Before children, I used to love having time to get totally absorbed in a project, sitting for hours at the machine, really getting into "the zone", y'know? Now, it's a good day if I get half an hour here or there, and I'm having to develop new ways of doing things. I find it exceptionally frustrating, but I'm slowly learning to be content with just doing a few rows of knitting, or perhaps cutting out a pattern one night, and the fabric the next. Last night, despite getting two children into bed by 7:20 (trust me, this is a major achievement in our house), I only managed to baste the pockets onto my curtain-skirt, before sitting brainless in front of the television for an hour. I kind of lost my sewing mojo a bit when I realised after basting the pockets on that: a) the curtain-skirt is in fact starting to resemble an old faded apron from someone's 1950s home-ec project; and b) the pattern I'm using, which is one that I used to make exceptionally poorly-constructed mini-skirts from when I was about 16 or 17 is just maybe a tad snug around the hips. I suppose I should have realised that 2 children later things wouldn't be in the same place as they were back then. Bah.
Anyway, it got me thinking about all those little things that are energy-sappers in the creative process. For me, the main one is when something goes wrong. Major craft-rage ensues. It's so demoralising, isn't it, when you've carefully worked for ages on something then have a senior moment and do something like getting the middle of the skirt caught up in the overlocker and chopping it off.
There are plenty of other things that aggravate me, too...things like ironing interfacing onto things, or re-threading the overlocker, or pressing and stitching the final hem. Projects can sit for months with one of these things needing to be done to them. So, (and I guess I'm asking this of the one and only person other than my husband who actually reads this thing ;-) )...what pushes your craft rage buttons?
PS the little woolly pants in the photo still need to have the ends woven in, which is yet another knitting aggravation. They're from this pattern, and are knit in Cleckheaton Vintage Hues.
Oh well it depends on the mood I'm in actually. If I'm feeling all serene then I cheerfully unpick stuff or redo things. However, if I'm in one of my more fragile moods, my husband does everything he can to prevent me from doing any sewing, because he knows it will send me into depths of self-loathing and bad temperedness. Anything can set me off when I'm in one of THOSE moods, anything at all.
ReplyDeleteOh, and if I catch people using my expensive mundial sewing scissors for cutting paper, I get very snippy about that too.
Well as you know I am quite sanctimonious about this kind of thing, and I don't experience craft rage because I stop the minute I know I've had enough. However, if we are talking craft disappointment, then I wouldn't even know where to begin with stories about that.
ReplyDeleteSeriously - I can't ever finish a project without hating the sight of the thing! All the trauma of creation turns in on itself and off it goes to charity. One dress that had taken a long time to construct and was so carefully measured but just didn't fit in the end got ripped in half down the front :/ Maybe that is a tad extreme. It just all that TIME and EFFORT and it doesn't work! Makes a girl want to weep!
ReplyDelete