Like it? I made it myself

We are living in uncertain times. War looms, the economy is wobbly, and the future is looking even more uncharted than usual. People are searching for security and, as a result, domestic skills have suddenly become fashionable, or rather being fashionable has become so unfashionable that homely old hobbies have risen up to fill the gap. Seeking a combination of spiritual uplift, comforting routine and a sense of control, people are taking up knitting in droves.

In America, where uncertainty is now a way of life, the trend has created a marketing opportunity. Sewing and stitching classes are full. Self-customised clothes are the rage. Elissa K Meyrich, who runs the now over-subscribed Sew Fast Sew Easy classes in Manhattan, says: 'People are beginning to re-examine themselves. They are reassessing what is important to them, and which traditions they are going to bring forward to the next generation.' Even celebrities like to feel resourceful in these jittery times. Julia Roberts recently announced that she cleans her own house, cooks and knits. Nicole Kidman, it is reported, has started blending her own perfume.

I too know the sense of well-being that comes of doing something for yourself. I get it every time I pass the little strip of wood I nailed on to the top-stair riser to stop the end of the carpet flapping. That was a good day, but that was a long time ago. Perhaps I need to try again.

In what is surely a sign of the times, Spruce magazine, the latest Wallpaper* spin-off, included a sewing pattern for no-nonsense trousers in its launch issue. The whole thing seemed easy. Why go to the man for trousers when you can make your own?

Infused with a new ethic of simplicity, I went to Peter Jones and bought myself a couple of square metres of navy blue corduroy, a zip and some buttons. I also picked up some needlework fabric and an embroidery hoop. The trousers might take me some weeks to finish, and I wanted a quicker fix of well-being: cross-stitching.

Cross-stitching designs run the gamut from abstract patterns to pictures of sleeping cats, but I had my heart set on a nice simple motto, something empowering and inspirational, catchy but not corny, spiritual and quietly profound. I toyed with 'Perfection is an excuse for failure', from Uri Geller's Little Book of Mind Power, but I thought there might be copyright issues. I decided against 'Hugs Department: Always Open' because, quite frankly, my hugs department is never open. I passed on 'Laughter is the sun that drives the winter from the human face' - too long for a beginner. In the end I went with something short and old-fashioned, but still topical: 'The end is nigh'.

Cross-stitching, in case you don't know, involves sewing a series of little Xs across the interstices of a woven backing. It's not difficult to master, once the au pair shows you how, but it demands close attention, a bright light and a high boredom threshold. After two days I was still on 'The' and my untrained fingers barely had the strength to push the needle through the fabric. Eventually, somewhere around the 'i' in 'nigh', I gave up. Still, cross-stitching is a skill I know I will always possess and can return to whenever my wrist stops aching. In the meantime, I fancied something a bit more survivalist. I felt like baking some bread.

What could be more basic? Bread is just flour, water and yeast. You don't even really need yeast - if you have the patience you can catch your own from the air. I tried this once before, during a period of prolonged unemployment, but I don't recommend it. This time out I went to the bakery and bought some fresh yeast.

I don't like to use a recipe when I make bread. It's very confining. After a bit of practice you tend to know when you've got the balance of ingredients just about right. You also know when you've got it wrong, and this time I got it wrong. The dough got stuck to the table, and the bowl, and my hands. I needed more flour, but I couldn't reach the flour. Finally I got it under control, into a ball, and back in the damn bowl. While it was rising I decided to make a start on my trousers.

My wife had set up the sewing machine for me, leaving a strict warning about not breaking it. It seems to me I've used one before. It could have been in a previous life, or at school, but I knew instinctively how to raise the 'foot', how to position my 'work' under the needle, and how to tail out thread. I briefly envisioned myself as the Jamie Oliver of the new TV sewing craze. And then something went very, very wrong.

I was having difficulty getting the edges of the two bits of fabric, with their various corresponding notches and slits, to stay lined up. I ploughed on, readjusting the pins and tugging the seams together, but I was only storing up trouble for myself: by the end everything was well out of whack. The trouser dream was over.

The bread, by contrast, was a tremendous success. I made three loaves, all of them wholly edible. My children even agreed to eat them, perhaps because they could tell how depressed I was about the trouser fiasco. In truth the bread felt like a hollow victory. I spent more than £30 on raw materials for my trousers, plus £5 for a copy of Spruce, and I had nothing to show for it.

If you want to feel spiritually-centred, here's my advice: do something you're good at. Periods of recession are no time to wake up to the fact that you're worse than useless. Remember: The end is ni...