First Project Fail

Back in January, I started my first project in crochet. After all, I'd gone through like 5 lessons, surely it must be time to make something besides a swatch. I decided to make a basket. Just a tiny one, but it meant crocheting in the round.

The project was marking as being easy, so away I went. My first challenge was getting the #&*$ magic circle right. This was a huge challenge for me. It required a bazillion YouTube videos and a bunch of websites. Finally, someone on Facebook posted a link for me to try and hurrah! this method worked. My biggest problem now is pulling the magic circle closed correctly. I'm very hit or miss at that. This is a magic circle with a mysterious extra loop. I don't know how I did that.

With my first hurdle crossed, I was off and stitching.

This bottom section involved increases which were actually fairly easy. It was simply a matter of keeping track of when to increase and which stitch I was on. I used a stitch marker to let me know where I'd started.

As I finished the bottom, I was met with a new maneuver that I had yet to learn in my beginning crochet class. Luckily, it was easily understood from the name and I figured it out without having to go to Google. I crocheted into one side of the stitch instead of the full stitch and began crocheting the sides of the basket.

I was happily stitching away and failed to notice I was having a few issues going on. The first was that I would forget to add a stitch that I needed. The second was that I was adding an extra stitch here and there. This was all happening at the end/beginning of the circle, and by the time I was nearly done, it was noticeable and it was ugly.

I folded over the icky side to sort of hide it from the picture. It's on the left where you can see the yellow stitch marker. The side most visible is the part that doesn't look bad. :-) 

The class instructor had mentioned that she often doesn't correct mistakes she makes because they weren't that visible. That might be the mistakes she makes. The mistakes I made were blatant and I decided that I couldn't live with them. I ripped the entire basket apart and ended up with a spaghetti pile of yarn.

Lessons learned. Count stitches. This was what totally tanked my project.

Pattern knowledge gained: I didn't like the little handles on the basket. The pattern also had me going taller than I needed or wanted. Next time I attempt this small basket, I'll stop at the row before the handle row. All I wanted was a small basket into which to toss my car keys. 

Overall thoughts/feelings: Disappointment was high. I actually wanted to finish a project and have something tangible for all the hours I'd spend crocheting swatches. But I'm consoling myself with the fact that I gained experience and learned things I couldn't have picked up without doing an entire project. As they say, experience is the best teacher.

Five Lessons Writers Can Learn From Jaws

It must have been my weekend for movies. In addition to watching 13 Going On 30, I also saw a show on the Biography Channel about the making of the movie Jaws. There were a lot of interesting things shared about the movie and some of them made me think of what they mean for writing books.

1. The shark was supposed to appear a lot more than it did in the movie. Steven Spielberg had it all storyboarded out, but the mechanical shark didn't cooperate. It was constantly broken. Because of that, he was forced to imply the shark was there. It made the movie much scarier because the audience was supplying the visual with their imaginations.

Writing Lesson: Your readers will bring their imaginations to what you write. It's a collaborative effort, so help them engage and then get out of their way. No one needs 10 paragraphs of description.

2. The original soliloquy where Captain Quint (Robert Shaw) talks about his navy ship going down and how 1200 men went in and only 300 came out was 8 pages long. It was Shaw who cut it down to 4 pages, which made it something that could be added to the movie. It was also an extremely powerful scene.

Writing Lesson: Edit, Cut, Revise, and Repeat. Your work will be stronger for it, especially in emotional scenes.

3. Originally Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) was supposed to die in the movie, but the team filming live sharks in Australia got an absolutely incredible shot of a Great White attacking an empty shark cage. It was too spectacular not to use in the movie, so Spielberg changed things. He had Hooper escape and hide on the bottom so that it made sense to show the shark attacking the empty cage.

Writing Lesson: When the muse or serendipity or your subconscious gives you a gift, something that makes your story more awesome, don't discard it because it doesn't fit what you plan to do. Change your plans.

4. The script wasn't completely ready to go when filming began, and because of shark malfunctions, the scriptwriter was writing the next day's pages the night before shooting. The actors all offered ideas on how their characters should be portrayed. One of the people interviewed for the show (sorry, I can't remember who it was) said he'd never seen so much actor collaboration on their characters before this.

Writing Lesson: Your characters are going to assert their personalities as you write. Don't fight them. I'm a character driven writer and I know a lot about my people before I ever sit down to write, but they still surprise me and do things I never would have guessed they'd do. I used to tell them they couldn't do that--I always lost the argument. Now I go with them and let them expand who they are on the page.

5. The woman who edited the film and put it together was a genius at finding small clips from the shoot and using them to enhance transitions and other scenes throughout the movie. Her input strengthened the story and the impact it had on moviegoers.

Writing Lesson: A good editor can help you make your work stronger than when you finished. He or she will point out what can be fleshed out more, what doesn't make sense, and point out things that distract from the story--among many other things. Any writer who thinks a good edit won't benefit them better do an ego check. If Steven Spielberg realizes a talented editor can improve his work, you should realize the same thing about your writing.

There you have it, five lessons on writing from watching the Jaws documentary.

4 Things To Learn From the Crazy Daffodil

I live in Minnesota. October is when the weather starts turning and we do the work it takes to get the yard ready for winter. For me that includes cutting down all my flowers and mulching the garden. All my outdoor work is done now, but I have a flower I didn't cut down.

You see, in my garden there's a crazy daffodil in bloom. Yes, it's blooming in Minnesota in October. The temperature this morning was 35 degrees.

The flower has been up for four weeks now. Even if the cold didn't daunt it, I would have thought time would have taken its toll. It hasn't, not yet. Every time I look out the window I can see this flower stubbornly clinging to life, a bright spot in a landscape that's becoming more and more barren every day. And I got to thinking that there's a lesson to be learned from this daffodil.

Do the unexpected. This flower is remarkable because it decided to bloom in October. If it had bloomed in April or May, it would have been just one more daffodil.

Don't give up. By persisting in the face of adversity (and MN weather is definitely adverse), the daffodil brought joy to one person. Me. :-) And I relieve that joy every time I look out the window.

March to your own drummer. So what if all the other flowers are resting and waiting for next spring? The daffodil wanted to bloom now, so it did. It didn't care what the others were doing.

Bend, don't break. We've had some horrific winds Tuesday and Wednesday and it's still windy today, though 25 mph is much better than 55 mph. There are large tree branches on the ground all over the place, but the daffodil moved with the wind and is still blooming beautifully in the garden.

Of all the things I thought of, I think the most important is to persevere, to hang in there even when the going is tough. It reminds me of something said during The Last Lecture (available for viewing on YouTube as well as iTunes): The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough.