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Last week, I got tired of the dusty, judgmental scowl emanating from the Brother sewing machine on my office desk.

The sleek plastic starter machine was a gift from my mother, enough Christmases ago that I’ve lost count. Outside a few test runs of wonky straight stitches on scrap fabric and some enjoyable fooling around with its zigzag stitch, I had barely flipped a switch or feathered a foot pedal. Until recently, the most I’d fiddled with it was while seated on the floor of my parents’ living room, thanking my mother for the thoughtful present through the semi-permanent Marlboro fog in the house.

I’m a serial hobbyist. That neglected sewing machine jockeys for space with embroidery hoops, origami paper, whittling knives and strops, several half-repaired Mardi Gras costume pieces and a one-row accordion. I pulled it out of that overly-optimistic craft morass on Friday, dead set on turning some loud but functional curtains into … well, anything else. I proceeded to make a tote bag too ugly even for the lumpy organic produce at my local co-op.

The hem around the bag’s opening is a blank white, as are the curtains; their tropical pattern is only printed on one side. The marker lines I made and then cut around are still visible, as are multiple aborted rows of straight stitching. I sewed the bag shut in sections several times before realizing I could slide the opposite side of the bag under the machine. Breakthrough! The handles are different lengths and widths and aren’t sewn parallel to each other. The less said about my attempts to close raw edges, the better.

None of that matters because I took trash and turned it into something I could use. With any hoped-for habit, doing something is better than nothing. That frame of mind may prove useful as the details of the recent Iran ceasefire deal become clear in the coming days.

Because it was put together in part by Donald Trump and people he trusts, the ceasefire is almost guaranteed to be shoddily constructed. Iran will concede just enough so that Trump can declare victory to his followers. It will almost definitely cost the U.S. more than it was expending in the region before the war. It will be less stable than the deal with Iran made under Barack Obama, the one Trump torpedoed in 2018.

But it will stop hostilities between Iran and the United States, at least for now. It will limit the ability of Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to continue a conflict that opened with a double-tap strike on a girls’ school. That’s worth celebrating, though not exactly in the way our dealmaker in chief might prefer.

Will the ceasefire deal bring lasting peace, as Trump has promised? Will it bring down the price of gas during the summer travel season? Will it kick off an era of good feelings between the newly minted leadership of Iran and the United States? Almost certainly not. But like the cattywampus veggie bag I crafted, at least it’s something.

What do you think? Is any deal better than no deal? Do you have any hobbies you’re hoping to get in the habit of doing? Sound off in the comments.

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