of the things we want to make. We write lists, save inspiration photos and gather and stash supplies as if our very lives depended on it.
This all sounds wonderful. We, as Makers, get to blissfully live out our dreams one project at a time.
This is not entirely true! We all have a BIG secret: It doesn’t always work out!
The trial and error of Making is sometimes huge as we continue to try to innovate and perfect each item. Sometimes these errors cause a lot of waste and in some cases a large stash of “unmades“.
Here is one of my stashes of “unmades“. These come from a time that I was trying to make what is called “amigurumi” which Wikipedia defines as:
Amigurumi (編みぐるみ, lit. crocheted or knitted stuffed toy) is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small, stuffed yarn creatures. The word is a portmanteau of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, and nuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll.
They can be dolls, food, toys or whatever. Pictured here are my attempts at a brown mouse (see his cute pink ears!) and a seahorse that I tried in blue then white along with some buttons and beads for eyes. This photo also shows an experiment with crocheting some thread earrings.
This photo shows an unfinished “virus shawl”. Although it was not my first attempt at this pattern, and the first one came together beautifully, I think I got lost on this one and never had the desire to pick it up again. Since I believe I would have to unravel such a large amount of this one to fix it, I will probably unravel the whole thing and start something new with the yarn.
That’s one good thing about the process, in most cases, we attempt to reuse the supplies that just didn’t work out.
So, I made this really cute, really warm toddler ear flap hat. In the process of installing the ties, (which meant it was almost done), the hat started to unravel. I still don’t know what happened or why because I simply set it aside.
Last, but not least, is this group of misfits. The yellow duck and the bumble bee are finished, but nope, that’s not the look I was going for. Look at these cute Elmo shoes. I made these for my granddaughter, but they are a hot mess!! Also shown is yet another attempt at amigurumi which I actually got the face right that time, but it was going to be a sheep and I just couldn’t get those bobbles for the body right! Now, I make bobble blankets!! Go figure. And, more crochet thread earring attempts.
Although this is not a comprehensive view of what can and does go wrong in the studio, these are the things that did not “eventually” work. You can be sure that several attempts were made with each one before I walked away.
As Makers, we have what seems like an endless stash of supplies, Works in Progress “WIPs“, Unfinished Objects “UFOs” and things that simply didn’t work. All of it is part of the attempt to make perfectly beautiful things. All of it is a part of our lives.
The point here is that Making is a process. You have to go into it knowing that you are going to make mistakes along the way. The blanket you make today is not going to look as neat and perfect as the one you make next year if you just stick with it. Don’t take yourself so seriously! Relax, and enjoy the journey.
Leave a reply below if you think I should pick up any of the above projects and give it another try.
Please also visit my Etsy shop (Black Ribbon Shop) where you will find lots of Cool Custom Creations.
Until next time,
Denise
Black Ribbon Studio 