My family's one and only experiment with macrame ended when my mom came home and found the cat swinging by three sets of claws from a hanging braided plant holder, with the flowerpot in shards on the floor.

So the take home lesson here is: macrame + cat = no. (Although, actually, I think we could simplify those terms a bit. How 'bout just: macrame = no? Works for me.)

So many blossoming careers in my house ended with things breaking.

I was the youngest. And we had a very active puppy in my youth. So by the time we got to my mother's hobby-seeking phase, we really didn't have a lot left that could be broken, at least not without a serious investment of time and effort. (My parents would never have asked themselves why they couldn't have nice things, because the answer was so obvious: the kids. And the dog.)