By Amy Van Veen (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 6, 2013
Pinterest has given me a false sense of self.
Either that or it has given me an alternative self. One that posts deliciously complicated recipes and renovation plans for a home that I do not own.
For those who are not aware of Pinterest, it’s a vortex of distraction that sucks you into its bowels until you don’t realize that three days have passed. It’s essentially a giant virtual pin board where people post relevant links to any number of categories, from do-it-yourself (DIY) to cars, photography to science/nature, travel to fashion, fitness to gardening and everything in between. You can follow or be followed, just like any other social media site that uses stalker terms we don’t seem to question.
Even though my pin boards are posted to with the best of intentions, my Pinterest self looks a lot craftier than my real self. Certainly, as I look over my pins I see a plethora of recipes that I have done. And there are a lot of e-cards that I did in fact make me chuckle when I saw them. But the real lies come with the DIY pins.
Do-it-yourself headboard with stretched canvas and handwritten passages from favourite novels? I do not have that. I did Modge-Podge pages from Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native to the inside of a $9 lampshade that only worked after multiple failed starts and expletives yelled at an innocent glue container.
A chunky, cozy hand-knit blanket perfect for cold winter nights that apparently I pinned twice? I did not do that. I did once yell out fourth-grade versions of curses when I tried to make a circle rug for a Barbie house that looked more like a mini yarn monster vomited up something that did not agree with their stomach.
What about ombre wall art made from a collection of wine-stained corks? Well I do have a jar that’s slowly being filled with corks from the bottles of wine I buy that aren’t twist-off, but it looks more like a memento to a life of a wine-o than anything crafty.
The biggest reminder of how my real self differs from my Pinterest self are the DIY sewing projects that stare at me from my Pinterest board and from the bottom of my closet. Turning a dress into a skirt is a lot easier said than done, I tell my computer screen as if reasoning with the talented blogger I’m trying to emulate. Instead of a dress turned to a skirt, I have a dress cut in half with a zipper missing, pulled seams I don’t know how to fix and a bag of rags staring up at me every time I open my closet doors to pick out something made by someone who actually knows the logistics of sewing patterns.
My sewing “process” usually includes me staring at an piece of clothing, working up the guts to take a scissor to it and then having no idea what to do with the now destroyed article that it goes back in the bag of other destroyed shirts, skirts and sweaters to be saved for another day when I feel like going from crafty to disappointed.
But maybe that’s okay. My Pinterest followers see me constantly pinning pins that I will never do and they don’t judge because they do the same thing.
At least that’s what I tell me and my Pinterest self.
