I spend a lot of time printing every block-printed shirt and sorting through every screen-printed one. Yes, it’s my job, but I don’t think about it that way when I’m doing the work. I think about the person who liked my art enough to spend their hard-earned money supporting my small business, and I want to make sure they get the best quality shirt I can give them.

Of course, mistakes still happen.

My block-printed shirts are all printed by me, by hand. I’ve had several years of practice carving the linoleum and rolling on the ink and applying the perfect amount of pressure on the press to get a clean print. Even still, sometimes they don’t turn out right. Often, I’m the only person who notices the defects. A particular chatter mark that, to me, ruins the look of the design. A splotchy area where the ink didn’t transfer all the way. A smudge, a wrinkle, a color mixed wrong. All of these constitute what I call a goof.

It’s not always block-printed shirts that get this unfortunate name. Screen-printed shirts can be goofs, too. When I pick the ink colors for those shirts, I don’t get to be as particular as I am with my block-printed shirts. Because I outsource the screen-printing to a small local screen-printer, I don’t get my hands on the shirt until it’s finished. The most common goof for these is because the ink colors didn’t turn out right. It’s different seeing an online mockup versus the finished piece in person. Colors don’t always look the same through a screen.

It’s never easy to feel unhappy with something I’ve made. To look at something I’ve invested my love and time into and only see the mistakes I’d made along the way. To look at a shirt and only see the changes I would make with hindsight. It’s harder when the goofs are screen-printed because I order in bulk so it’s never just one shirt, but dozens. I open a box excited to see my vision in person for the first time and feel that cold curdle of disappointment.

Accepting mistakes as part of the process of creating art is possibly one of the most difficult things I’ve had to learn to do. It’s made harder when I know it’s not just myself I would be disappointing, but everyone who orders from VesperTwine, if I ever released or sent out something I thought was unworthy.

What I had never expected was for those same people who I wanted to give the best of my art to ask for a misprint listing. I’d seen other small businesses sell B grade items but I had never considered doing so myself. I always felt like a disappointment when I made a goof that it was surprising, and healing, to see people say that those same things that make it a goof also make it more human.

In anticipation of moving in 2024, I made my first goof listing. Everything sold out in 24 hours. I had expected nothing and yet people were asking for more. They were asking me to make mistakes. It was such a contradiction to my own thought-process that I didn’t know how to respond. Prior to this, I had been hoarding my goofs to use as cleaning rags and when I was in excess of those, I kept them in a box and donated them when it became full. Now, I could list them for half off or more and know they were going to a good home.

I don’t sell goofs all the time. I wait till I have a couple boxes full and then post them all, the prices reflecting how goofy they are. A good print with a color I don’t like being half off and the discount increases if there’s a printing error or a shirt defect.

Even as I prepare to make another goof listing, I still struggle to come to terms with the fact that people like my art enough to spend their money on it. Not just goofs, but everything on VesperTwine. Even the stuff I think is good I still see errors in, like any artist. To know that people like my work enough to see the human behind the art, making those natural mistakes, is something I’m not sure I will ever learn to accept about my own art, but something I’m eternally grateful for.

No, things do not always work out even though I do try to carefully control every outcome, but I’m also trying to control feeling like every goof is a failure. Like all the kind people in my comments say, it’s just proof a human made it.