There's a feminist argument against a writer spending time cooking and sewing, but it pleases me
I learned to use a sewing machine as a child. My mother made most of our clothes, and passed on her skills. As a teenager, with the brazen confidence of someone who doesn't know what's supposed to be difficult, I embarked on whatever stood between me and the item of clothing I had in mind. I cut and sewed dresses on the bias, became confident with the strange geometry of the crotch seams of trousers and the counterintuitive curves of sleeve-heads. I added pockets and linings when I wanted them, learned the hard way which fabrics suited which designs.
There is no need, now, for me to make my own clothes. For years it was a choice between buying poor quality and making good quality; we can all afford badly made fast fashion but I had learned to respect natural fibres and French double seams. These days I can buy durable, well-made clothes, but I still knit my own jumpers and apparently, this week, sew my own dresses.
I know a couple of my friends think it's a waste of time, all this handicraft. There's an obvious feminist argument against a writer spending her time cooking and sewing. Still, it pleases me.
READ MORE
Making things yourself only sometimes, unpredictably, gives you better than you can buy. (Home-made pitta bread is revelatory. See also hummus, crackers and rice pudding.) But the professionals are often better at it, and it's certainly cheaper to buy even the poshest jam than devote an afternoon to fruit-picking and an evening, a lot of sugar and a lot of electricity to making your own, which may or may not turn out well. Price my time at minimum wage, add materials, and the dress-in-progress has already cost more than buying a ready-to-wear equivalent. You could plausibly argue that by doing these things myself, I'm depriving the
sustainable
small businesses from which I would otherwise buy.
But that's not it. Making things isn't about penny-pinching. And I don't think cooking or sewing, or for the matter of that carpentry or wood-turning, are intrinsically moral acts. Maybe it's a declaration of independence, and certainly there's temptation to keep going down the production process; my mother now grows the plants to dye the yarn she spins to weave scarves and towels. I have a friend who progressed from making bread to feeding sourdough to grinding flour, and he daydreams of growing the grain.
Some of my own cooking experiments have seemed absurd even to me; I'm sure efficiency comes with practice but the time it took me to make enough tortellini for a dinner party, including making the pasta dough and rolling it by hand, was wildly out of proportion to the time it took my friends to eat it. Never again. I feel similarly about sewing my own underwear and maybe knitting my own socks, though I know people who do both.
[
Sarah Moss: 'I'm a classic first child. A driven overachiever. Slightly neurotic'
Opens in new window
]
If the pleasure of this kind of make-do-and-mend is not about saving money, the planet or achieving independence from consumerism, what is it? Something about knowing how things work, how the objects we handle and need and love are made; something about being able to make things well, or at least making them badly often enough to learn respect for good makers.
There are places for machines, technology, software. I don't want to ride in an artisanal handmade helicopter and if I were to need a ventilator or pacemaker, I'd want the latest tech. Dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and washing machines are obvious godsends to those of us who have lived without them. But I have a deep sense that it's good to know with your hands and your body where things come from and how they are made.
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‘How are you holding up?': I don't know if I have the words to describe how I am
There is a question I have not been able to properly answer since my wife Tracy passed away last year in August. And it is the one asked most often. 'How are you holding up?' Most of the time, this is asked out of genuine concern. Family, friends, church members, hospital staff who have become a sort of family over the years. People who would actually be willing to take the time to listen to the answer, and would care what I have to say. [ Death and grief in the digital age Opens in new window ] Obviously not everyone falls into that category. There are some who do not really want an answer; they are simply asking as a sort of polite obligation, a social custom that must be observed before we can get down to more pressing matters. Something like a handshake. READ MORE But for the people who do care, and for those who have shown their love for me in a thousand ways over this past year, I often find myself wishing I could offer more than my usual response. 'I'm okay. Thanks for asking.' Tracy Keogh passed away last year in August So why do I not say more? Well, it is partly because I do not want to hear what people might say to me if I do. And I know that is probably unfair to those closest to me, but I was burned early on by 'advice' from individuals who had no experience with grief, yet somehow were experts in the field. Experts who traded mainly in clichés. 'It's going to take time.' Well, maybe. But that doesn't change how I'm feeling now. 'You need to get out of the house.' Okay, and then what? Go and do something without my best friend? Try to enjoy myself without her? Do you have any idea what you're saying? And another word of 'wisdom' I have heard more times than I can remember: 'Grief comes in waves'. But if they knew anything about grief, they'd know it doesn't just come in waves. It comes in tsunamis. Great, big catastrophic tsunamis that can wipe you out without warning. [ How I coped when grief became my new reality Opens in new window ] [ Seán Moncrieff: Funeral sandwiches are part of the Irish grieving process Opens in new window ] This was the kind of thing I was hearing in those early days, and it always made me feel like my sorrow was being casually invalidated. And so I shut down completely, isolated myself, hid away for fear I would hear some awful advice. And in fear of how I might respond, if I did. That's one reason I tend to keep my answers short now. Why I don't say how I really am. But mostly, it is because I don't know if I can. I don't know if I have the words to describe how I am. Certainly not in conversation, where I struggle to express myself even half-coherently at the best of times. When it comes to talking, some vital transmitters in my brain refuse to show up for work. Can I do it in writing? I don't know. Not in any way that will do more than scratch the surface. But maybe that's better than nothing. Tracy spent her last few weeks in Milford hospice, Limerick So, how am I holding up? I'm a little better than I was. Keeping busy helps – another of those dreadful clichés, though it turns out there is a grain of truth in it. And there are days when I feel I can see the faintest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Though I say that cautiously, because I felt the same thing a few months ago, only to be knocked out all of a sudden by a sucker punch of grief that hit me almost as hard as the initial loss. As I said, it comes in tsunamis. But some days are okay. And then there are days when the weight of Tracy's absence is crushing. When I come home and she's not here. When I make dinner for one. When she's missing from family occasions. When friends invite me to do things and I realise I'll be going alone. And even when I'm driving and she's not there beside me, telling me what I'm doing wrong. On those days, I feel utterly lost. 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Irish Times
2 days ago
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There's a feminist argument against a writer spending time cooking and sewing, but it pleases me
I've had the sewing machine out for the first time in a while this week. For months I'd been hankering to make a dress, for no discernible reason. The pattern is in a Japanese book I've had for years without going further than thinking that one day I might like to make that, and there is no definition of 'need' that would include my possession of a new dress. Even so, one of my vague projects for this year – career break, turning 50 – is occasionally to do things because I feel like it. The career break is of course a rare luxury, but on whatever scale it's possible to follow the odd harmless whim, I recommend it. I learned to use a sewing machine as a child. My mother made most of our clothes, and passed on her skills. As a teenager, with the brazen confidence of someone who doesn't know what's supposed to be difficult, I embarked on whatever stood between me and the item of clothing I had in mind. I cut and sewed dresses on the bias, became confident with the strange geometry of the crotch seams of trousers and the counterintuitive curves of sleeve-heads. I added pockets and linings when I wanted them, learned the hard way which fabrics suited which designs. There is no need, now, for me to make my own clothes. For years it was a choice between buying poor quality and making good quality; we can all afford badly made fast fashion but I had learned to respect natural fibres and French double seams. These days I can buy durable, well-made clothes, but I still knit my own jumpers and apparently, this week, sew my own dresses. I know a couple of my friends think it's a waste of time, all this handicraft. There's an obvious feminist argument against a writer spending her time cooking and sewing. Still, it pleases me. READ MORE Making things yourself only sometimes, unpredictably, gives you better than you can buy. (Home-made pitta bread is revelatory. See also hummus, crackers and rice pudding.) But the professionals are often better at it, and it's certainly cheaper to buy even the poshest jam than devote an afternoon to fruit-picking and an evening, a lot of sugar and a lot of electricity to making your own, which may or may not turn out well. Price my time at minimum wage, add materials, and the dress-in-progress has already cost more than buying a ready-to-wear equivalent. You could plausibly argue that by doing these things myself, I'm depriving the sustainable small businesses from which I would otherwise buy. But that's not it. Making things isn't about penny-pinching. And I don't think cooking or sewing, or for the matter of that carpentry or wood-turning, are intrinsically moral acts. Maybe it's a declaration of independence, and certainly there's temptation to keep going down the production process; my mother now grows the plants to dye the yarn she spins to weave scarves and towels. I have a friend who progressed from making bread to feeding sourdough to grinding flour, and he daydreams of growing the grain. Some of my own cooking experiments have seemed absurd even to me; I'm sure efficiency comes with practice but the time it took me to make enough tortellini for a dinner party, including making the pasta dough and rolling it by hand, was wildly out of proportion to the time it took my friends to eat it. Never again. I feel similarly about sewing my own underwear and maybe knitting my own socks, though I know people who do both. [ Sarah Moss: 'I'm a classic first child. A driven overachiever. Slightly neurotic' Opens in new window ] If the pleasure of this kind of make-do-and-mend is not about saving money, the planet or achieving independence from consumerism, what is it? Something about knowing how things work, how the objects we handle and need and love are made; something about being able to make things well, or at least making them badly often enough to learn respect for good makers. There are places for machines, technology, software. I don't want to ride in an artisanal handmade helicopter and if I were to need a ventilator or pacemaker, I'd want the latest tech. Dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and washing machines are obvious godsends to those of us who have lived without them. But I have a deep sense that it's good to know with your hands and your body where things come from and how they are made.
Irish Times
3 days ago
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Irish people are great with words but we're terrible communicators
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