Inherited...

One of the things I have always remembered about my parents was that my father would far rather see my mother reading a book or playing the piano in preference to sewing or knitting. I can remember too that doing either tended to make her ... irritable. So the knitting I can visualise her doing was my knitting, rescuing the socks we had to knit in Primary 7 (I never turned a heel yet), and I can recall the making of two pink sundresses with matching pink boleros ...

And I inherited her dislike of both. The last thing I knitted was a Size One cardigan for my second son, who is now approaching 42 years old. I do, however, find myself sewing on occasion - this occasion being today, when I was taking up a pair of winter trousers for myself, nightmarishly thick with impenetrable, showerproof nylon exterior. It was so difficult I had to find a thimble to push the needle through (I know - that's what the thimble is for!), and found this little beauty that I inherited from an aunt who both knitted and sewed with every appearance of enjoyment. 

While I was thus engaged, a text message pinged in from my 12 year old granddaughter, alerting me to possible presents I might like to get for her and her sister. This duly noted, the chat turned to ...sewing. I told her I couldn't simultaneously text and sew, and would have to go. She informed me in no uncertain terms that she loathes sewing, having just started on a regime of two periods a week of Home Ec. Why should she have to do this when the boys got woodwork? I told her I'd felt the same. I didn't have to do any sewing or anything else in secondary school, where the time was taken up on Latin for my class, but had done it for years in Primary. The bit she liked best was that I'd been belted once for sewing my fingertips together in class and getting blood on my apron. Clearly she has inherited my genes in this respect.

The picture is of the little silver thimble that I can still fit on my finger, and the box - lead? pewter? - that it came to me in. I can love them without having to sew, can't I?