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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP--your post makes me sad.

I am reminded of visiting an immigrant cousin of DH. The wife, also an immigrant, offered to show me her hobby room. It was totally immaculate and there were shelves of dolls standing in elaborate and rather garish costumes she made for them.

As I took in all my perceived tackiness of the hobby, her husband came in and went on about how much he admired all her handicraft and all the donations she made to her church of the dolls for auctions etc.

He clearly was proud of something his wife did that was actually not at all a personal interest of his.  I will add that his wife is obese, not mildly so, but really so.  No matter, he was still proud.

Like most immigrants, he came over with very little. He built a business and was successful enough he could indulge his wife's hobby, which she used to give back to her community, and it was a source of pride to him.

It made me ashamed of my all too quick tacky assessment of her hobby.[/quote]
This thread was worth it for this post.[/quote]

+1.  Also brought back memories of an elderly second cousin who used to crochet those dolls dresses for upper body dolls to cover toilet paper rolls (imagine scarlet ohara with a toilet paper roll under her skirt) or to cover old coolwhip tubs.  I had one of the latter as a child to store hair clips in.  I remember thinking the toilet paper covers were so weird, but she was such a sweet lady and she really enjoyed making them and donating to various places.  May she rest in peace.  I feel sorry for OP’s wife, given his evident contempt for her.
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Lol I can’t even quite picture this. It sounds really weird. But if it made her happy and she enjoyed it as a hobby, that’s what counts! [/quote]

I also felt badly when I realized how I used to scoff at some of the "crafts" that the old ladies at my church made every year for the church fair....as I've gotten older, and realize that a) old ladies in nursing homes have no money, have no ability to go shopping, and have arthritic hands--the idea that they kept themselves busy making these little items for the fair all year says so much about their values. They didn't just sit around watching TV all day, they recycled what they had or whatever people donated into pretty (well, often tacky) little (useless) things that were probably time-consuming for them to make. Now I kind of wish I had a coffee can wrapped in yarn to display my Christmas cards. [/quote]

My elderly great-aunt used to make Dammit Dolls for the church bazaar - she used fabric scraps and recycled clothing for to make and stuff them and type out the kitchy poem on her manual typewriter, and they're small, useful, and a great reminder of her.  One of my professional colleagues bought me a mass-manufactured one a couple years ago, and I realized my auntie was just ahead of her time.

My grandmother had incredible sewing, knitting, crochet, etc. skills.  She could make professional-grade slipcovers for furniture in no time at all.  We inherited a chair that we didn't realize was slipcovered for the first decade we owned it.  Turns out the chair is a totally different color, so my grandmother whipped up a fully piped and fitted custom cover for it to coordinate with her new curtains.  THAT'S the sort of craftiness that would come in handy.[/quote]

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