By the time most Januarys are over I hit what I affectionately call the doldrums of winter. All the fun stuff of winter (December holidays, my birthday) have all passed, and I’m left with dead grass and bleak skies. I did a January photo challenge with my handmades the past two years, and its been fun. This year, I decided to alleviate my February funk, and do TWO challenges.

I’m participating in the #FiberuaryChallenge; a way for makers to share with daily prompts about themselves and their work. I didn’t really read up on who organized it, how many years. No, I saw some people I know doing it and decided to jump in. I find posting to Instagram frustrating, because doing a bunch of hashtags on my phone is annoying. And I don’t care enough about the algorithms to figure out which tags will get me the best responses. Establishing yourself as a designer is hard. But I suspect some if it is just putting out patterns. However, I think I improved over last year, since more ACTUAL crafters are following and liking my posts. Last year it was just a bunch of fake bots… But I DID post a lot of pictures of my feet in January 2021. Maybe that’s the correlation. If so, they owe me money.

My second February challenge is to write a haiku everyday this month. And share it in all its AWFUL glory. On the last day of January, I decided I was going to do this. I have shared 4 so far, and each is worse than the last. I’m a crap poet, and I’m well aware of this. But making bad art for the sake of making is liberating. No one has shown up to my house with torches and pitchforks- there is nothing to lose by sharing your worst work.

As an added bonus, I’ve gotten out of my own head somewhat. The idea of putting out a pattern that “flops” doesn’t terrify me as much. Its just the way of things. I like being the best at things, I take the most enjoyment in doing the things I’m really good at. Failure, or the fear of, prevents me from doing quite a few things.

But for now, I’m going to share with you my 4 bad haikus. #haikufebruary is the tag I’m using on Instagram. My awful poems have inspired at least one friend to join me in this liberating bad art experiment.

Now, I’m going get back to writing patterns that may or may not be great.