This summer, my two lavender plants are doing really well. So well in fact that I can make sachets and give them to people as gifts. This summer I also finally bought a sewing machine. A consignment clothing lover’s best friend. Now Clara can hem her skirts in seconds instead of painstakingly sewing them by hand. And with her skirt scraps I can make potpourri sachets.
But of course, all this has a downside. As I sit at the sewing machine, I think of sweat shops, and women who are poorly paid all over the world, and women who learned to sew in school, but nothing else, which is why I never learned to sew because my generation was going to free itself from that icon of domesticity.
As I make my little lavender sachets, I think of artisanal work, and how difficult it is to make a profit when you are making something one step at a time, and that it’s no wonder we went through the industrial revolution. Crank out those sachets thousands at a time, then maybe there will be a small profit down the road.
Meanwhile, as I assemble my sachets in my makeshift workshop, I think about the pride that went into handmade things. I am a little proud, and a very nice scent is diffusing all over the house.
Fortunately, our generation is also the generation in which men learned to sew in school to help women free themselves from the joke of domesticity. And help them start up with their sewing machine.
ReplyDeleteDid you mean the "joke" or the "yoke"?
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