I believed for years that I wasn’t good with my hands. I’d been told it often enough that I accepted it, and there were plenty of other things to keep me busy. Recently, I’ve been giving myself a chance to find out whether that was ever true.
I’ve started embroidering thrifted clothes and experimenting with cyanotype prints on fabric, creating pieces for our allmine staff and guests to wear. It feels good to learn something that feeds my creativity, especially when I can share the results with people who are part of my daily life. My impatience, however, remains fully intact. I can picture the finished piece long before I know how to make it.
I love learning new things, every day, whenever I get the chance. A conversation or watching someone approach a task differently can teach me something I didn’t know I needed. Lessons are available everywhere when I’m willing to pay attention, including the ones about patience that I apparently need more than once.
I’m calling these pieces hand saved because upcycled sounded too sterile. The clothes already have details worth keeping; I’m adding something that might make another person choose them. As I work, I’m realizing that this instinct is familiar. It’s how allmine began, too.
Before this project, there was a rundown deli in an old building. I saw what it could become, though there was a great deal of work between the space in front of me and the neighborhood joint I imagined.
The mural on the wall dates to 1944, and I kept it. It had been part of that room long before I arrived, and I wanted it to remain part of what came next. Now people share dinner beneath it, adding their own memories to the building’s history.
Turning the deli into a restaurant was only the beginning. You can open the doors on a particular day, but you cannot set a date for when someone will start thinking of your business as part of their life. That takes time, and people choosing to come back.
This is one of the stranger things about restaurant work: the day moves quickly, while growth is slow. Dinner needs to happen tonight. Building a team, earning trust, and finding your place in a neighborhood take years. When you’re occupied with what still needs doing, it can be difficult to appreciate how far you’ve come.
Being featured on Pizzeria Insider gave us a welcome chance to do that. Bruce is such a wonderful storyteller. He put us at ease, captured the essence of allmine, and we definitely felt the love.
To be appreciated by someone who has been to over 600 pizza shops and owned one himself left us elated and filled our cup. He understands what goes into this work, and having him recognize what we’ve been building meant so much to us. It gave me a moment to enjoy what was already here without immediately thinking about what needed to happen next.
The episode tells the story of how I opened allmine and what we do here today. I’d love for you to watch it and meet more of the people behind your dinner. Bruce told our story with so much care, and I’m excited to share it with you.
I’m learning that patience gets easier when I stop treating unfinished as unsuccessful. I can enjoy the stitching as it takes shape and appreciate what I know now that I didn’t know when I started. I can look around allmine and recognize years of progress, even with plenty still to do.
I still want things finished sooner. But I’m beginning to understand how much I would miss if I only enjoyed them once they were complete. There is pleasure in learning what my hands can do, pride in what our team has built, and a great deal to appreciate while the next idea takes its time.
Perhaps you have something like that in your own life, something you care about that is taking longer than you hoped. Building allmine reminds me to give the work time; learning to use my hands reminds me to enjoy that time, too. I’m glad I finally questioned what I believed I couldn’t do. It would have been a shame to miss all this pleasure simply because I wasn’t good at it yet.
Thank you for helping allmine become what I hoped it could be. When I look around the room now, I can see years of effort in the ordinary pleasure of people having dinner together. It makes me glad I saw something worth saving, and glad I stayed with it.
Roxana and your allmine friends
