It’s late, I’m exhausted, and my studio has gone from having a relatively clear floor to being a giant disaster area.

But, you know what?  I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

In the interest of getting started with the “nurturing relationships” part of my general set of first goals (see the About the Project page over there on the left…), I hosted a huge (for me) party for about a dozen crafty women tonight.  At one point, half of them in the room were people I didn’t even know.   And for me, that’s big.  (You’d never know it to “meet” me online, but I’m horribly shy in skinspace.  It takes a fair bit of caffeine and possibly some tequila before I’ll start talking to strangers.)

We all came together under the banner of yarn.  We knit and spun and crocheted together, talking sometimes amongst ourselves and sometimes as a group.  I taught two people how to spin yarn with a spindle, and we collectively dumped out the cullings of our wool-and-fiber stashes on the studio table and picked through them for new things to take home.

I had intended to make it a little more personal — I wanted to make homemade cookies or pies or something — but we ended up with pizzas and garlic bread from a local chain, and the world did not implode.  My house was not 100% clean, but the sky did not fall.  Hell, I wasn’t even wearing a bra when the guests started to arrive.  But it all went incredibly well.

There’s a lesson in this for me.  For a while now, I’ve been too worried that things weren’t perfect at home, and that when they were, finally, I’d start inviting people over more often.  I thought I’d take that step when I’d finally started in with the house, so at least I could blame the chaos and disarray on being in the midst of rennovation.  But I don’t need to wait until things are perfect.

I just need to take the steps, be a gracious hostess, and do what I can.

The rest takes care of itself.

(Not that it’ll stop me from starting the rest of The Project.  But it’s good to know that I’m able to look past it long enough to really connect with people if I need to.  It’s all part of this evolution, baby…and if it means that next week there are painted walls and I serve hors d’oeuvres in an apron — or not — that’s fine, too.)

Step one, taken.