Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Stitching and Stereotypes


Stitching the Night Away Stitching Bloggers Blog Hop

Loretta at Stitching the Night Away has an interesting question for Blog Hop #4.  It's one I've never asked myself before and I'm not sure what my answer is going to be.

Do you experience this same assumption from society in general that just because you’re being crafty you’re also driven by some unseen force to be in constant 1950s housewife mode? and then…. Who actually does the cooking and the cleaning in the household? I’d also really like to hear some words from the men in the crowd who stitch on this topic. What sort of societal reactions do you get and what ridiculously wrong assumptions do people make towards you when they see you working on needlework?

I don't think anyone who knows me considers me a 50's type of gal.  I'm pretty independent and take care of a lot of things on my own.  But my husband and I usually share the household chores.  Usually whoever sees that a job needs done just does it.  No job separation here.  Sometimes he cooks, sometimes I do.  If one of us sees the dishwasher needs emptying then we just do it.  I keep track of what maintenance my car needs.  There are certain things I really don't like doing (like vacuuming) but I do it anyway most of the time.  A lot of this stems from the fact that David traveled a lot when we were first married.  He was sometimes gone for several weeks at a time.  So I either learned to do certain things or they didn't get done.  So some of this was out of necessity.  But you do what you have to do when you have to do it and honestly I'm not too concerned with what other people think.

My "craftiness" comes from a frustrated desire to be an artist.  I would love to have the talent to create beautiful paintings but sadly I'm missing that gene.  So I cross stitch and pretend my fabric is a canvas and my threads are paints and I can create works of art that way.

This was a good subject to discuss.  I hadn't really thought about this before and it made me think about my perception of what I do and other's perception of me.

Visit all the blogs in this round of the Stitching the Night Away Stitching Blogger Blog Hop:
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2 comments:

Donna said...

I feel the same way. I can't really draw or paint worth a darn so instead I use a needle and thread.

PS Quaker Gone Tropic looks wonderful!

Loretta @ Stitching the Night Away said...

I am with you on the frustrated desire to be an artist ... I can't draw a straight line to save my life.