Latch Hook

Jim is weaving a latch hook rug. It's not really a rug -- at 12 inches by 12 inches it will be a small wall hanging, maybe a pillow if he backs it and stuffs it.

He's having a ball. He turns on Santana at full volume and weaves bright colored acrylic yarns into the grid and banishes pandemic boredom away.

It's from a kit and will look like this when he finishes. Shaggy and soft and colorful.

We have something of a reverse marriage -- our gender roles are upside down and have been for the 21 years we've been married. I pay the bills, do the taxes, do most of the yard work and anything involving a ladder or digging. Jim does all the cooking, shopping and cleaning. He does all the car care, I do all the appointment scheduling. We split the laundry.

I garden, he does needle crafts. Somehow I never learned to knit or sew or do quilting or crocheting or any kind of hand crafts. My sisters do. My stepdaughter does. My neighbors do, but needle crafts never seemed to take with me. Jim does needlework, and always has, long before he met me.

Our gender roles didn't seem to be of any interest when we lived in Connecticut. He had retired before I did, and so housekeeping became his domain while I worked. But now we are both retired, and as we meet new people here in a new city (most of whom are older and of an older generation), they are fascinated by our role reversals. Cooking dinner especially, which is a topic of great interest to our women neighbors who swap recipes with Jim and can't get over that he cooks every night.

I used to cook. I raised a family and had to put dinner on the table and breakfast in front of them and they lived. But it's been so long now, I'm not sure I could cook a whole meal on my own.

As the servant woman Prudie says in Poldark: "Mistress does all the cooking now, m'lord. I've lost the skillage of it."

Yeah, I have too. I've lost the skillage of cooking and housekeeping while Jim has been doing it all. But I never had the skills to do the needlework that he does or that my sisters do or my stepdaughter or any other women I know or meet do. They are all so talented with thread and yarn and fabric and tiny beads. I'm not.

I blog, though.