Make Do and Mend

 

This rabbit what I made. Sinister innit?

The crafting trend is experiencing a bit of a boom period right now.

If you’re roughly over forty five, don’t own a television, don’t live in London, or you’re the owner of a Y chromosome, you may not be acutely aware of this, but trust me that it’s ‘a thing’. No doubt there’s been oodles of media space documenting this already (probably presented by Kirstie Allsop) but I wouldn’t know, having studiously avoided ‘hard news’ in favour of stuffing my head with knitting patterns and finding out when the next cake decorating event was happening.

As a little girl, my heroine was Ripley from the ‘Alien’ franchise. I’m part of the generation that grew up on ‘Sex and the City’ (doesn’t mean I’m a fan btw). I was always of the assumption that it was not only acceptable, but desirable, to be a single woman in your thirties living in the capital city (ignoring the fact that all those SATC characters talked about was landing a boyfriend, blinkered teen that I was), focusing on work and spending my free time going on exotic travels. Why would I waste time slaving over a mixing bowl when I could get my cupcakes directly from the Hummingbird Bakery? Once, upon hearing a friend state that she was ‘just going to check how the frittata was doing’ I loudly declared “I am never going to need that phrase”.

Well, colour me corrected, my friends. I spent my last weekend happily whisking together a banana cake and giving the kitchen a thorough clean. Although I never thought of myself as one of life’s happy homemakers, it was pretty . . . satisfying. I felt like Anne of Green Gables, confident that I would pass Marilla Cuthbert’s Victorian standards of cleanliness and rejoicing in being allowed to prepare supper ‘like a grown up’. A job well done, I took to my sewing, stitching together (badly, I must admit) a soft toy I’d been gifted with by a friend aware of my crafty proclivities.

I’ve started a knitting circle at work. I’ve spent at least two hours of my life competing to decorate a biscuit with the best possible portrait of Lionel Ritchie’s face. What has happened to me? When did I turn into such a girlie girl?

As mentioned earlier, it’s not just me - the nation has gone batshit-crazy over cosy crafting activities: Make Do and Mend, ‘Drink, Shop, Do’ in King’s Cross, The Great British Bake off, The Great British Sewing Bee, yarn bombing . . . .  Plus pubs the city over have wised up to the merits of hosting craft nights where (mostly female) Londoners can combine the delights of a stitch n’ bitch session with the delights of a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Ask a random observer about it and they might suggest this is all in response to the ubiquity of technology in our lives. Saturated as we are with iPads, iPhones and Kindles, purchasing our every furniture or food requirement online, and tweeting every random thought that wanders into our frazzled brains, we long to reconnect with the pleasure of creating something with our hands. I can vouch for the therapeutic benefits of clacking knitting needles, the yarn twisted around your fingers. A pestle and mortar feels more satisfying than shaking herbs straight out of the packaging.

But surely it’s also a response to the state of the economy?  Everything feels a bit shit, and we’re all experiencing a collective hangover from the material excess of the last thirty years We’re longing to get back to basics, yeah? (Let’s slide over the fact that a Cath Kidson apron will set you back the best part of £30, it’s the mood of the times, innit).

Or maybe it’s just that as a generation we’re bored of what came before. In an era where nothing is denied to us, an era of casual sex and superficiality, excess drinking, parties, clubbing, and drugs firmly crossed over from ‘strictly for the bad kids’ to ‘everyone’s doing it’, maybe it’s the only way left of rebelling.

Zoiks! It’s slightly strange to find out that what you thought was your own innate need to express yourself through crafts and feeding others is in fact part of a greater statistical trend reflecting the state of the nation. I just want to make tea cosies, man!

My parent’s generation seem a little bit baffled by this turn of events. “What have you been up to” they ask over the phone, remembering days when this question used to be answered with words like: electro-marathon, Jaeger-bomb, and Bleugh-I’m-so-hungover-right-now-I-can’t-think-my-brain-hurrrrrrrrrts.
“Oh, you know” I now reply, “Went to a knitting night with some friends yesterday. I’m making a tea cosy!”
"I see” they respond “Had a nice drink or two did you”?

 “Well, a pot of tea and some scones . . . .With cream and jam!” I throw back lamely.

I explain about the crafting trend in London right now, about the economy, about technology, and about ‘too much freedom’.

“Well, yes I understand that” my dad offers politely . . . . “It’s just not very rock n’ roll, is it?? I mean, you couldn’t imagine Mick Jagger saying he spent his evening knitting a tea cosy and drinking a pot of tea”.

“True” I counter, “But Mick Jagger had to start taking his cocaine up his anus because his septum was dissolving. Now if it was a choice between that and a nice tea cosy, I’m going with the tea cosy. . . .”

Score one for knitting, I think.

I will admit to the odd twinge about whether I’m betraying the feminist sisterhood by being overly interested in all this 1950’s housewife stuff. But I REJOICE in the knowledge that all this crafting is of my own free will, and if I wanted to, I could pick up a hammer and knock together a shed, or go learn to be an engineer and construct a mighty bridge. You know, should the mood take me.

I think it’s important that we remember, in the midst of getting off our faces on cake stands, vintage tea cups and crochet hooks, that we’re able to enjoy these hobbies precisely because they’re HOBBIES, and no one’s going to beat us round the head if we don’t actually home-make all our clothes, or produce dinner for four on a ration book of three carrots and half a sack of flour (or whatever it was they were allocated during the war).

Which is why I proudly call myself a feminist and get irked that the word has such bad PR. “I’m not a feminist, because I don’t hate men, and I love cooking and would actually rather like staying at home with the kids and baking all day” I’ve had thrown at me in conversation. Well that’s lovely, angel-face. Good stuff, and carry on, says I. But I’m pretty sure you are a feminist. In that you’re university educated, are free to marry the man of your choice, and get to enjoy the wages that you earn. If you believe in equal pay and equal rights, trust me, you’re a feminist. Now excuse me, I have to go and check on the frittata.

What's better than a knitted rabbit? A rabbit in a Rasta hat, of course. And no, he doesn't have pubic har and sidies as one reader suggested, it's just the camera angle and the fake fur. Sicko