I'm sitting here surrounded by mounds and mounds of fabrics--weird prints (bananas!) and pretty prints (flowers!) and vintage sheets and a big pink shawl. There are piles and tubes of interfacing, a whole box of zippers and buttons, and I finally found where the hell my rotary cutter went. The cutting mat is propped up against the fireplace, and the clear ruler has fallen over onto the floor, and there is a pin cushion on the coffee table, two pairs of fabric scissors, a couple of fabric markers, a tub filled with spools of thread, and a seam ripper. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear I was a seamstress, and about to embark on making my masterpiece.

Really, though, I'm just pretty sure I'm going to sew my hand into something. It's been a couple of years since I've tried to sew anything, and even when I used to sew things, they weren't especially pretty. My straight lines are kind of crooked, and my curved lines veer off into outer space, and I'm pretty sure I've never figured out, exactly, what a dart is. That's what ninjas use to try and kill pirates except they fail, right?

This afternoon, finished with my freelance work, ready to write, I sat down, and got up. And then sat down, and got up, and sat down, and forced myself to write a page, and then almost burst into tears because I am a wretched hack. I surfed the Internet for way longer than there was Internet to surf, almost blew my budget buying eight different things but backed out just in time, and then found myself at my closet door, dragging my giant tub of craft supplies out into the middle of the living room and started sorting out things into craft arenas. It was a very large and ugly job.

Over the course of the years, I have tried my hand at crocheting, painting, drawing, making things with felt (what things? I don't even know), origami, etching, embroidery, things that required glue and construction paper and sandpaper (what required glue and construction paper and sandpaper? I do not remember), jewelry-making, book-making, quilting and sewing. The detritus has piled up in one big box, and I've been kind of embarrassed to go through it--partially because I gave everything up after a few half-hearted attempts, and partially because I was so bad at everything I tried. Really bad. And if there is anything I know about myself, it is that I hate to do things I am bad at, and would rather throw it into the corner and stomp and sulk than try to improve myself.

But I kept trying things. I was convinced I was going to stumble onto the craft that would fulfill my soul, make me happy, cure my depression, and really showcase the true and spectacular crafty, creative talent that lurks inside my crafty, creative soul.  Writing is not a flashy kind of talent, but if I could paint a magnificent landscape, why, then you'd be impressed. And I'd be impressed, too. And fulfilled, did I mention fulfilled? It is no surprise that I turn to crafty things when I can't write, though you'd think I would know better by now.

This time, it's obviously all about channeling my frustrated energies and et cetera into a project, but it's also because I am entirely lacking in anything even coming close to resembling a summer wardrobe, and I've got all this fabric, and a pattern for a skirt, and skirts are easy and why not just make a dazzling array of cute, shoddily constructed, lumpy, uneven skirts in funny patterns? Why not, indeed. I took my measurements, the pattern is cut out, the giant pile of fabric is piled up and ready to be washed and pressed, and then, it is go time. May go time not include "go cry in the corner time," amen.