Wednesday, March 6, 2013

DOIN' THE DAMN THANG

Short and sweet, I like to make things. In fact, it makes it hard to choose a blog name when I can't decide if my favorite thing to do is knit or bake, to sew or cook, to embroider or to repurpose things. Alright maybe my top two are knitting and cooking.

Lets moonwalk back to yesteryear, when I realized MY two favorite things were besties: crafting and the internet. In the magic land of the interwebs, there were people like me but with a million times more knowledge and experience, not to mention fantastic cameras and resources, all over craft forums. If I wanted to make something but wasn't sure the right technique, there was a way to learn how. (My first revelation: the zig-zag stitch actually has a function. Duh. Thank you internet.) From that, I learned that its really rewarding to show off new creations and get helpful feedback from friends. Not to mention, the first time one of my tutorials were featured was a pretty cool feeling.

The more pieces I made, I realized I should somehow log them all in one place. This is when I first should have started a craft blog. But I didn't. I started selling on Etsy, and that has in a way served that purpose, but I sent the idea of a blog to the back of my head. I crafted my way through high school, started college and finally make the leap to learn to knit. I was pretty good, and again I had a spark of an idea to start a craft blog. But I didn't. Sophomore year went on and I made a ton of cool stuff posted it all over social networks and everyone said I should start a blog, but no blog. Junior year I SWEAR it almost happened, but I couldn't think of a name and here I am about to graduate my senior year and I made the leap. 

All that said (rambled), I should admit that everything I have tried I have also miserably failed at. At this point, its just funny. The truth is, if you're gonna make things, theres a big chance you will too. Maybe just the first time. Or second. But it will be funny. Eventually though, you'll get it right.
So here are my top four most hilarious failures to get this thing rolling. 

  1. When I was a child, I desperately wanted to "make" something new to eat. I told my mom, and she doesn't remember this, but she told me to open the fridge and make something. So I made a glass of iced tea and put parmesan cheese in it. I don't know why. I took one sip and immediately regretted it and shamefully spilled it out. Lesson learned. 
  2. My first wearable sewing project was resizing a t-shirt. (I had sewn pillows and stuffed animals and when you mess up you don't really notice.) But I saw a tutorial in a LiveJournal community called "tshirt surgery" about how to make a giant shirt smaller and add on new panels to spice them up. I hacked up an old volunteering shirt and added a polka dot panel of fabric to the bottom. The fact that I didn't add seam allowance in addition to sewing it with the straight stitch on my machine AND the polka dot fabric wasn't stretchy....it just...didn't...you get it. Bad.
  3. A few months ago I saw an awesome velour skater skirt online, and told myself I could "totally make that!" like we always do. Well math is hard and circle skirts are math and it fit my waist but the skirt had twice as much bulk as necessary and it was knee length and worth a hearty laugh and a little shame. I ended up buying a velour skirt later on. (When I just told my roommate, Kristin, that I was writing about the skirt, she described it as "pretty bad.")
  4. Lastly, over winter break I decided to focus my extra energy towards Bikram Yoga and knitting my first sweater. I found a fantastic pattern on Etsy for a Weasley Sweater from a shop that gave me tons of advice and got to work. I guess the yoga got to my brain because I realized 9 hours and 3 skeins of yarn into the process that I had one normal sleeve and body sections, and then one triple size sleeve. How bad could it be? I could fit my torso in the second "sleeve." Luckily I'm fast at frogging out mistakes and my mom is fast at rolling yarn back into balls. Many hours later it worked out, and heres some proof: 
Still not a Weasley, but definitely a real knitter.

A good quote from a friend to sum it all up is "Dare to fail gloriously!"
So lets do this. 

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