A co-worker and I were talking the other day about how people our age are starting to figure out careers in things our parents never taught us like gardening and crafting that skipped a generation.

A woman I know has done something similar, by opening a sewing school. She started doing it just in her house, but it absolutely blew up to the point that she quit her day job, got a separate space, and now does it full time. Talking to her husband about it more recently, he said that they were being told this very thing: women in the early- to mid-30s and younger never learned it from their moms, so there too it was skipping a generation.

I think there was this prediction from our parents' generation (I'm 33) that we wouldn't need a lot of these more practical skills to the same degree due to increasing technology. For example, I learned only the most basic of basic carpentry, and that was more from my engineer grandfather who did woodworking as a hobby. But now that the economy isn't raising all boats, our generation is recognizing due to a combination of economics and environmental concerns that we don't necessarily need to hire someone or buy something to solve a given problem. So there's this whole resurgence of handicrafts and cottage industries. It'll be interesting to see what effects this has on, say, people who are kids now.