My Biggest Crochet Blunder (And How I Got Over It)
Everything was going great. I had started a new pattern and a new technique to make a really awesome blanket. It was a huge owl and was taking a lot of concentration to make sure I did every stitch right. I was feeling super proud of myself because I could see the owl slowly building as I worked.
It was going to be so epic! It was a baby shower gift and I could just imagine the mom’s face when I handed her the complete blanket with an adorable owl on it. She would hug me, maybe get a little teary eyed and thank me. I would feel so happy for giving her something so special.
And then I noticed…the wing on the left side looked lopsided. The colors weren’t lining up. My heart dropped. I was 3/4 of the way done with the blanket! No! What did I do wrong? How could this have happened? I didn’t understand what mistake I had made, I was being so careful!
I took five minutes to cry. I vented to hubby. I might have stomped around my house for forty five minutes grumbling. (Who can remember?!) And then I went and looked at the project and tried to figure out what went wrong. Apparently when I was counting stitches I’d missed TWO back at the start of the project, and that tumbled me into disaster. I was so fed up with myself and my inability to make this work that I put the project in time out.
I have a “crochet time out” pile. I toss random things into it from time to time when I just can’t make it work and I’m angry at it. They stay there until I can stop being angry with it (and myself) long enough to start over.
Sometimes as much as it sucks, we have to just accept that there was a mistake and start over. This particular project is still in the “time out” pile. I still cannot bring myself to rip basically the whole thing out and start from scratch. It physically pains me to just think about that.
Maybe someday, super cool owl blanket, you’ll get to come out of the time out pile and be finished. But for now you can stay there with a hat I messed up, a pair of slippers with no toes, and a pair of mittens missing two fingers.
Do you have a “Time Out” pile? What do you do when something goes wrong? Tell me about your most frustrating crafting or life experience when you had to take a time out.
