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Sometimes Projects Just Fail

November 30, 2018 thecraftsessions
A1472528-9AFB-48E8-81C1-8C8103017B96.JPG

I made the sweater in the picture at the top about six months ago. And to me (and to all my family and my friends who were asked to judge it’s beauty) it was an abject failure. It’s actually much uglier in person than it is in pictures. The back is bright purple and there is a strip of light mauve on the bottom left panel. After these pictures were taken I actually redid the band one more time in a raspberry which improved it, but did not de-uglify it.

My (incredibly loving and supportive) fella actually said “Felicia, you make so many beautiful things. Please just throw that one in the bin and start again. It’s so ugly. You can’t inflict that on someone.”

Now the failure wasn’t for lack of trying. I tried, and I tried, to make it work. I pulled different parts out over and over again in an attempt to make a beautiful scrap sweater. And yet, I couldn’t get it to work. I ripped for joy, and tried again, and still no joy.

Now I’m a big fan of failing. Failing means I have tried something hard, something that is a stretch for me, and that I’ve hit the edges of what I’m capable of in that moment, under those circumstances. That’s not to say that I enjoy failure in the moment of the failure because I often don’t. In the moment I feel the prickles of shame, frustration or anger run up on the back of my neck….. But then I consciously make the choice to find the lessons and the joy in the failure.

It’s a choice I’ve practiced over many years. To consciously feel joy about being wrong. Because – and here is the magic part - when we have failed we have learnt something, and as such we are smarter than we once were. This is not a reframing where we are trying to make a pile of elephant dung be a cookie. But rather it is a cookie, that upon first glance can look like elephant dung. What’s failed is failed - it’s done - so why would we not look for the joy in learning the lessons we’ve learnt??

Failure is a teaching tool; we always learn from what we did, even if what we simply learnt is not to do the same thing again*. This process of try and fail and try again, can be incredibly satisfying and informative…. but this is conditional upon us being able to see failure for what it is. We need to take our cultural conditioning and our judgement out of the game. We need to learn to allow the failure not to mean anything about us. We need to not take our failures personally but rather that we see them as opportunities for growth.

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”
— Stephen McCranie

So back to the ugly cardy - even after all my years of knitting and combining colours and my effort I couldn’t make it work. And so I quit trying, and simply called it done. And I learnt some lessons.

I learnt that sometimes I can’t force it to work.

I learnt that I can’t really combine flat colours with heathers and make them sing in a way I would like.

I learnt that slightly different weights need to be combined using different stitches.

I learnt that sometimes an ugly yarn is simply an ugly yarn.

I learnt that while someone else may have been able to make it work, I couldn’t with what I know at this moment.

I learnt that to keep trying was just making me feel worse.

And so I quit. A noble and valid choice.

The back is this bright purple.

The back is this bright purple.

 

When I’ve talked about failure on the blog in the past I’ve had lovely kind humans commenting that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself – that I shouldn’t talk of myself in that way. That I shouldn’t call myself a failure and put myself down.

I find this line of thinking really interesting because I don’t see talking about a failure as putting myself down at all. I was calling my work in that instance a failure. I don’t see my failure as a reflection of my worth.

We have a cultural narrative about quitting that is tied up with the idea of failure. We don’t quit. We keep going. We don’t allow ourselves to fail (or to quit) because we must keep trying and trying until we succeed. Being quitters means that we are weak minded losers. Being quitters equates to being a failure. But this narrative is bullshit.

Me wearing the same cardy.

Me wearing the same cardy.

This wasn’t always my attitude towards failure. I’ve learnt how to better think about it through my personal experience with failure.

A long time ago I was once a young human who had always done extremely well at school. So well in fact that I managed to haul myself into a spot at one of Australia’s best universities. And it was there that I failed. More than once.

Failed! For the first time in my previously easy academic life, I failed, and I didn’t know what to do. School had come easy to me you see, and so when I failed I didn’t know quite what it meant. About me or my future or my potential. You see, I had never learnt about failure and I had never practiced failure. I had never thought about failure as something that was possible for me.

Figuring out how I thought about and understood failure took me years to muddle through.

In retrospect it’s easy to see what happened, why I failed. I had just moved to the big city by myself at 17. I was a little lonely and totally unclear what I wanted. And one of my clever techniques when I was afraid of failure and uncertain was “avoidance” as a life strategy. And so, when I knew that I hadn’t done the work I needed to to pass the exam, rather than pulling out of the subject (as that would be admitting failure) I simply didn’t show up to the exam.

Yep.

Ahhh the craziness of youth. Anyway after failing and failing again, I decided to take a year off uni and reset. I took my full time job at the local supermarket and for a year I clocked in and clocked off for my 40 hour week. And I got very very bored.

So I quit. Again. By this time I was 20 years old with no plans, no degree and now no job. Some phone calls to my family lead me to understand that there was some :-) concern about the quitting and the failure and the uncertainty. There was some suggestion that the quitting in itself was a failure.

And yet to me it became clear that it wasn’t about failure or quitting but rather it was an opportunity for growth. I was the kind of person that learns best by doing. I couldn’t learn anything about what I wanted without trying all the things. Trying fumbling around with uni studying things I didnt enjoy, working full time in a supermarket,, trying traveling with no money, trying blagging my way into jobs in cities I didn’t know. Without the failing and the trying and the quitting my life wouldn’t look how it does now. All of these experiences were critically informative learning.

The ugly cardy went to a good home where it is very loved it’s owner. It’s owner isn’t the lovely kid in the photo. The kid in the photo said “oh Felicia - that is a very ugly cardigan”. Bless x

The ugly cardy went to a good home where it is very loved it’s owner. It’s owner isn’t the lovely kid in the photo. The kid in the photo said “oh Felicia - that is a very ugly cardigan”. Bless x

As Greg McKeown says in Essentialism, we quit things all the time. We must quit, and we must fail if we are to allow ourselves to grow and evolve. For example we aren’t still doing ballet or learning the organ or sucking our thumbs, like we did when we were small. We aren’t still annoying the shit out of our brother, and taking jokes way to far, as we aren’t 10 years old anymore. We are also not 20 or 30 or 40. And as such I am no longer a ballet dancer, a ceramicist, a land surveyor, a GIS practicioner, a checkout chick, a smoker, a big social drinker, a super-annoying big sister, a white-liar, a market researcher, a worrier, a non-exerciser or someone who is terrified of heights. We’ve allowed ourselves to evolve through our failure and our quitting. And sometimes through our success.

I have tried and failed and practiced and got better and tried and failed again. And that is how I have learnt to appreciate failing. Because each time I fail - especially in my making - I learn something that I couldn’t have learnt without the failure. The potential for failure is about butting up against the edges of what works so we can see what doesn’t.

Sometimes failing is the only way we can learn what we need to learn. About life and about craft.

Playing in the middle is safe and comfortable and comforting but it isn’t where the magic is. Think about the works of craft that you admire; the things you have made, and the things other people have made, and think about what you love. For me the things I love most are the things that surprise me, the things that shoudn’t work but do. The things that break the rules, and in breaking them come up with new rules. This kind of craft can only happen when we try to butt up against the edges of what works and maybe even cross those lines. And to do that we must step into the uncertainty of not knowing and accept the possibility of total failure.

For me? My most cherished makes are those that I have made by sitting in uncertainty, which means I need actively practicing working with my potential to fail. In order to make the projects that sing we have to also make projects that suck.

How do you feel about failure? Is it something you flirt with? You abore? Or you roll around in? Have you got better at it over time. Please tell me your stories!

Felicia x 

* Like cutting out fabric after two glasses of wine late at night. A lesson I need to relearn at least once a year - which has taught me another important and useful lesson about myself. I’m a woman who needs reminding.

In Thoughts On Craft Tags failure
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Welcome! I'm Felicia - creator of The Craft Sessions and Soul Craft.

This blog is about celebrating the connection between hand-making and our well-being. These posts aim to foster a love of hand-making and discuss the ways traditional domestic handcrafts have meaning and context in our everyday lives.

I love the contributions you make to this space via your comments and learn so much from each and every one. x

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The Year Of The Scrap - One of my favourite uses for a couple of balls of dk/sport weight yarn is a baby version of #grannysfavourite by @tikkiknits. I’ve made this little sweater so many times - because the result is something really special and it’s such a fun little knit. ✨ This is the 3rd size which is a 3-6month size and I’m using one 200m stray ball I had. The reason this is such a good scrap knit is that it is top down and seamless, and looks super sweet sleeveless if I run out of yarn. ✨ How to make the most of your scraps? I knit the yoke, then the body before using my kitchen scales to weigh what yarn I have left for the sleeves. I then divide it into two balls based on weight and knit till I run out of yarn. When I get to the end of the first sleeve, I leave it on the needles without casting off, and knit my second sleeve to make sure I haven’t weighed it wrong. I cast off when I have two sleeves the same length. ✨You can knit this pattern with as little as a ball and a half. ✨ Even if you don’t have babies in your life this is a wonderful charity knit for organisations like @knitonegiveone, especially if your scraps are machine washable. ✨#theyearofthescrap
On the blog today: How Artefacts (Craftefacts) Elevate Craft (and our lives). ✨This is one of those posts that I’ve been pondering for an age. About the super power that craft has to elevate our lives by providing us with a visible representation, an artefact, of the process. How these “craftefacts” capture our history, our feelings, our capacity and our values, at a given point in time. Living among them adds a richness and depth to our lives that is incredibly special and life elevating. ✨ The experience of living with the things we have made doesn’t have a word, and so I created one - craftefact! A little silly and clunky perhaps but the only way we can talk about ideas is if we have language. I’d love you to read the post and let me know if you can come up with something less silly😊. And I’d love to hear how living among the things you have made affects you. ✨This photo is of my biggest two wrapped up in their quilts on a lazy school holiday morning. ✨#craftefacts #craftasanelevatedlife
This Sunday just gone was my beautiful friend @faragoanna ‘s  exhibition opening of her #daddyasbirds exhibition. I know many of you have been following along as Anna has created these paintings over the last year, since the sudden passing of her husband Adrian. The opening was a chance for us to come together to celebrate his life but also to celebrate this incredible project Anna undertook in part to sit with her grief. What she did was incredible, and if you’d like to see it the exhibition is on at Monsalvat until March 3rd, so please head on out there. I was taking photos in the day with my real camera so I stole the first photo from my lovely friend @_jay_emm and the second from my lovely friend @twinklettes. X
I’ve been a little quiet in this space because of some life stuff (and I’ve been in this stunning place), but I’m still checking in when I can, still listening and still learning alongside so many of you. I’ve been pondering the incredibly simple but profound idea of when you know better, do better. What’s become clear to me is that doing better is a ongoing process, not act. So many resources have been shared but I wanted to highlight a couple that I’ve found incredibly helpful recently... Firstly everything from @wherechangestarted. In particular there have been some super clarifying posts over the last few days about what our responsibilities are, about the important distinction between anti-racism work and activism and what “doing enough” looks like. Please also watch the saved stories on @astitchtowear ‘s feed if you haven’t seen them. And head to @sophiatron and @tikkiknits and @yumichild ‘s feeds to bear witness to racism in australia today, and to hear their wisdom. I’m away from this space again this weekend so I’m turning off comments as I can’t check in. Hope your weekend includes a little craft! X
The Year Of The Scrap - One of my favourite uses for a couple of balls of dk/sport weight yarn is a baby version of #grannysfavourite by @tikkiknits. I’ve made this little sweater so many times - because the result is something really special and it’s such a fun little knit. ✨ This is the 3rd size which is a 3-6month size and I’m using one 200m stray ball I had. The reason this is such a good scrap knit is that it is top down and seamless, and looks super sweet sleeveless if I run out of yarn. ✨ How to make the most of your scraps? I knit the yoke, then the body before using my kitchen scales to weigh what yarn I have left for the sleeves. I then divide it into two balls based on weight and knit till I run out of yarn. When I get to the end of the first sleeve, I leave it on the needles without casting off, and knit my second sleeve to make sure I haven’t weighed it wrong. I cast off when I have two sleeves the same length. ✨You can knit this pattern with as little as a ball and a half. ✨ Even if you don’t have babies in your life this is a wonderful charity knit for organisations like @knitonegiveone, especially if your scraps are machine washable. ✨#theyearofthescrap On the blog today: How Artefacts (Craftefacts) Elevate Craft (and our lives). ✨This is one of those posts that I’ve been pondering for an age. About the super power that craft has to elevate our lives by providing us with a visible representation, an artefact, of the process. How these “craftefacts” capture our history, our feelings, our capacity and our values, at a given point in time. Living among them adds a richness and depth to our lives that is incredibly special and life elevating. ✨ The experience of living with the things we have made doesn’t have a word, and so I created one - craftefact! A little silly and clunky perhaps but the only way we can talk about ideas is if we have language. I’d love you to read the post and let me know if you can come up with something less silly😊. And I’d love to hear how living among the things you have made affects you. ✨This photo is of my biggest two wrapped up in their quilts on a lazy school holiday morning. ✨#craftefacts #craftasanelevatedlife This Sunday just gone was my beautiful friend @faragoanna ‘s  exhibition opening of her #daddyasbirds exhibition. I know many of you have been following along as Anna has created these paintings over the last year, since the sudden passing of her husband Adrian. The opening was a chance for us to come together to celebrate his life but also to celebrate this incredible project Anna undertook in part to sit with her grief. What she did was incredible, and if you’d like to see it the exhibition is on at Monsalvat until March 3rd, so please head on out there. I was taking photos in the day with my real camera so I stole the first photo from my lovely friend @_jay_emm and the second from my lovely friend @twinklettes. X I’ve been a little quiet in this space because of some life stuff (and I’ve been in this stunning place), but I’m still checking in when I can, still listening and still learning alongside so many of you. I’ve been pondering the incredibly simple but profound idea of when you know better, do better. What’s become clear to me is that doing better is a ongoing process, not act. So many resources have been shared but I wanted to highlight a couple that I’ve found incredibly helpful recently... Firstly everything from @wherechangestarted. In particular there have been some super clarifying posts over the last few days about what our responsibilities are, about the important distinction between anti-racism work and activism and what “doing enough” looks like. Please also watch the saved stories on @astitchtowear ‘s feed if you haven’t seen them. And head to @sophiatron and @tikkiknits and @yumichild ‘s feeds to bear witness to racism in australia today, and to hear their wisdom. I’m away from this space again this weekend so I’m turning off comments as I can’t check in. Hope your weekend includes a little craft! X
Blog
How Artefacts - Craftefacts - Elevate Craft
How Artefacts - Craftefacts - Elevate Craft
about 2 days ago
Thinking About Combining Yarn Scraps
Thinking About Combining Yarn Scraps
about a week ago

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