Whilst stitching, I have been musing recently on the nature of the annoyances that happen to makers.

These aren’t earth-shattering, life-changing events in the big scheme of things, but I’m betting that even the most zen amongst the making community can sometimes feel like they want to scream (or cry) or have steam coming out of their ears due to some tiny straw that has just broken their metaphorical camel’s back.

I don’t consider myself a particularly grumpy old woman, in fact I feel very fortunate most of the time. But sometimes those niggley little irritations do surface and it feels good to get them out from under my skin – a bit like squeezing a spot.

So I hereby present my personal top ten list of annoyances as a maker.

(Actually, these are just the first ten things that occurred to me. But here they are anyway!)

1. Vanishing equipment

Yes, that irritatingly frequent occurrence when you put down a vital piece of equipment and it then apparently “disappears” into thin air. An all-too-regular incident, in my experience.

My fine point pen, which only ever travels from the table to the pen pot on the shelf, is currently status “vanished”, leaving me cursing as I resort to the not-quite-as-good-because-its-a-bit-splodgy pen. Also prone to this are my scissors, which have been known to disappear for days at a time. And no, they have not been borrowed – I have trained my family well – the scissors just vanish and then reappear! Oh, and my camera lens cap once “went away” for over a month, only reappearing at a craft fair when a customer found it in my “bargain box”!

2. Missing materials

This sounds similar to annoyance no.1 above, but is actually quite different.

I’m talking about when you run out of a vital component or material and it takes a-g-e-s to obtain more, thus stalling your creative flow. Like me having several bears in progress, but being unable to get any further with them because I stupidly ran out of cotter pin joints and will have to wait weeks for more to arrive so that I can finish them off.

This situation has been aggravated recently by Covid causing postal delays (plus see also annoyance no. 8 below, which applies equally to incoming goods as to outgoing ones).

3. Fabric fails: no. 1

When you buy fabric that has been described specifically as “easy to work with”, only to find yourself cursing it’s very existence every time you use it because it is the absolute opposite of easy to work with and makes you sweat and swear profusely as it shreds and frays and covers you in fluff when you try to make things from it. (Yes, vintage viscose, I am looking at YOU.)

4. Fabric fails no. 2

When you find the perfect material and love it so much that you use it all up in no time and then try to order more of it, only to find that it no longer exists ANYWHERE, leaving you pining and fruitlessly searching the internet for hours / days / weeks, with increasing levels of desperation.

And when you do think you’ve found it, and order some, when it arrives it turns out to be not the right thing at all and in fact more like the fabric mentioned in number 3 above.

5. “Silence is NOT golden”

When you make something that you think is the absolute bees-knees, tip-top BEST THING you EVER made, take lovely photographs of it after hours of faffing and styling, spend ages crafting a story about it as a caption, post it on Instagram and…. crickets.

6. “It’s Gone Wrong!!”

I used to think that all appliances were evil. But over time I have modified that theory and now believe instead that machines have souls. Yes, I am talking about those inanimate objects that we rely upon to carry out the same, dull, practical activities day in, day out, for many years, without any thanks, until they die; at which point they are thrown out with the trash. It must be terrible for them. So just to make their lives more interesting, they play up from time to time and throw a wobbler.

In my household the principle offenders are:
a) The Printer. It waits patiently until I have something VERY IMPORTANT to print, before telling me that it has a problem. I can almost hear it giggling inside as it flashes up its best error message or chews up my last sheet of nice, pristine paper and spits it out in disgust.

b) The Iron. It has a range of irritations that it throws my way, depending upon its mood. For example, the dodgy thermostat often surfaces when I am using some particularly delicate fabric, leaving scorch marks in its wake. Or, like a cliché in a horror movie, the sole plate becomes inexplicably sticky, leading to accusations from my other half that I have been doing something irresponsible with the iron when I most certainly have not.
We have been through several irons and each one has had it’s own particular idiosyncrasies, all of them annoying.c) The Sewing Machine. Again, a machine with a plethora of annoyances at its disposal, which it varies according to whim. Tangled bobbin thread? Gotcha. Chewing of fabric when starting to sew? Yep. A foot pedal that is constantly trying to escape my foot? Check.

These less-than-endearing traits are usually reserved for when I have a deadline to meet and I am already behind.

7. Rude people

I’m talking specifically here about people who come up to your stall at a fair, forgetting that there is not, in fact, an invisible soundproof bubble between them and you, just a table and a couple of feet of thin air.They proceed to make comments such as “Oh No! I don’t like THOSE at ALL” or “Ugh. I could make one of those for a fraction of the price!” (or endless variations on a similarly inappropriate theme).

We’ve all had them. Yes, they are entitled to their opinions. No, they do not have to express them within your immediate earshot.

It’s just rude.

8. Bureaucracy gone mad

Otherwise known as when the rules or laws about selling and exporting goods change, leaving you frustrated and confused about what you need to do to comply with said new rules and fielding irritable comments or complaints from customers, or would-be customers, who happen to not live in the UK, and just want to buy things from you, but have no knowledge of the hoops you have to jump through in order to sell and deliver said items to them.

Not surprisingly, said customers object to the extra money they will now have to pay to buy your goods because of new taxes / fees, etc, none of which you will see a penny of.

To add to the general annoyance, any guidance on how to navigate these changes is usually aimed at companies who have whole departments devoted to dealing with such things, rather than at solitary baffled middle-aged women sewing at their kitchen tables.

9. Interruptions

(For people who have studios of their own this probably does not apply, so feel free to go off and make a cup of tea or just read on and feel smug at this point).

When you work from home and so do other people, usually it is all fine. Until, that is, their making of tea / venting about work annoyances / preparation of enormous cooked lunches (with resulting enormous quantities of washing up) / seemingly endless general clattering about / (insert your own variation here) starts to impinge upon your concentration, your productivity and eventually, your general good humour. Can equally affect those of us who still have children at home (which I no longer do) and have to constantly break off from working to tend to their needs, which are many and frequent.

Virginia Woolf was only partially right about “a room of one’s own” – sometimes a whole building of one’s own would be better actually.

10. To Tidy Up or Not To Tidy Up – that is the question

This refers to the constant, energy-sapping mental and physical battle between the knowledge that a tidy workspace can be more productive (and actually give you the space to DO work, rather than tripping over boxes and trying to clear table space) and the simultaneous and opposing knowledge of the fact that if you do tidy up, you will not be able to find anything ever again.

Which brings us neatly back to number 1, above.

I could go on, but I’ll leave my list at a nice round number.

So, what would you add to the above?

I would love to know that I am not alone in my irritations.

Or my belief that my iron has a soul. ♥