Of Mice and Misadventures

In 1787, a man named Robert Burns was ploughing a field in Scotland when he accidentally destroyed a nest that a mouse had built in preparation for the coming winter. According to his brother, when it occurred to Burns that his actions would lead that mouse to certain death, he composed a poem to the ill-fated rodent with his plough still in hand. That poem was aptly named, “To a Mouse.” Its famous fourth stanza reads:

“But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!”

If you are not a master of 18th century Scottish poetry (I very much am not), this stanza is most likely more familiar when summarized as “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” 

As I have planned, attempted, and subsequently failed to commit to blogging several times, I had that notion of mice and men and their plans in my mind when I decided to draft this post. And, while chances are significantly high that this new attempt at regularly blogging will be as unsuccessful as my previous efforts - at least now everyone who has read this far knows that a rodent freezing to death over two hundred years ago gifted humanity with a classy way of effectively saying, “shit happens.”

Your sacrifice is appreciated, dear mouse.

That said, I am feeling rather optimistic that this time will be different. I have learned from my (many) failures. So much so that some of those failures are actually the inspiration for this new blogging beginning.

You see, recently I made an Instagram account (shameless plug is shameless). The initial concept for which was having an efficient way to share all my crafting projects with my friends (a novel thought, I know). For a short time, that was precisely my Instagram's only purpose. Then... My best friend introduced me to hashtags (I am a terrible Millennial). With that introduction, I was instantly swept away into the very manicured and overproduced world of social media.

Suddenly, I found myself trying to take more “artistic” pictures of my crafts, hiding imperfections, and only showing the world snippets that obfuscated these following truths:

1. Crafting is an exercise in frustration;

2. I screw up a lot;

3. Number two needs to be repeated a million times;

4. No, seriously, read number two again because I have had a grand total of zero projects work out as intended on the first attempt; and

5. I have wasted many, many, crafting supplies on exceptionally silly mistakes.

Additionally, I spent the majority of my life convinced that I had no “artistic talent” and, as a result, I was equally convinced that I was “bad at crafting.” But the reality is that a lot of crafts do not require being an exceptional artist – they just require some good old-fashioned effort, a lot of trial and error, and more patience than I am known to have.

Accordingly, I am dedicating this blog to my adventures - but more importantly, to my misadventures - in crafting. Here, I will write about the crafting process for whatever craft I am working on, lament about my inevitable errors and mishaps, and share the things I have learned along the way. 

I hope that you plan on joining me. If you do - I can at the very least promise that your plan won't end up as bleakly as the mouse's did.