I do not, it’s fair to say, present as frivolous. All those words like frothy and frilly and frou-frou, they just don’t fit me.

And let’s spell it out: these words are associated overwhelmingly with that other f-word, femininity, which from an early age has been a problematic space for me to occupy.

I was a terribly earnest child, and now that I’m a grown woman you’ll rarely find me hanging around at the hyperfeminine end of the spectrum. I can glam up with the best of them, but when I do, the result tends to be more Lady Macbeth than Disney Snow White, if you see what I mean.

So let me tell you the story of my vanity case

This is a sad little story, quite inconsequential in the grander scheme of things, but close to my heart (a) because it features eight-year-old me and (b) because it touches on something pretty deep in my relationship with making.

So. All the way back in the last millennium – 1983, to be specific, I entered an essay competition sponsored by the Irish Milk Board.

In what was perhaps the first of many such feats of approval-magnetism, I based my work closely on the literature provided by the sponsor – so closely, in fact, that it felt uncomfortably like cheating.

(All I did, after all, was take the information given, restructure it, translate it into Irish, and illustrate the result. No peer-reviewed primary research or anything.)

Lo and behold, my essay won a prize.

A little in advance of the awards ceremony, I had to declare which of their enticing range of prizes I wanted. I don’t recall much about the list, other than that it consisted mostly of toys.

But it included one mysterious and alluring item: a “vanity case”.

A vanity case!

Surely – surely! – this must be a treasure beyond imagining: a magical container full of the sparkliest, froofiest, pinkiest-and-purpliest, glitteriest and goldiest and forbiddenest of pleasures!

I pictured eye-shadows, lipsticks, mysterious scented powders, sequins and rhinestones.

(In my world, such things were the stuff of fantasy. One of my grandmothers wore a little make-up more days than not, but that was the solemn height of it.)

Well. Ignoring the fractionally raised eyebrow of my teacher, I chose the vanity case, and off I went to collect my prize.

Picture me, standing on a broad stage in a dark echoey hall, squirming in the spotlight with guilty anticipation as I wait for my coffer of radiant delights to be bestowed upon me.

You can see where this is going, right?

What they handed me that afternoon, dear reader, under those dazzling stage lights, was a small, plain brown suitcase, with rounded corners and a metal clasp.

Sturdy.

Serviceable.

And completely empty.

*a pause as we contemplate with our adult ironic distance the cheesy symbolism of that*

I used the ugly vanity case for years to carry my personal things on family holidays. (Did I mention brown is my least favourite colour?)

I knew I could never breathe a word of my bitter disappointment – because then people would know of my shameful secret yearnings, and also because I’d been wrong.

VANITY CASE.

How much heartache the promoters of that competition might have saved if only they’d called it something else!

Shameful secret yearnings, you say?

Yes, let’s come back to those, because they are what prompted me to write about this.

The relationship between vanity and shame – and the shaming of perceived vanity – is pretty central to my experience of femininity.

Part of me is deeply ashamed of my love of softness, shininess, luxury and froth. And I constantly have to negotiate with this shame in order to make the beautiful things I want to make.

The balance of the struggle has fluctuated over the years, but it’s definitely become more complicated as I’ve got older, because the Real Grown-Up Responsibilities to which I should at all times be directing my attention have become more pressing.

For example, I have difficulty allowing myself to work on soft household items (cushions, curtains) while hard items (walls, shelving) remain unfinished.

This is of course a gendered dichotomy (hammer drill versus sewing machine), and I wonder what effect that has had on my efforts to find a better balance. I do love my power tools, but there is a certain defiance, a certain I’m-as-good-as-the-boys-ness about my enthusiasm for them.

What I need is somehow to empower the tools on the other side of the fence – quilting foot, seam ripper, embroidery hoop, needle gauge – and get my inner patriarch to shut up while I create beauty all around me, for the sheer hell of it.

Feels kind of subversive, when I put it like that.