Friday, January 20, 2012

Its not as easy as Martha says

So, a few weeks before Christmas my lovely cousin (who I NEVER get to see) asked me to make her boyfriend a crochet Christmas stocking in U of M colors.  I thought I would super impress her and asked if she wanted a matching one, and then I further blew her mind by telling her I would totally have it done in time for Christmas!  After realizing I have no patterns for a stocking handy, and deciding I didn't have time to write one, I started my internet scour of great stocking patterns. 

Several Google searches led me to the Martha Stewart craft site.  Let me say before I get into the meat and potatoes of this post that I despise Martha.  Nothing is ever as easy as she says, and it never looks like the picture when your done.  That said, I did indeed click the forbidden link and was directed to an entire slideshow of 13 different stocking ideas

I started looking through them, and came across the Sweater Stocking.  Cute?  Yes.  Functional?  Yes.  Sounded too good to be true already.  In just 6 simple steps (the tutorial is less than 1 printed page) and one simple template, you too can make a sweater stocking!  The first thing I did was confirm with Cousin that a sewn stocking would be ok.  She said yes.  Printed the template and directions, went to the local resale shop and bought a XXL Banana Republic, navy blue sweater for $10.00, then took my goodies home and dusted off the sewing machine. 

This is when the laughter turns to tears.  My first mistake was attempting this while Noah was awake.  I was constantly telling him to stop taking the scissors, don't play with needs, stop unplugging the machine, don't adjust the tension, blah blah blah...  He finally went down for a nap when huge mistake No. 2 occurred:  Overconfidence.  Her simple, "life is but a dream" tutorial made me feel like Martha herself.  I was about to turn a discarded sweater into Holiday Craft Greatness.  NOT!  What I ended up with was a lopsided, frayed disaster.

By this time, its the week before Christmas.  It will never make it from Michigan to Virginia on time, and I'm feeling like a super failure.  I FB my cousin to tell her how utterly sorry I am, and she then tells me its ok.  She event throws a "Damn Martha" in there to make me feel better.  Honestly.  

So where am I at with this project now?  Starting from scratch with some good ole' yarn and a hook.  The moral of this story is, Stick with what you know, save the experiments for less urgent times.  And I should throw another moral in there for good measure:  Its NEVER as easy as Martha says!

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