The Benefits of Making Mistakes

Scene from the motion picture The Lovely Bones

One of my favorite books is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.  A movie was made based on this book, which the scene above is a clip from.  The main heroine (Susie) has a father that likes making ship in the bottles, a hobby that she loved helping him with in the book.  In the movie, Susie seems a more reluctant participant, but this scene in the movie made an impression on me due to the discussion that takes place (which doesn't take place at all in the book).

In the movie, the father is talking about why it is important to have hobbies.  Hobbies teach you things.  When Susie asks what they teach you, he says that they teach you--when you make a mistake--to do it over and over again until you get it right.

Why did this make an impression on me?  I couldn't really say until just recently, when I messed up on a project I was crocheting.  I realized that hobbies were one of the few things that we could make mistakes with that didn't have dire consequences.  Of course, making mistakes is annoying, and it isn't something you want to do...but I realized that it provided a wonderful life lesson.

When you really think about it, though we are doomed to err and make mistakes, there are few situations where we aren't penalized for it--which is unfortunate.  When we are children, even though we are ignorant, from a very early age we are expected to know how to behave and what to do.  When a child does something wrong, it is assumed that they did know better--and they are usually punished for it.  In school, we are expected to do our school work perfectly.  When we have a job, we have to do that well or suffer consequences.  In relationships, if you err, it is often interpreted as something you did intentionally to annoy the other person.  Making mistakes results in bad consequences--and we learn to dread making them.  As a result, we are also not forgiving of ourselves or others when mistakes are made.

It is really an unfortunate lesson we learn, and it is a rather ridiculous expectation we are given.  Of course, we want to encourage people to do things well.  In some careers, there should be a low tolerance for mistakes. You certainly don't want your brain surgeon to make mistakes.  Still, for us flawed human beings, I sometimes wish society wouldn't make us hysterical about making mistakes.


I hate making mistakes as much as the next person, but on the other hand--I have learned more...I have learned better by making mistakes.  When you examine what went wrong, you often better understand your subject, whatever it may be.

Though I've always been a person that admired rules and regulations, I admit I'm not a big follower...or not in the strictest sense.  When I make a recipe or do a craft, I'll usually deviate from what it says and do my own version.  For years, I just put this down to being creative.  This time, though, I really was trying to follow a crochet pattern to the letter.  I was trying to make the vest in the picture down below:

My first mistake was not paying attention to how much yarn I needed to do the project.  I had these huge rolls of yarn, and I thought, "Certainly that is enough for a project like this." Wrong! I ran out of the blue, so I switched to the yellow--which resulted in another mistake.  I think the yellow was a slightly different type of yarn, same material but thinner.

Still, it did not seem like it was going to be disastrous.  The pattern required you to crochet the ribbing, left side, and right side separately--and then you sewed them together with a crafting needle.  Now I had counted my stitches.  I had put the two together, and it seemed they lined up.  When it came time, though, to fully stretch out the two sides so I could sew them together, I realized I had a problem (see picture below):

In case you are wondering, the two sides are supposed to be the same length.  I could not figure out how this had happened! But what to do?  I didn't want to throw it out after doing all that work! Was it salvageable?

And this is a benefit of making a mistake--it truly allows you a chance for some ingenuity. What I did was sew the excess to the end of the totally blue side, figuring I'd make a bum puff at the back of the vest, which you frequently see in Steampunk styles.  I didn't wind up using the ribbing for the project, but when I sprained my ankle I was able to use it as an ankle wrap.  The finished product was certainly not perfect, but it was functional--and my mom loved it.  She actually looked quite good in it.

Mom modeling the vest I made

The back of the vest

Hobbies are wonderful because they provide the opportunity to make mistakes without having to worry about bigger consequences like reprimands, loss jobs, or loss of life...or ideally they should.  The worst that should happen with a hobby is that you may lose some money and experience a lot of frustration.

A person needs to learn that while it is good to do things well, the path to being good at something is paved with mistakes.  If we continue to grow throughout life, then we can look forward to always making mistakes.  To not grow, to not take the risk of making mistakes will eventually result in stagnation and being out-moded.  This project taught me how to save what I could, and it taught me that a mistake doesn't mean that the finished project can't be functional.

I think what bugged me, though, is when I reflected on my life...and I realized that every time I did try to follow something...I often did screw up.  When I did things my own way, I usually was successful.  Why?  Is there a hidden lesson here?

Why do I tend to do better when I do things my way rather than follow directions of others?  It is possible that when I read directions of other people, I tend to do it on auto-pilot.  I tend to pay attention more to what I'm doing when I'm winging it.  This was one thing I noticed when I decided to do an experiment.

I wanted to make a crochet dress for my Carpatina doll that she could wear for her every day clothes.  Her dress, as shown in the Carpatina catalog excerpt below, is lovely--but a bit too fancy and inconvenient for a doll you play with.  Carpatina clothing is meant for dolls that are only put on display and never played with.

A picture of the dress my Carpatina doll Rimilde came with (I renamed her from Veronika).

Though they are 18 inch dolls, they are slimmer compared to other 18 inch doll brands.  I had no pattern.  I decided to "wing it".  I encountered several problems while making the dress.  I was loosely basing it on the crochet pattern for the vest, but I hadn't made the two panels wide enough.  No matter, I made side panels.  It was while making the doll dress that I realized what I had done wrong with the vest.  I had accidentally started increasing it when I was skipping holes ( which was required in the fourth row).  I also figured out how to make ruffles intentionally (I didn't do it intentionally on the vest).  I learned probably better how to crochet by going over what I had done wrong on the vest.  When I made the doll dress, I actually repeated some of my mistakes--but this time I did it on purpose, and when I wanted the effect.

I was very pleased with the result (see below):

I plan to follow directions on the next project in my crochet book, which is an afghan.  It will be interesting to see how that turns out.