Is the Duck a Gateway Drug?

So, I have this thing I do, where I'll see something crafty and think: "I want to be crafty! I want to make things! With my hands!"

So, I'll start trying to do something (like sewing, or quilt making) and feel all useful and practical because I know if I can keep it up I'll be able to do handicrafts... before realising that my attention span isn't really up to these sorts of challenges.

I'll buy "simple patterns" for some skirt or blouse, and never make them. Or I'll get all of the material needed for a "simple" quilt design, and never get past cutting out the first few squares. Or I'll buy a crochet hook and a ball of yarn and make about five inches worth of a scarf.

I even flirted with the idea of taking up spinning and weaving once. I went as far as going to the local textiles club to see if I might be able to take classes or something. Some nice woman put her own knitting aside to show me how to spin, which was great, only I realised before I'd even left the building that I'd never see it through. It required a level of patience, competence and continuity that I struggle to produce at the best of times.

I know this about myself, yet I still can't seem to avoid the trap of walking into a shop that sells crafty things and thinking: "I want to be crafty! I will buy this easy guide to something-or-other and then I will make things!"

So, the other day, while I should have been looking for something else, I bought a counted cross-stitch pattern. It was a simple pattern obviously designed for complete beginners and/or children. It was a duck, and the price-tag was 99c.

"I'll buy a duck for a buck," I said to myself, and ended up buying that instead of what I had been looking for in the first place.

I've been working on that duck all week (on and off). Turns out counted cross-stitch is kind of like jigsaw puzzles - You have a picture on the "box", a blank canvas and a whole bunch of pieces with which to make the picture.

I haven't been very efficient, or very accurate, but I actually finished it. Not to sound melodramatic, but this is possibly the first time I've actually finished a crafty thing in my life.

And I want to do another one.

So, on the one hand, I'm all: "Yay! I've done a crafty thing! I can be crafty after all!", but at the same time I can't help but notice it's cross-stitch.

Cross-stitch is completely decorative. You don't use it to make anything useful. You can't cloth yourself with cross-stitch. You can't make blankets with cross-stitch. You can't mend socks or shoes with cross-stitch. All you can do is make pretty pictures.

I want a proper, useful, womanly skill that will enable me to be a constructive member of society after the Great Wipe takes out all modern technology and we have to go back to making things for ourselves. Heck, I'll even take one of those manly skills, if it means I'm good for something.

Sure, I can cook, but I can't fish or hunt, I can't recognise the difference between the poisonous berries and the good-eating berries in the wild, I can't raise chickens, I can't tan leather, I can't make furniture or build log houses... Heck, I even have trouble growing vegetables.

I want useful skills, goldern it! I'm not pretty enough to be this decorative!

On the other hand... I made a duck.