What your projects can teach you
January 6, 2009 by Del
Filed under Community, Creativity, crafts, miscellaneous, yarn crafts
I wish I had a picture of my ugliest project to show you, but I don’t. Wisely, I never snapped a photo of this hideous handbag that I made a few years ago.
I made it in purple variegated yarn, trimmed it in acid-green fun fur (*shiver*), stuck some handles on it and lined it with more acid-green satin. (I have absolutely no explanation for all the acid-green.) At this point, the bag is probably taking up room in a landfill somewhere because I decided not to keep it. It was fugly.
However, as with any other project I’ve ever completed (or not completed), the fugly bag taught me some things:
- How to sew a lining into a bag
- That I don’t like knitting with fun fur
- That I don’t like fun fur…period
- How to choose good stitch patterns for a more sturdy bag
- That acid-green isn’t my color
I know that sometimes, we make things that later make us question why. Why did I make this dishcloth/doily/shrug/toilet roll cover/unidentifiable object? Instead of wondering who you can foist these ugly projects onto, try to turn it into a learning experience.
You can learn something from everything you make. Projects can teach you not only the best way to do something, but the best way not to do something. You may find a new way to cast on that works for you the majority of the time, even if the project that taught you that ends up being a dud. You might nearly complete a Fair Isle hat, only to learn that stranded knitting isn’t your thing.
Whether you complete an item or not, the great thing about working with yarn is that you’re always learning something. Our projects, all of them, teach us new things all the time.
The next time you finish a project, or leave it languishing in the bottom of your basket, ask yourself what you learned. You just might be surprised by the answer.
