{"id":758,"date":"2013-10-31T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/and-another-halloween-has-come-and-gone-plus-a-bonus-from-the-library.html"},"modified":"2013-10-31T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T22:30:00","slug":"and-another-halloween-has-come-and-gone-plus-a-bonus-from-the-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/and-another-halloween-has-come-and-gone-plus-a-bonus-from-the-library.html","title":{"rendered":"And another Halloween has come and gone. . . (plus: a bonus “from the library”!)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You know, I used to think of myself as a \u201ccrafty\u201d sort of person \u2014 back when I was a kid and crafts meant needlepoint and sewing.\u00a0 Now sewing is obsolete, when the fabric costs more than\u00a0the completed piece of clothing, and the crafts of the 2010s are scrapbooking and jewelry-making, neither of which suit me (I don\u2019t have the eye for, or interest in, scrapbooking, and the only jewelry I wear is my wedding ring), but once a year I can still get the sewing machine going, and whip up something for the kids\u2019 Halloween costumes:\u00a0 a lion, a soldier, Anikin Skywalker.\u00a0 At the boys\u2019 school, the fifth graders write reports on saints and dress up on All Saint\u2019s Day, so I\u2019ve now twice managed to lead a kid into deciding to write about a saint whose costume could double as a Halloween costume \u2014 three years ago, a Roman soldier transformed into St. Martin of Tours the next day, and tomorrow, a prisoner will become St. Maximilian Kolbe.\u00a0 Sometimes, when the school PTO solicits donations for the annual auction, I think of donating a custom-made Halloween costume.<\/p>\n

(Will the kids, when they\u2019re adults, appreciate the homemade costumes?\u00a0 Or will they just remember being jealous of friends with generic screen-printed polyester jumpsuits with superhero patterns?)<\/p>\n

Now, I don\u2019t make the costumes exclusively from scratch \u2014 the prisoner costume started out as an adult-sized handmade costume from the Goodwill, a jumpsuit with snaps in front, which I cut in half to turn into pants and a snap-front shirt, then narrowed the sides, created\u00a0a new elastic waistband, and shortened considerably.\u00a0 I was going to make a hat with the leftover fabric, but it kept getting jammed in the sewing machine.\u00a0 And Anikin Skywalker started out as a pair of girls\u2019 knit brown pants, a large man\u2019s brown sweatshirt, a woman\u2019s extra-wide belt, and a light brown sheet, all from a thrift-store expedition a couple years ago.<\/p>\n

But in our modern world, there are few opportunities to be \u201ccrafty\u201d \u2013 a generation ago, or maybe two, sewing one\u2019s own or one\u2019s children\u2019s clothes was a time-honored way to save money.\u00a0 Now it only makes sense for people who can\u2019t find their clothes in retail stores, such as religiously conservative women who believe in \u201cmodest dressing\u201d (e.g., long skirts), or women who have enough of an\u00a0interest and skill in fashion to design their own clothing.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s still satisfying to go through the sewing process (with\u00a0a 60s sewing machine bought at a garage sale in 1991) and end up with a finished product that you can have a sense of pride in.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s something tangible and useful, more so than a batch of muffins or an item of home d\u00e9cor, and certainly more than a facebook or pinterest post or even (yeah, I know) blogging.\u00a0 But even cooking, especially trying new bread recipes, is a form of \u201ccrafting\u201d for me, and gardening (that is, before that point in the summer when my plants have all died) feels tangible and useful in a way that coordinating pension accounting doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So that was the context behind my picking up the book Homeward Bound:\u00a0 Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity<\/a><\/em>, by Emily Matchar.\u00a0 And it doesn\u2019t usually happen that I know before even making it beyond the introduction, or rather, beyond the first couple pages of the first \u201ccomplete\u201d chapter, that a book isn\u2019t worth reading.\u00a0 Because, according to Matchar, women (and men) aren\u2019t embracing knitting, and gardening, and other DIY crafts because of a desire for connection to the natural world or a connection to a tangible accomplishment but because of all the bad, bad things in the world:<\/p>\n

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