learning a new craft
I’ve been festering in a prison made of my neuroses lately, which means it’s time to redirect my obsessive nature towards my hobbies/interests… and what better way to do that than to write about different approaches to learning a new craft. When writing about anything, I have to be careful about getting into the history and the implications and the context for the thing, because for me that ends up being the whole world, and have found that making lists is the only way to control whatever that’s about. It’s not that I think I’m qualified to take on such a task (writing about the whole world), it’s that I believe it’s how everything should be done, as someone whose entire deal is fixating on context and nuance, anyway I’m losing sight of the task at hand again, I’m the Jesse Eisenberg of girl bloggers. I am choosing not to re-read that previous sentence. I am asking you, dear reader, to suspend judgment. Moving on.
3 approaches to learning a new craft
- Enrolling in a workshop or online course
- Pros: access to experts and their “tried and true” methods, ability to receive feedback, little need for students to do their own research
- Cons: , experts are self-identified and can have other agendas (sponsorships affect their brand recommendations, may not always be transparent), inexperienced crafters do not recognize instructor’s blind spots
- Learning by doing (“winging it” on minimal info)
- Pros: first hand experience is the most effective way to learn something, immense satisfaction of figuring something out on your own, save $ (at least in the short-term), a fresh/inexperienced perspective lends itself to finding affordable tools and alternative methods
- Cons: there may be longterm consequences to rookie mistakes, these mistakes may’ve been outlined by a more experienced crafter (like an instructor of an expensive class)
- Doing your own research
- Pros: can make more informed decisions based on lots of information, less expensive than a class, save money by checking out books from a library or internet resource like archive.org
- Cons: can be overwhelmed with choices, delayed start due to choice anxiety, spend lots of time instead of money, people who choose to do research beforehand may lose sight of what they were interested in achieving/making in the first place, might get sucked into too many directions due to listening to experts instead of inner voice/individual preferences
examples
Punch needle crafts
- Enrolling in a workshop/online course: Amy Oxford has a monopoly over this craft and uses it to promote her expensive branded tools.
Polymer clay
- Winging it: Newbies use permanent markers to draw details on polymer clay pieces. This looks okay at first, but in time the black ink bleeds/fades. Unfortunately part of learning to use polymer clay means either understanding the chemistry of your materials or trusting information from a chemist.
Beading
- Doing your own research: Popular advice found on forums, etc. poo-poos Czech beads and new learners could miss out on a lot because they listen to people who are interested in using consistently sized Japanese beads for pictorial flat stitches.