The Power of Knitting

I recently read The Odyssey for a class and was struck by the number of times spinning and weaving were mentioned. Now, I won't say that weaving and knitting are the same craft; clearly they are not. However, I would say that they fit into the same catagory of crafts. Consequently the book got me thinking about the way that knitting and other crafts may have empowered women in the past.
It's a striking thought, really, because knitting today reminds people of a time when women stayed home with their children and made their clothes, which was also a time when women, in general, were subordinate to men. Many women today don't have the time to knit because they are working, raising a family, and keeping a home. Those of us who do find the time to knit are often shirking other duties to finish "one more row." But for some, knitting used to be a chore that all women had to do, much like dishes. After all, if you didn't knit, where would the members of your family get their underwear, scarfs, mittens, sweaters?!
In The Odyssey, however, weaving was considered an art and all royal women did it. They spent much of their free time spinning wool and then weaving it into robes that they could pass on to others to welcome or thank them. Penelope, Oddyseous's wife, however, used her weaving to fool the many suitors trying to marry her in her husband's absence. She told them that she was knitting a robe for her father-in-law to wear when he passed away and that she had to finish it before getting married or it would fall apart. Every day she weaved, and every night she pulled all the weaving she had done that day out, so that she had made no progress at all. The men were fooled for 3 years until one of Penelope's maids told her secret. Either way, I found it interesting that Penelope used her craft, which today would be associated with subordinate women, to fool a few outrageous men.