Craft Husbands

Craft Husbands

It starts out innocently enough, a new found interest in cross stitch that necessitates buying a metre of fabric and a handful of threads. The fabric, better known by the cognescenti as 'AIDA', comes in a variety of hole sizes and colours which you soon discover all have to be sampled and explored. But in spite of this unexpected escalation the multi-coloured, multi-textured collection still fits within one shelf in the small corner cupboard of your spare room.

But hark, what is this talk of exhibitions I hear? Your wife is sitting quietly on the sofa, leafing through a craft magazine. An innocent pastime, a dream like excursion through pages of glossy photographs seeking inspiration for her next project. But little do you know that in reality she is slowly being seduced by organisers' advertisements for unparalleled ecstasies if she would only attend Stitch'mUp 2003. Unaware of the horrors to come you agree, a nice afternoon out to one of the major venues, just a few hours of pottering around an exhibition hall, punctuated by the odd cup of tea or two and maybe a cheese sandwich. The first warning bell sounds when you are told the night before that she wants to go to bed early. Not for an evening of connubial bliss but because you both have get up early the following morning. Your relaxing afternoon out has just turned into a day long foot crushing, back numbing, sweaty hell prefixed by a snake like traffic jam of like minded devotees. Except that you are not a devotee, not even a passing disciple, merely a victim whose eternal suffering has only just begun.

In my opinion women buy clothes by looking at themselves face on in a mirror without moving or paying any heed to how they will look in motion from behind. This observation applies to craft exhibition attendees in particular who in the main seem to wear tight fitting trousers or stretch ski pants. From the front in the dim light of a bedroom mirror, fantastic. Wobbling along between densely packed trade stands, not so good, especially as craft is a sedentary occupation and clearly many of the attendees take no exercise at all. (All death threats to 15a Railway Cuttings, East Cheam.) This latter characteristic leaves you battered and crushed, propelled hither and thither like a leaf in the wind. You soon realise that in this all female environment you are merely a man, an appendage to your mate; of even less significance than usual. You are banged, beaten and bounced out of the way in a manner that would be a dead cert GBH conviction in the outside world, but not here in the craft dimension.

But there is an escape, after closing time at 5:30pm - the usual time to be let out on parole - you can drive your beloved home and never repeat the experience again. She can drive herself to the next display of hades, you can escape with a sudden bout of double pneumonia. So why don't you? Why do so many men still follow their wives to this quarterly ritual humiliation ceremony? Well, you see it's the gadgets. All those little perspex, rubber and metal gadgets that these women use to produce their strange and wonderful creations. One whiff of these wondrous implements and it's good bye B&Q, poop poop to DIY. You see full grown men wandering around the hall, glazed expressions on every face, no longer feeling the agony of a well placed trainer or a bargain bound elbow. They only see the gadgets, the must haves that cost more for a small plastic quillting guide than the whole of the Black and Decker range put together. You start to believe that twenty quid for a skinny piece of wire billed as the only way to pull through an even skinnier piece of material is the only thing between you and certain death. The gadgets call, they shout. they plead "Buy me, buy me, get out your plastic and try me". And that's even before you discover the software, the all seeing, all dancing, hundreds of functions software. Save me!

And as your other half becomes contaminated by other pursuits - dyeing, dipping, quilting, stamping, machine embroidery - one shelf in a small cupboard gives way to two whole wardrobes, a set of plastic wall mounted shelves, a dozen plastic IKEA mesh storage units, half the breakfast room and the whole of the spare room. Every trip to a fair or exhibition, whether in some tiny village hall or the grand vista of Earls Court, carries the inevitability that you will come back laden with more and more and more. It takes over your life, your house, your bank account, your very existence. The staples of your male conversation - football, sex and cars - give way to concerns about colour matching, dyeing idiosyncrasies, and the importance of fibre lengths in paper making (size does matter).

You are lost, damned forever to traipse around exhibition after exhibition, smiling benignly when the cheque book comes out for the eleventh time for yet another fat quarter. There is no escape, and only occasional bouts of lucididty where flashes of the real world burst in and reveal the true horror of your situation. I am having one of those bouts now which is why I am writing these words as a warning to all mankind before I sink back into the realms of the undead. Take heed men wherever you are, watch out for those first few words that will condemn you forever "I think that I might try a bit of cross stitch". Watch out before it's, before it's, before it's....oh those gadgets, that DMC chart, ooh machine embroidery.....



	It starts out innocently enough, a new found interest in cross stitch that necessitates buying a metre of fabric and a handful of threads. The fabric, better known by the cognescenti as 'AIDA', comes in a variety of hole sizes and colours which you soon discover all have to be sampled and explored. But in spite of this unexpected escalation the multi-coloured, multi-textured collection still fits within one shelf in the small corner cupboard of your spare room. But hark, what is this talk of exhibitions I hear? Your wife is sitting quietly on the sofa, leafing through a craft magazine. An innocent pastime, a dream like excursion through pages of glossy photographs seeking inspiration for her next project. But little do you know that in reality she is slowly being seduced by organisers' advertisements for unparalleled ecstasies if she would only attend Stitch'mUp 2003. Unaware of the horrors to come you agree, a nice afternoon out to one of the major venues, just a few hours of pottering around an exhibition hall, punctuated by the odd cup of tea or two and maybe a cheese sandwich. The first warning bell sounds when you are told the night before that she wants to go to bed early. Not for an evening of connubial bliss but because you both have get up early the following morning. Your relaxing afternoon out has just turned into a day long foot crushing, back numbing, sweaty hell prefixed by a snake like traffic jam of like minded devotees. Except that you are not a devotee, not even a passing disciple, merely a victim whose eternal suffering has only just begun. In my opinion women buy clothes by looking at themselves face on in a mirror without moving or paying any heed to how they will look in motion from behind. This observation applies to craft exhibition attendees in particular who in the main seem to wear tight fitting trousers or stretch ski pants. From the front in the dim light of a bedroom mirror, fantastic. Wobbling along between densely packed trade stands, not so good, especially as craft is a sedentary occupation and clearly many of the attendees take no exercise at all. (All death threats to 15a Railway Cuttings, East Cheam.) This latter characteristic leaves you battered and crushed, propelled hither and thither like a leaf in the wind. You soon realise that in this all female environment you are merely a man, an appendage to your mate; of even less significance than usual. You are banged, beaten and bounced out of the way in a manner that would be a dead cert GBH conviction in the outside world, but not here in the craft dimension. But there is an escape, after closing time at 5:30pm - the usual time to be let out on parole - you can drive your beloved home and never repeat the experience again. She can drive herself to the next display of hades, you can escape with a sudden bout of double pneumonia. So why don't you? Why do so many men still follow their wives to this quarterly ritual humiliation ceremony? Well, you see it's the gadgets. All those little perspex, rubber and metal gadgets that these women use to produce their strange and wonderful creations. One whiff of these wondrous implements and it's good bye B&Q, poop poop to DIY. You see full grown men wandering around the hall, glazed expressions on every face, no longer feeling the agony of a well placed trainer or a bargain bound elbow. They only see the gadgets, the must haves that cost more for a small plastic quillting guide than the whole of the Black and Decker range put together. You start to believe that twenty quid for a skinny piece of wire billed as the only way to pull through an even skinnier piece of material is the only thing between you and certain death. The gadgets call, they shout. they plead "Buy me, buy me, get out your plastic and try me". And that's even before you discover the software, the all seeing, all dancing, hundreds of functions software. Save me! And as your other half becomes contaminated by other pursuits - dyeing, dipping, quilting, stamping, machine embroidery - one shelf in a small cupboard gives way to two whole wardrobes, a set of plastic wall mounted shelves, a dozen plastic IKEA mesh storage units, half the breakfast room and the whole of the spare room. Every trip to a fair or exhibition, whether in some tiny village hall or the grand vista of Earls Court, carries the inevitability that you will come back laden with more and more and more. It takes over your life, your house, your bank account, your very existence. The staples of your male conversation - football, sex and cars - give way to concerns about colour matching, dyeing idiosyncrasies, and the importance of fibre lengths in paper making (size does matter). You are lost, damned forever to traipse around exhibition after exhibition, smiling benignly when the cheque book comes out for the eleventh time for yet another fat quarter. There is no escape, and only occasional bouts of lucididty where flashes of the real world burst in and reveal the true horror of your situation. I am having one of those bouts now which is why I am writing these words as a warning to all mankind before I sink back into the realms of the undead. Take heed men wherever you are, watch out for those first few words that will condemn you forever "I think that I might try a bit of cross stitch". Watch out before it's, before it's, before it's....oh those gadgets, that DMC chart, ooh machine embroidery.....