Hands On

mine
Originally uploaded by sweetmondaygirl.

I'm not very good at embroidering. This pillow case is the best thing I've done in the several months since I picked up the hobby. (And I didn't even bother with the "yours" version since Lord knows when I will ever need a "yours" anything.) Most of the time, I end up getting the string in a million knots or the stitches are terribly uneven. But I like doing it anyway. I've figured out that I like almost anything where I'm creating something that didn't exist before. I like getting my hands dirty with things. Clay, paint, soil, wood, scissors, newsprint, paper, film, fabric... bring it on. Discovering this has surprised me because it doesn't really go with the rest of my personality. It would make much more sense for me to like doing things that are less concrete. So it's interesting to me that I need this. I'm trying to foster it as much as I can these days because for a while after college I didn't do nearly enough of any of that stuff, and I always felt like something essential was missing. It took me a while to figure out that even though I was up to my neck in the film industry, I missed the actual production work, the moving of the lights and splicing of the film and what not. It hadn't even occurred to me that that was what I had enjoyed about school. I'd thought it was all about the stories.