I’ve always done needlework and was happiest learning to do difficult, tedious work as a form of relaxation.   One adventure was a foray into custom shirtmaking.   Sewing and turning a perfect collar is a Zen-like experience.   Believe me, a nice shirt that costs $50 is the best bargain in town.   To me, the underpinnings of a craft are as soul-satisfying as the end result.

After looking at various forms of handmade lace, I decided to try to learn tatting, an ancient form of lacemaking.   I got some books and practised for a couple of days and finally achieved what looked like a couple of inches of trash spun by a drunken spider.   But I had the technique down and there was a pattern in there somewhere.   The next couple of weeks had me up to speed, a relative term in tatting, since it is notoriously slow work.   Fortunately, I didn’t find out until much later that it is extremely difficult to learn to tat, and impossible to learn from a book.   I did a lot of tatting, and still have some in a box somewhere, as well as several pieces in a museum in Central Florida.

These days my favorite learning addiction is computing.   The most difficult part is deciding which roads to travel, since there’s so much knowledge available and so many people are willing to teach as well as learn.   Thank you all, I’ll try to do my part.   What I’ve gotten out of these experiences is this; if there’s something I want to do, it’s a good idea to look over the options, decide what I want to achieve, plug my ears to the naysayers, and go for it.

A friend who is a programmer just told me it’s tedious, time-consuming and unrewarding to learn programming.   I really wish he hadn’t said that.

Lisa Miller