[LMB] Male and/or Female

[Anita]

On Nov 15, 2007 1:05 PM, PAT MATHEWS <mathews55 at msn.com> wrote:

>
> >From: Marilyn Traber <mtraber251 at earthlink.net>
>
> If I were the
> >little useless femme powderpuff who couldnt do anything, we wouldnt have
> >much to talk about some evenings!
>
> Don't underestimate the skills of the little femme powderpuff, unless you
> have a taste for takeout food and are comfortable in guy-type conditions
> at
> home, or have a housekeeper, and take torn hems to the tailor or (like one
> woman of my acquaintance) uses the stapler on them. (She thinks hand
> sewing
> is an art as arcane as flint-knapping. It probably is these days.)
>
> Pat, reared to those skills
>

I tend to see both cooking and hand sewing as fairly useful life skills.
Cooking I see as gender neutral and hand sewing really should be more so.
Cooking because I have learnt at least as much from Iestyn about food as my
home ecc teachers and because my brother has been taking it up with a
vengance since he started working in hospitality.

Hand sewing because it is so much easier to do clothing repairs that way.
Admittedly in the SCA sewing is a slightly more gender neutral skill than
elsewhere although it could be the A&S oriented group that I play with.

The youngest housemate I ever had was 19, I was 21 at the time. He tried to
bring his mending to me because mother had always done it. I explained how
to fix it and gave him access to my sewing box. I refused to do any of it
for him though.

Anita, young and hand sewing since childhood.