Sewing and fiber arts are STEM, change my mind.

As I dip my toes more into quilting it is like... mindblowing how technical and complicated everything is, and how amazingly skilled the people (mostly women) who excel at it are, and how very much they are underestimated.

(The same is true of knitting but I've been fluent in it so long that I forget. Unlike quilting, which I am very, very bad at. But enthusiastically so!)

And like, sewing OR knitting OR crocheting to fit bodies? Holy crap!

My grandmother, who I don't believe graduated high school and probably hasn't read a book other than the bible in decades (or maybe like, ever?) cranked out beautiful crocheted lace and intricate quilts like it was breathing.

She can't read a crochet pattern, but she could whip up a flawless lace tablecloth (I say "could" because she's 93 now and her joints don't really let her craft anymore.)

She grew up in a Kentucky holler, married at 16, nobody would think of her as an "intellectual" by any count... but she freakin' has the mind of an engineer.

And I think that's true of a fuckin' ton of women, throughout history, and everyone just wrote it off as nothing.

Anyway, "women's work" is hard work and fuck the patriarchy thank you goodnight