The writer begins her meditation with the words, “as I cannot write I put this down simply and freely.” From the beginning of her passage there is doubt that her own words could even constitute writing, as is apologetically lamented in the words, as I cannot write. These words are in fact written with thread, as if to suggest that the shape of a stitch does not carry the same rhetorical weight as an ink drawn letter.
What is your earliest memory of craft(ing)? Such nostalgic questions often bring into focus memories of sitting with mothers and grandmothers crocheting, knitting or beading… something to pass the time or to fill empty school holiday moments. For me, craft, was suffocating lace trimmed floral fabric frames and frilled toilet roll dollies scattered throughout our domestic space- meaningless ‘women’s things’. Craft was the empty, ‘feminine’ things I spent most of my youth trying to shave from my identity in pursuit of a concrete vocation that ‘mattered’.
