Lessons in the Domestic Arts: A Sampler

Marie O'Rourke, Westerly, Issue 61.2 (2016)

(Note on access: download the pdf and scroll to page 37.)

My mum and aunties can make something lovely out of almost anything it seems. Except relationships, perhaps: of the six Robertson children, there will be five divorces. Sometimes no end of craft or skill can turn around a project based on ill-matched materials.

As they sat and knitted and sewed and talked, shared tales of absent or abusive husbands, money denied, happiness on hold; as they wove their particular sad story, I wonder: did they realise all along they were reading off the same pattern?