Trying New Things

Lots of creative people enjoy a variety of crafts and other creative activities. Often, those of us who sew will also knit or crochet, enjoy embroidery, card making, screen printing, photography, watercolour painting, or anything from a long list of creative activities. We often also enjoy other creative things like singing or playing an instrument, writing, dancing, cooking or gardening.

With brains already full of ideas, the internet also offers endless possibilities for things we could try.

It’s when we feel inspired to try new things that it can get difficult. Our first attempts might not go as well as we had hoped they would, and we feel bad. And this is if we’ve even found the courage to try in the first place, as starting something new can make us feel almost afraid.

Why Trying New Things Can Be Difficult

It’s very hard to let go of perfectionism. Often we will embark on something new with the expectation that our first attempts will be as good as the ones we’ve seen on the internet, even if those people have had years of practise and we’ve only just started. We know that it’s entirely unrealistic to expect to be good at something straight away, but we feel bad anyway when we are not.

We often forget is that mistakes are part of the learning process. It takes lots of bad drawings, terrible watercolour paintings, dropped stitches, sleeves sewn on the wrong way round, and fingers and the clothes we’re wearing ending up attached to thing we’re sewing, before we can reliably make things that are good. And even then, things will still go wrong sometimes.

Making mistakes means that occasionally, the things we’ve made will be unusable. I have proudly worn some of my mistakes mistakes, like the bright green wrap dress I made years ago. It had a ruffly flower to hide a messy bit! But if it turns out too small, or it just doesn’t work as the thing it was supposed to be, you won’t be able to use it.

When that happens, it can feel like the materials you’ve used have been wasted. As children, we were all taught not to waste things. This is especially true if you grew up in the post war years, or if your parents did, and while being careful and not wasteful is definitely a good thing, it’s not good when a fear of wasting fabric, or paint, prevents us from trying new things.

This is also true of time. We are taught not to waste time. We might hold beliefs that certain activities that are a waste of time (often they are things we are enjoy, or that involve us taking care of ourselves), and there is a pecking order of things that must always be done first (often these are tasks that involve taking care of other people). There is also the idea that we must always be productive, and having nothing to show for a couple of hours’ effort can feel like we have wasted time.

This can lead to us not wanting to try in case we waste things. So when things go wrong, it is perhaps more useful to consider what we learnt. If we learnt something, then it is not a waste, even if what we learnt was to keep the clothes we are wearing and our fingers well away from the needle of the sewing machine!

I Thought I Couldn’t Draw

In the last couple of years, I have shared things I’ve drawn.

This actually quite a new thing, because for 30 years, I believed I couldn’t draw.

I did art at school, but I wasn’t very good at it. I took GCSE art anyway and did spectacularly badly. For anybody who is unfamiliar with the English school system as it was in the 1990s, the lowest grade they could give you, other than a U which stood for unclassified, was a G. There was an urban myth that for some subjects, it was possible to get a G just by writing your name on the exam paper. I got a G for art.

Even though I already felt that I wasn’t very good at art, the G was a bit of a surprise! In the years afterwards, I still enjoyed drawing and painting, but it was frustrating to pick up pencil or a paintbrush and make a drawing that I knew wasn’t very good.

Every so often I would try, fail and give up.

Then when I was in my early 40s, a number of things happened.

One was that I discovered Bob Ross. I quite quickly went from watching him paint with his gentle encouraging manner, to actually trying it myself. For the first time in my life, I made a painting that looked like what it was supposed to be.

Another was that I signed up for a series of workshops called Start Your Art. The only workshop I remember was one on portraits led by an artist called Melanie Rivers (her website is here). I actually almost didn’t do that one! I felt too intimidated, and I was sure that the portrait I made would be terrible and I would feel bad about myself.

But I did it anyway, and I was so glad I did! Melanie talked openly about the voices of self doubt in her own head, and made practical suggestions for dealing with our own.

In the end, I was so pleased with the results that I shared my portrait in the Facebook group, something I would not normally do. Melanie left a comment saying, “Anna, you are an artist”. I’m not a hugger, but I could have hugged her.

The third thing was that I signed up for a foundation course in textiles with the Open College of the Arts. I didn’t realise at the time just how much drawing was involved, and it did make me feel quite stressed. However part of the course was designed to help with loosening up our drawings and rethinking how we see drawing. My tutor was helpful and gave me some advice (mostly about keeping going with a drawing, and perhaps trying pen instead of pencil). By the end of it, I was in a completely different place drawing wise than I was when I started, and I’ve continued in that journey over the last few years.

So it turned out that it wasn’t that I couldn’t draw. I was just somebody who needed some guidance, a little bit of actual art instruction, opportunities to try out different drawing tools, and time to practise without judgement or expectation of perfection.

A Similar Experience With Knitting

Along with drawing, I always thought I couldn’t knit. I learnt both knitting and crochet as a child, and I much preferred crochet.

I like the idea of knitting though, and as with the drawing, I would try it every so often. But the experience was often bordering on painful. I just couldn’t knit in the way my mum showed me and I was so slow!

Then one day, I was on a bus in Oslo and I saw a woman knitting. As I watched her, I realised that she was knitting differently to the way I had been shown. So I had a quick google, and discovered that in Norway, people do knit differently. It’s a technique that is a lot more like crochet.

So I tried it out, and lo and behold, I am a knitter! Mostly socks and small things (no approach to knitting is going to fix the fact that I have the attention span of a goldfish), but still a knitter nonetheless.

Tips For Trying New Things

Here are some hopefully helpful tips if you are considering trying a new thing.

Bear in mind that your first attempts probably won’t be very good. Remember that you are learning, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and progress is still progress, even if it is small.

Making mistakes is part of the learning process. We actually learn more when things go wrong than we do when we get everything right. So make lots of mistakes!

If what you are doing isn’t working, see if there is another way. Often there is more than one way to do things. If the way you choose isn’t the official way, it’s unlikely to matter very much. Sewing in sleeves is a good example.

Another thing to consider if things aren’t working is the materials you are using. Is the yarn you are using too thick? or too hairy? Would it be easier or look nicer with different fabric? Would pen be better than pencil? I discovered that crocheting with hairy string was not enjoyable. It was horrible and scratchy, and it hurt my hands, but that wasn’t a reason to abandon crochet! Nice soft yarn in pretty colours is a joy.

Try things out. Like making mistakes, trying things out is a chance to learn what works and what doesn’t. Not every idea will work out, but they will all give you information.

If there is a particular skill you feel you need to learn, then there are plenty of information online. All the people on the internet who make beautiful things will have needed to learn how, even if it doesn’t seem like it! It’s alright to put what you are doing on hold while you gain the skills and knowledge you need.

A little bit of practise can go a long way. Again, it’s unrealistic to expect to be good at something straight away. Practising not only gives you the chance to do things a few times so that you get better at them. It’s also a good way to build confidence. And often, you don’t need as much practise as you might think. 10,000 hours is supposed to be the amount of time it takes to get really good at something, but it takes much less time to become good enough to derive some enjoyment from the thing you are doing. I found this with drawing.

If you have a real desire to do something, especially if it is a thing you keep coming back to, it’s worth having a good go at it, and exploring options if it doesn’t seem to be working. But if it gets to a point where you are not enjoying it, it’s alright to give it up, or at least leave it for the time being. You might have been told repeatedly that giving up is bad, but that’s nonsense, as long as your life doesn’t depend on it. Making things and arty projects are supposed to be fun. If it’s not fun, and none of the alternatives are working either, then it’s alright to abandon it and try something else.