+1 to this. I did the same, learned to sew. My motivation was to make a particular costume for conventions, and since then I've made several more. Agreed tha

+1 to this. I did the same, learned to sew. My motivation was to make a particular costume for conventions, and since then I've made several more. Agreed that having something to do that's not on a screen is really important. (I started before the pandemic, but it's definitely been a fresh thing to do.) And the skill is versatile; I've repaired plush stuffies for friends and nieces and nephews, repaired and altered some of my own non-costume clothing, and recently made a couple pieces for myself too. I was lucky enough to have my experienced mother to teach me, walking through how to use a sewing machine and some basic hand-stitching. Doing one seam is like in 3d programming where you get one triangle to render on the screen, and everything else follows from there. I don't have the patience to watch instructional videos, and so I do a lot by trial and error. But I also learned that there's no objective standard of "doing it right" -- if it looks acceptable and holds together structurally, then it's not wrong. Sewing doesn't have technical debt like programming - you finish a piece and you're done, you're not worried about its architectural fit with a mess of other components.