Comment Re:Some of the oldest trades become useful. (Score 1) 737
I started my hobby at the other end of the fabric spectrum. I can weave bobbin lace, make nets, and crochet and tat lace (knitting eludes me), Basic metallurgy and small foundry construction, and low power electronics (if it can be powered by a lemon and metal, or a chain->magnet+wire) for data storage (picture wiki on a raspi, pedal a bike until you are done with your research!). And growing spices, as well as preserving them. We might need an economy to get started, but we could team up and kick ass.
As for reproduction issues that you bring up, rubber trees. Synthetic latex may not be available (i don't know how easy it is to make) but natural rubber (and the rubbers one could make with it) would still be around. But with out modern medicine, and the inherent increase in infant mortality rates, I don't foresee that being an issue for many people. To protect a woman, sure. To prevent the chance of becoming pregnant before safe, sure. But after they are safe and want to have kids, I'm not sure that birth control would be an issue. After all, each couple should have 3 or 4 kids (childhood and young adult mortality rates) just to keep populations stable, and to do that a woman might need to give birth to 10 babies. Scary, but I came from families that had that problem not even 70 years ago; without antibiotics and an OB-GYN and sterile tools, we'd be looking at rates similar to the worst periods that we humans have survived.