it seems that the whole dressmaking/being frugal with clothes interest is now the smart thing to do amongst women in the know.. this article in the Telegraph reveals that smart women are updating their wardrobes with bits of lace, ribbons and jewellery. I particularly like this paragraph:

“My generation of women, the last-gasp feminists, so radically de-skilled ourselves in anything to do with domesticity that we are hopeless at making things with our hands. I don’t know why we thought it was clever, but there you are.”

I know i didn’t think this as a child, teenager or even as recently as 5 years ago, but now? I’m so thankful that between my parents and my grandparents.. they made sure i at least got a grounding in most of the major crafts, or was exposed to them enough that i can teach myself the rest, know what things are and so on.. I’m reasonably self sufficient in that sense. I can cook low budget meals, but also cook from scratch, sew, knit, i want to teach myself crochet, i can embroider and crossstitch, i can grow my own food (not to the point of self sufficiency yet but that’s more to do with the depression and lack of space), i can preserve some of what i grow, and not just by chucking it in the freezer either. i can bang a nail in the wall n not hit my thumb, i can hang a picture. I may not be terribly good at some of it (some things i just leave to Michiel cos he is much better at it and accomplishes the same thing without swearing – but then, i do some things much better than he does, and without the amount of swearing he would say if he tried to do them) but at least i know how to do it. And more importantly, i know where to look information up – and i don’t just mean on the internet either.

In fact, having information available at your fingertips (and not on the computer) is one of the more important things to have in a crisis. For example, i have, somewhere, bookmarked a page on making a small makeshift cooker with some corks, wire, tealights and a saucepan, its enough simply to boil some water for a cup of tea if the electricity/gas go out. where do i keep the information? on the computer. which is a fat lot of use if the electricity/gas have gone out…

Anyway, where am i going with this? i suppose i just want to say thankyou to my parents and grandparents for teaching me what they did (and yes, Mum, this means you can say “I told you so”). Which is not what i set out to say when i started writing, but oh well!!

[I'll probably never hear the end of this now... :) ].