A crafting hero: Brandon Farris
If you don’t know Brandon Farris, he is a comedian based in Califorina, a youtuber with over 90k subscribers and 1M followers on Facebook, he is also the world’s most enthusiastic, carefree, confident, joyful and hilarious crafting newbie ever.
Oh and he has video playlists called “challenges” and “learning to” and his ‘about’ page simply says “You deserve to laugh! 💜 . How could I not love this guy!!
The first time I saw Brandon was when his learning to knit video went viral. With more than 4M views since October it’s definitely not your average yarnie instructional….not least because as he’s searching for a video to learn from he’s also eating marshmallows off the knitting needles….ooh the sacrilege!!
Why did he do this? (the learning to knit, not the marshmallow nonsense) Well he tells you right at the start, he was bored. He was cleaning the house and found some yarn and needles so decided to follow a youtube video and learn how to knit. Simple right? Well Brandon is nothing if not laid back about how easy this will be. And not just knitting, in his second crafting video which is about one of my favourite crafts, crochet he says “I already know how to knit…I’m assuming my knitting skills will just transfer over to the crocheting” ahhh we’ve all been there, the blind confidence that because we can knit we can crochet or vice versa. I still continue to struggle with knitting after upteen attempts and several lessons with knitter friends. Ah well, maybe one day!
It’s not just this relaxed approach that I enjoy watching it’s the fact Brandon is trying it all, from sewing to painting and origami to following written patterns, he’s done more crafts in the last 5 months than I have since I started the Happy Barnet Craft Challenge!! (well, almost!) It’s reminded me why I started crafting in the first place. I just gave it a go. I only started to crochet because I took my niece to a workshop on knitting and crochet for her birthday and realised I could actually do this crochet malarky….and just as importantly I loved it. I had gone in no intentions of picking it up myself so without taking her along I would never have discovered how much I enjoy it.
Similarly with my other favourite craft, papercutting. It was my friend K who arranged for a group of us to go to a workshop on it. I thought it would be a fun afternoon but had no idea I would take to it the way I did. This has encouraged me to try other crafts and of course not all of them go as smoothly….there’s a reason you don’t see any pottery in my instagram feed you know!
But it’s easy to stick to the things we already know, things we are comfortable with and can do. Trying out new things, having a go and not getting too hung up on whether it’s perfect or not but just finding out if you enjoy it and want to do more of it is exactly what the Happy Barnet Craft Challenge is all about. ‘Have fun, be inspired and try something new’ is the tagline I’ve used and I could easily paraphrase Brandon and add ‘don’t take it too seriously , you deserve to laugh’. Basically, we could all do with being a bit more Brandon!
So after I finish writing this I’m going to see what else I haven’t tried yet and what I could have a go at. Maybe I’ll watch some more of Brandon’s videos and see if he can inspire me (again!).
And Brandon, if you stumble across this blog, here is your official Happy Barnet Crafting Challenge tick for, well let’s see, ‘learning a new technique from youtube’, ‘setting yourself a challenge’, ‘using a craft tool or material you’ve never used before’…and probably several others!!
Happy Crafting, folks!
Want to join in with the Happy Barnet Craft Challenges for 2019? The Challenges | Facebook Group | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube
Want to watch more Brandon videos? Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Challenge completed!!!
A gallery of completed craft projects from the Happy Barnet Craft Challenge 2022.