Anarchy and Apron Strings

In a yarn-strewn room at the shop, Hoskins weighs in on the New Domestics and the sudden appeal of crafts and housework. I wonder from the start if she's going to drop the F-bomb in relation to the womanly arts, and sure enough, she does. "I do think it's feminist in some way," Hoskins says. "I think a lot of it is, like, the reclamation of our feminine past, and the fact that it's not something to be ashamed of."

Shame. It's an interesting point to ponder, considering past generations of women were made to feel ashamed if they couldn't whip up a soufflé or darn a tattered sock. The cruelest mid-century supper club humor was directed toward inept wives, those poor wretches who burned dinner, scorched linens, and would sooner buy a shirt than mend one. Now, ironically, some women feel the need to apologize if they excel at--or even take an interest in--traditionally feminine activities. It could be viewed as treason, or worse, the systematic undoing of the progress our feminist forebears made a generation ago.

Hoskins believes the opposite--that the choice to be domestic or even work exclusively inside the home is just another privilege afforded by feminism. "We have the luxury of reclaiming this part [of ourselves]. Where in the past, like in the '60s and '70s, there was so much work to be done to stake our claim outside of the home," Hoskins says. "Maybe we're starting to feel like we can and should value what women have always done, that it's not inferior to what men have done."

"Women's work" has always been a loaded term, and seldom a compliment. It evokes softness, weakness, tedium, even inferiority. "A man's job," contrariwise, has usually meant dirty, adrenaline-fueled, challenging labor deemed unfit for the fairer sex. But why are some traditionally gendered tasks considered more valuable than others? Is baking inherently less important to society than, say, post-digging?

"Knitting is women's work, but that's good," Hoskins says emphatically. "It's not less worthy than working outside the home."

Maybe that's one reason last year's remake of The Stepford Wives was so roundly rejected by audiences: The crusty old archetype of the enslaved housewife has been replaced by the new vision of the empowered domestic. (Or else the film just sucked.) Either way, it looks like those tired old 'bots need to make way for a new crop of duster-wielding goddesses: the Stepford Punks.

For whatever reason, a punk rock ethos permeates the New Domestic lifestyle. This makes for some incongruous creations. At Crafty Planet, there's a sewing bag on display that reads "Knit Fast. Die Young." They've got patterns for skull-print sweaters, Goth embroidery, and snarky cross-stitch sampler kits that bear such treasured, timeworn expressions as "Babies Suck," "Beeyotch," "Merry Fucking Christmas," and my personal favorite, "Irony Isn't Dead." On a corkboard near the door, various hipster entrepreneurs advertise their wares: guitar strap appliqués, hand-sewn Vespa seat covers, even hip kiddie clothes. Some of the Crafty Planet denizens may be housewives, but I detected no whiff of desperation. Imagine Kim Gordon in a Vulcan mind-meld with Betty Crocker and you'll get the idea. Today's crafter is more Riot Grrl than Girl Scout, cookies notwithstanding.

Hoskins sees definite blood ties between the genesis of the New Domestic movement and the local punk rock scene. "It started with music, I think," Hoskins says. "The whole DIY movement: starting your own record label, having your own band, doing your own thing. DIY can apply to anything. It's about wanting to be independent and not wanting to support big business or be corporate. You don't want to buy a sweater everyone else has." Think of it as stickin' it to the Man with a six-millimeter crochet hook.

The punk rock esthetic is evident even in the BUST merch that initially shocked me with its seeming docility: "I'm Foxy and Crafty!" screams a knitting-needle holster. The booklet of cookie recipes includes "suggestions of punk rock tunes to listen to while baking." And the Easy-to-Knit Scarf Kit promises to produce not a neatly stitched muffler, but a tattered, deconstructed paper yarn sash that, according to the description, is "so punk rock." In fact, BUST cofounder Debbie Stoller originally borrowed the term "stitch 'n' bitch" to describe gatherings of rogue knitters who embrace yarn and anarchy in equal measure.

This maverick attitude in younger crafters is a relatively new phenomenon--"old-school" housewives, unsurprisingly, tend to toe the line. "The younger people, our core group, they're more likely to try to learn on their own. They're independent." Hoskins says, noting that older customers are more likely to seek detailed instruction. "You see fewer younger knitters working from patterns."

That turns out to be an apt metaphor: Despite handicrafts' reputation of being passed from generation to generation, many of today's twentysomethings were never taught to sew on a button, let alone knit elaborate toques. In the '70s and '80s, my own mother was too busy schlepping coffee for her male associates to worry about obsolete womanly arts like needlework. Hoskins says that most of the students at Crafty Planet's classes are reclaiming a heritage lost somewhere along the way. "I don't know how many of these women learned from their parents or grandparents," she says. "I think more often they're coming without having learned anything when they were young."