OK,  I said yesterday I’m expanding, and so I am (that’s not a fat joke).  I *wanted* Friday to be Friday Fuck-ups.  But, I was reminded I’m supposed to be PG-13.  Apparently, you can only have one f-bomb in the movie to keep it PG-13.  I hope to be doing more Friday posts, so….I had to rethink.  Thinking in the first place can be rough.  Re-thinking…torture ;).

I wanted it to be in that same vein, though.  And here’s why: we see on social media (blogs included) the best facet of people’s lives.  When we meet someone in person, we meet their Facebook persona.  Life is *not* like that though.  As an example, I have an affinity for crafts, and naturally catch on. So, in classes, I soar ahead of the other students.  HOWEVER, I still have epic fails. They don’t see that in classes, and may think it always comes easy… which it doesn’t.

Comparing ourselves to the online versions of people is an awful thing to do to yourself.  I have had it described to me as comparing our rough draft lives to someone’s final draft.  “Oh look, she has this perfect family, her husband bought her flowers.” Meanwhile, I’m over here giving mine the silent treatment and he doesn’t even notice it’s been three days since I spoke to him.  What she’s not saying is that he bought her flowers because he was out all night, and came home smelling of booze and cheap perfume.

Dear Reader, I hope by now you’ve grocked to the fact that my stories about crafting are VERY thinly veiled stories about life.  They are all true, mind you, but the lessons have more to do with life than the actual craft. For example, I’m not going to be telling you about the time my husband farted in my face on my 30th birthday because he thought it would be hilarious. That would be rude and uncalled for…kind of like farting in someone’s face ON THEIR BIRTHDAY.

Instead, I’ll tell you about the above shawl, and you can infer what you want from that.

This summer, my LYS had an event wherein each month, you made something that fulfilled the requirements they put forth at the beginning of the month.  August’s project needed to have a pattern who’s name included Sun, or Solar, or Eclipse (I think).  So, I bought yarn, and a pattern.  This is a big deal for me.  I rarely buy yarn anymore *cough* yarn wall *cough*.  Same with patterns–there’s so much out there for free!  And I almost never buy both for a project.  Even more shocking, I ended up purchasing (on accident) the yarn called for.

I set about knitting this thing.  And I hated almost every moment of it.  The lace pattern was not intuitive at all, the pattern was confusing.  I had been spoiled by shawl patterns by Sivia Harding*. I really liked the yarn and color-way, but was slogging through the shawl.  Fellow crafters were in love with the shawl.  Pam even bought the pattern and some yarn to do one herself (over my strong objections).  I just couldn’t have the same enthusiasm…until I finished.  Huzzah! I was done!!!!

Sivia had finally convinced me of the joys of blocking (we will get there someday, Dear Reader), so I went to block this shawl….and that’s what I saw….A giant freaking hole (already dropped an f-bomb in the post can’t do another.  Believe me, in real life, this was a hard R moment).

I was about ready to cry.  The only thing that saved me from tears was my absurdist sense of humor.  Of course the shawl I hated would be a fail.  Of course I spent a solid month working on something there was no salvaging.  While I’ve taken classes and become fairly adept at fixing lacework…this lace has no repeat.  It’s a mess to do it in the first place, much less to figure out what dropped where.

No.  the only fix was to take a picture to share my shame with my crafting friends, and rip the sucker out.  The pattern has been shredded, and the yarn, as you can see is back on the yarn wall where it can think about what it did.

So that’s the fail.  In this case, the fix is to delete, delete, delete.  In life, we don’t always have that option.  He can’t unfart in my face, and is that really a break-up-able offense if you aren’t Elaine?  I know, I had to think hard about it too…  Unlike life, crafting ALWAYS has that option.

When I first taught DeAnna to knit, we were knitting squares for Warm up America.  She went off to knit, and came back with…something. It wasn’t square, or even a rhombus, we don’t know what it was.  She was almost in tears, she was so frustrated.  She had no idea what she did wrong (neither did I frankly, to this day I don’t know).  I told her not to worry, we’d fix it.  I pulled out the needles, and undid the whole thing.

Just like life, my crafting advice can be a bit…dubious.  I mean, a better teacher would probably have figured out what she did, and actually fixed it, instead of just tearing it out and having her do it over again.  But, I know DeAnna.  What she needed that day was a do-over.  Some days are like that…even in Australia.

So, if you have need of dubious advice, let me know! I’m more than happy to oblige!

*no sponsorship, I just love her classes and designs!