Learning from failing

Most nights when my little one goes to bed, I retreat to our bedroom to work on some sort of craft. (We live in a tiny apartment and space is limited). Some nights I am scrapbooking and all goes well. I am in no way an expert scrapbooker. My use of embellishments is minimal and my journaling is lack luster, but I accept that as being part of who I am as a scrapbooker. I am ok with it.

The other crafts that I work on during the other 75% of the time usually turn out like crap. I am not excerating here. I spend a lot of time on projects that never pan out to anything good. I call it wasted time. I blame two things for these epic fails; Pinterest and my undiagnosed inablilty to focus which I believe some would call ADD.

 The invention of Pinterest has made my already overwhelmed brain crazy with an abundant amount of stuff. Some of the stuff looks so easy to make. For example, I saw a lovely Salt Dough Wreath that was so stinking cute I just had to make it. Well, let's just say that the balls were as deflated as the rumored Patriots footballs. It was terrible.

Pinterest one. Me zero.

There have been countless crochet patterns that I have tried and have hated the end result. There has been sewing patterns that have gone completely wrong. I have attempted to knit and failed immediately. I have tried to paint and channel my inner Bob Ross and I ended up with sad and pathetic little trees rather than his happy ones.

The other night after attempting to make a shirt my husband asked me what I was working on. I laughed as I told him that the material I had used wasn't the best choice (satin) and was making my cutting totally not straight which then, in turn, made my lines all off. I did tell him that it wasn't coming out well, but that I did notice that I was learning quite a bit. I had learned how to serge using my own machine rather than needing to pay extra for a serger. I also learned how to make a button hole and how to place a button using the sewing machine which was so cool I literally yelped with excitement.

I realized in that moment that if I just shifted my perspective just a tiny bit I could see all the positive things that were going on. So what the shirt is lopsided. I made quite the button hole. I have also been making some clutches that are so cute which I plan to put up in the shop really soon as soon as I take really good pictures of them.

SO the message of this post is, yes, you can have failures, but in those moments we are continuously learning something new. Embrace it.