Often my handmade objects don't come out perfect. By often, I mean almost always. It is a miracle if something comes out perfect. A seam will be crooked or a dropped stitch picked up the wrong way or a smudge in the middle of an otherwise brilliantly executed sketch. (I only sell the perfect things.)
There are many people who think part of the beauty of a handmade thing is those small imperfections, especially if it’s made by someone you know and love. It has been hard for me to learn to embrace the inevitable mistakes of my own handmades...but I am learning.
My Grandmother is one of the most creative people I’ve ever met. As I child I was in awe of her house, filled with all her creations, most of them made out of “found” items like metal shavings, driftwood, dried weeds, old beads, pieces of discarded plastic, empty jars, uneven tapestries....
Her imagination remains limitless. On a recent visit, I saw mobiles she had made of neon plastic beads--you know the ones at the craft store, those ugly ones that seem to have no purpose?--and wire. These mobiles were at least two feet in length, maybe more, hanging from her living room ceiling. They moved so delicately, beautifully. It was a strange kind of irony: those cheap neon beads and the graceful lines she had molded them into that moved with natural fluidity. I was fascinated.
This same grandmother showed up at my lonely apartment years ago--long before I was married and had kids--proudly carrying a bag full of leaves and sticks which she promptly transformed into a gorgeous mobile. She hung the mobile from my living room ceiling and it made me think of her every day after she left. A few years later my boyfriend thought I was crazy when I told him to be careful as he moved it.
He obviously doesn’t have a grandmother who makes custom installation art.
Ever since I was tiny Grandma has been giving me amazing, one of a kind birthday gifts fashioned out of whatever material currently held her fascination. One year I got a huge, square wreath made out of straw and plastic cranberries. Another year I received the most darling little hand-painted boxes with handmade purple polymer clay roses on the top. Still another year my present was a box of woven and knitted handmade Christmas ornaments (I still put them up on the tree every year). In recent years I’ve gotten calendars and photo books and cards featuring her photography and handmade paper. (She now sells her photography at Fiddleheads.)
It never occurred to me that Grandma may have given handmade gifts because she had to, because they were cheaper and easier than store bought gifts. I always thought she gave those gifts because she loved me and she loved making things. Then one year she and Grandpa came into a little money. My gift that year was a perfect, snowy, miniature ceramic lighted house: a lovely, store-bought and probably expensive tchotchke that broke my heart.
I remember opening the package with enormous excitement and anticipation...and then dissolving into inconsolable tears. I cried for three days. And I am not a crier.
My husband, upon seeing my tears, was at first concerned and then very confused: “Why are you crying? Look, she sent you a very nice gift!”
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| It looked something like this. [Attribution] |
To this day I get teary when I think about it--earth shattering disappointment mixed with the terrifying thought that my beloved, creative, amazing Grandmother no longer loved or cared for me enough to send me something handmade! It was terrible...so bad that my husband called my Grandmother (after three days) and told her about my despair--a thing I couldn’t do and had told him not to do. I didn’t want to make Grandma feel bad or--God forbid!--guilt her into making me something.
Not long after he called, another package arrived in the mail, this one containing completely homemade and outlandish gifts that absolutely soothed my soul. All was right with the world again.
I try to remember this when I am making things--imperfect things, things I begin to hate because they aren’t living up to the vision I have in my mind.
The handmade thing has a life of its own after it is created. I often make things and wonder what the heck I will do with them. Some are bizarre, like the five pointed orange felted monstrosity of a “purse” I once knitted. Some are mundane, like the washcloths I can’t keep myself from making. But they all, eventually, find their purpose.
In the midst of some of my more difficult and imperfect projects I find myself wishing I were more anal, that the stuff I make could be closer to the ideal than an ordeal. But I have learned an important lesson from my Grandmother and my children: it is the imperfections, the mistakes, the rejects, that are sometimes the most lovable.
When I visit my mother, I go first to her reject pile of handmade jewelry--what I find there is always my favorite stuff. And my children, of all the handmade things they own, the most flawed are their favorite. The pieces of my Grandmother’s art that I have loved the most have also been the ones that others thought were “ugly” or weird or “useless,” like the mobile made of twigs and leaves.
A few years ago I began knitting a very soft baby blanket out of two yarns that I loved. Despite adding on ball after ball of yarn, I ran out less than half way through the blanket. To make matters worse, every place I added a ball of yarn there were several of funny pieces of yarn sticking out because they refused to stay in place. Finally, admitting defeat, I cast off. The blanket was more the size of a small hand towel when I’d finished and I threw the disappointing thing in my reject pile, hating it more every day. What a waste! I thought.
Then my daughter was born. A little over a year old, she found the reject blanket while crawling around in my craft room and adopted it as her very special blankee. The little ends that stick out have become her favorite parts of it: she weaves them through her fingers as she sucks her thumb and soothes herself to sleep. My mistakes have become her comfort. And every time I see her move those fibers softly through her fingers I am reminded that mistakes can be more more beautiful, more loved than perfection.
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| Estella with her much-loved blankee |
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