In my professional life, I’m a custom seamstress and alterationist, so my professional work *does* in fact, stay done. I just never really get to see it, except maybe in pictures. I’ve never really been able to articulate just what it is that makes me crazy about most housework (the cleaning parts) and the secretarial work that I used to do, and you (and your grandma) hit the nail squarely on the head — it just doesn’t stay done. The letters to type may be to different people about different things, but the IN box is always full. (I guess they call that “job security”. *snort!*) The floors and the laundry don’t stay clean, and when I’ve worked through this mound in front of me, I turn around and there is another one behind me. And *we* don’t have kids! =:O

Something that *stays* done, though…. That is going to be my new reason when people ask why I make clothes or why I’m bothering to knit a sweater (my very first! I’m so excited!). Thank you so much for these words.

Sharon

My feeling behind my crochet has always been that it ties me back to my ancestresses, my mom crochets, my grandmother Staley crocheted (made each of her grandchildren, and great-grands ending with my daughter, an afghan before her death)….. I know the history of crochet doesn’t go terribly far back, but for as long as there have been women, we have been some-how or another involved in the making of blankets, clothing, bags and such for our households. To be yet another woman in that very long line of handy-women, makes me proud. It’s like a figurative umbilical chord, that stretches back from generation to generation to the time before history was recorded.

Thanks for giving me yet another reason to be proud of my crochet (and the minimal knitting and sewing) that I do! (Now, as much as I’d love to take up whittling and carving, pretty danged sure the hubby would appreciate wood shavings on the floor of the house even less than he appreciates my half-completed crochet projects all over the house. *wink*)

My grandmother, like so many others, used to do hand quilting. She did this in parties when it was fashionable and, later, beside her family. Not only did she chose designs and patterns with folk meaning such as marriage knots, but also recycled old clothing. Now, long years beyond her passing, her grand and great-grand-children look over the lovingly stitched shapes of our blankets and sometimes compare the fabric with old photo albums.

“This piece is from her favorite dress when I was about 10…” or “Remember those floral print bell bottom pants she made you back in the 70′s?”

The children laugh, but they think it’s pretty cool also.

As I wrap myself and my loved ones in these blankets, I can feel her arms around us still and recall the laughter, the tears and the patient hours she imbued them with.

I just returned home from a trip to my mother’s, but forgot to take my handwork, a necessity at her house. I had to go buy a cheap set of knitting needles to survive the visit. I couldn’t borrow from her: I was the rebel of the family who refused to learn to crochet and signed up for knitting lessons. Perhaps the best part of my little project (a washcloth) was that my 12-year-old daughter picked up the needles and a skein of yarn and knitted a second one on our drive home — with no mistakes!

Laney