i am going to vent a little now... and i would appreciate your views on this... maybe i am over reacting:
our weekly knit\crochet group decided to make a group collaborative afghan. so members turned in squares that would be combined in strips and then the strips connected to make the afghan.
well, when the time came to connect the squares into strips, most of the folks, for whatever reason, didn't volunteer ... so out of a seven strip afghan... i ended up putting together 5 of the 7 strips. i asked whether the joining colors were important... i asked if there were special conditions to how i should do this... i was told that anything was fine...
so the squares were supposed to be 10 x 10...but, and this is mine included, they were ALL different sizes... so there was a certain amount of extra rows put here and there to make the strips equal width... so i decided to forgo the grid square aspect... the individual squares are in the strips ... but not in the "grid formation"... practically impossible in a timely manner.
i used colors... if you look at my work, you know i am into color...
i thought the effect was like an "arty throw" ... not bad, i was fairly pleased with it.
so last week, i gave the strips to the lady who is going to connect the strips and bind to make the afghan complete.
i showed pics (and here and here) of the strips to a couple of other members (didnt want to get the strips out because afghan recipient was there), and got very favorable comments. One member even said that while she was sorry that i had ended up having to do all of that; that she was glad because she liked my style of crochet.
last night when i asked how the strips were coming, i was told that most of it would have to be undone... that the squares "were getting lost ... they didn't match up"... my work was ""appreciated", but that it was "just impossible" like it was ... and the kicker, "it wont look anything like what you did." ---she and another member decided this.
WOW! i have to admit, i took it a little hard. i vented to the ever patient Sugar Daddy, who consoled me.
It was really a good thing that i went to a "heavy metal" rock concert (Slipknot) after leaving the meeting... i got to work out some frustration by headbanging...lol
i do not believe that i will be volunteering to help out in that way again... i dont mind doing the individual piece... but i certainly wouldnt take on the piecing part again... i spent over 15 hours on this project, time that i could have spent on my own works... i am still a little bitter about that!
i decided to sleep on it before blogging about it... to make sure that i was looking at it objectively.
i dont think that the comments were meant to hurt my feelings... maybe it is just a difference in vision and style?
what do you think? i would appreciate different perspectives on this... something similar happen to you?
7 comments:
hey sis... sounds like some of the group have no consideration for others hard work... you aren't overreacting. like you said, they might not know what they do.. i love you
thanks, sis!
that is how i am going to view it...but had to vent!
love you too!
Ouch, I would feel the same way you do. I've been in different kinds of groups and know that a few people end up doing almost all of the work. I firmly believe that if you're taking on the work, you get to do it the way you choose. And it sounds like you really asked for feedback or guidance. Also sounds like your product would have been much more interesting than the way it's going to turn out. Heidi
Holy Crap! I'm glad I left before this came about! If want to PM me I'd be curious to know who said that it'd have to be ripped out. I think an 'artsy' throw would be perfect for him! His shop is very artsy. ANYWAY, if they wanted color uniformity then they should have specified this in the beginning so all our squares would have matched. Whatever happened to 'It's the thought that counts' ??? Geez, if this happened to me-I probably wouldn't return, but I am sensitive...and hard headed. I'm sorry I couldn't help with any of the strips and you ended up doing most of the work.
Now, I want to go headbang!!
It sounds to me like they had a vision in their heads about what the throw should look like and when it didn't, instead of appreciating what they HAD got, they were mad that it didn't look the way they thought it would.
Are they definitely going to undo it? Maybe suggest they sleep on it and look with fresh eyes before doing anything drastic. Sometimes when I do ceramics I put things in the kiln and expect them to come out looking a certain way, and when they come out different I hate it.... for about a week. Then I learn to love it because it has become something else, unexpected. Normally when you make a fibre project you see every stage so there are no surprises, but this time they missed a vital stage so the surprise was a BIG shock and this is probably why they over reacted.
However, they also had no right to make you feel bad about your work, especially when they had given you no guidelines or uniform squares. I think it looks fabulous and you are right to vent.
Yikes. Sounds like you had a really tough time.
I think I would have been reaaaaallllly upset too! You put a lot of time and effort and creativity into that afghan AND you were the one who stepped up when others didn't.
You can't control what others do, so I hope the venting helped. It's not good to keep all of that anger and frustration in.
thanks so much for all of the support! i appreciate everyone's comments... thanks so much for letting me vent... it really helped me to get a little more objective about the situation!
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