My mother was a real crafting snob. She preferred extreme crafts: forget the bead loom, she was into bead embroidery, ribbon embroidery, crewel work, quilting, tatting, spinning her own yarn, knitting, crocheting, basket weaving, sewing clothes, including my wedding dress. . .

She looked down her nose at things like latch hook, or needlepoint. My embroidery lessons began at cross stitching, but my mother was chomping at the bit to teach me the other stitches. Embroidery was one of the few crafts she taught me that I took to with a gusto, entering some of my crewel work in the County Fair, etc. (I won a few ribbons for it as well–1st, 2nd and grand prizes, if memory serves).

But when I took my mother’s approach with my own girls, I was disappointed. Yanni never finished her cross stitch picture. The stitches were too small for her to handle, and she had a hard time reading the diagram. We never finished that project begun when she was 10 or 11. So I dialed it back a bit and started buying needlepoint kits. Yanni finished 1, a butterfly, and even framed it before she lost interest in the craft altogether.

Last month I found the fish kit I’d bought years ago for Yanni to work on. It was missing yarn and needle, so I thought I’d go to Hobby Lobby and find those things so I could give the kit to Joy. I didn’t see the big plastic needle I was looking for, but I did find other simple needlepoint kits, (after I almost fell for the temptation of cool cross stitch projects), and a latch hook. (Despite my mother’s snobbery, I fondly remember the 1 latch hook set she’d bought in the 70s that the whole family sat down and worked on together).

I thought it would be wise to get Imani and Joy a needlepoint kit, and that was a good idea. I sat them both down and showed them how to work on the picture, and both of them liked it. Imani called it “the best craft ever,” because it was interesting and not messy.

Sometimes you have to do what works for your family.

Note: We haven’t started the latch hook set yet. I’ll let you know how that goes when we do.