Saturday Challenge: Mom's Hobbies

Another GeneaMusing's Fun Challenge I didn't complete until now, from back in May. Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:
1) What did your mother really like to do in her work or spare time?  Did she have hobbies, or a workshop, or did she like cooking, or reading, or watching TV?

 

With her first grandson December 1970

What did Mom do? She did all the usual stay at home housewife stuff. She cooked, cleaned and tended the garden. However, I always had the sense that these were things to get done and over with. That’s not to say she didn’t enjoy them at times, especially if she was being creative with cooking or such, however, they weren’t her joys. There’s a saying I’ve heard over the years “Housework is for when there’s nothing else to do.” I’m sure if she had been honest, she would have whole-heartedly agreed with that.

Once all of that was out of the way, at least for the time being, it was on to what she enjoyed doing. In her younger years she had enjoyed drawing and painting, and was quite skilled at it. However, I never knew her to do much of this when I was a child. We were surprised after her death to find many watercolor pictures that she had done years ago and saved. We had thought she’d thrown all that out many years ago.

 

one of her paintings

When I was a child and for most of her life, in fact, she enjoyed doing crafts. I would try to name the types of crafts she worked on, but it would take too long and I would miss many of them. I have heard her say she could never master tatting (a type of lace making that involves knots) and didn’t like to do quilling (curling small pieces of paper into designs). She had attempted both of these though, and probably every other type of craft that you can think of.

A couple of her favorites were knitting and crocheting. She learned to knit as a child from an Vera Margaret in the village of Skaneateles. She was either Mom’s Sunday school teacher or the daughter of the teacher; I forget which. Nobody ever taught her to crochet. Bored the first summer her and Dad were married, she sat on a dock in Owasco Lake near their rented cottage with a book and taught herself.

During the 70s and the 80s scrap crafting, using recycled items as well as beading were very popular crafts. Mom was busy with them as well as needlepoint on plastic canvas. I probably still have over 200 Christmas ornaments that her and I made during those years. This doesn’t include the many we each gave away or sold at craft shows.

A few years ago, she told me that she never really knew how to sew. I gave her a raised eyebrow look as I shook my head. I have heard about the PTA and church rummage sales when my brothers were children that included large amounts of Barbie doll clothes and other sewn items created by her. When I was in about sixth grade, I protested about my clothes, I wanted store bought clothes (like jeans!) that the other kids were wearing not home sewn clothes. Of course, these clothes were beautifully made, so well, in fact, that my kindergarten teacher had asked her to not send me to school in quite so many beautiful new outfits as I was fast becoming the envy of the classroom. Despite my protest she continued to make some of my clothes through high school. The later ones were either knitted sweaters or special occasion dresses that she made.

Where did Mom get the supplies for her craft projects? That was another thing she enjoyed for a number of years. When I started kindergarten, “Ward’s Craft & Yarn Shop” opened in a building Dad had erected next door to our house. She enjoyed her little shop and all the customers/friends it brought to her.

Another aspect of the crafts that she enjoyed was the Home Bureau groups she belonged to. A club sponsored by Cooperative Extension, these groups met monthly or sometimes weekly to socialize and work on crafts together. There were also county and state gatherings. She belonged to the Auburn Crafters, a daytime group, and the Neophytes, an evening group for probably close to 50 years.

Her crafts could best be summed up by something one of my brothers said to her once, only half joking: “Mom, if I walk in this house and you’re not working on a craft or have one nearby you just set down, I’m calling the ambulance for you.”