Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Mishmash

Yesterday while knitting

(not so much of the BSJ but all of what was left of another sample size of my Confectionery Cap, which is finally ready for my technical editor as a result of said BSJ avoidance)

it occurred to me that I would be enormously content if my job were to knit all day while watching Turner Classic Movies. It's not my job, and I've been doing it anyway, and as a result

(but also as a result of an ankle injury a couple of weeks ago I'm trying to see a doctor about this week)

my house is a MESS.

It's kinda making me crazy, but moving around is difficult with my sore ankle and I pretty much get to do one thing a day - groceries, laundry, garbage-taking-outeyness - and rest it for the remainder. What else am I gonna do while resting my ankle except watch movies and knit?

So: movies. Lately it's been a lot of westerns. Oh, who am I kidding? It's a lot of westerns all the time, and a lot of John Wayne swagger versus Jimmy Stewart desperation - has anybody else noticed that as he got older those long arms went all elbow when he gathered up the girl of his choice for a smooch, and also, that out in the dust and sun it was always a wrenching smooch? I grew up Jimmy in a smart suit and black and white film, and the grizzled frantic romancer is still sitting funny for me. I guess it does demonstrate though that in a country where you need to team up to survive and having children is essential to keeping your land, romance is a much more serious business than in cities where smart suits are the norm.

My point is that in addition to the steady diet of westerns, I just started reading Little House on the Prairie

(I grew up with the TV version so I spent my childhood reading time on the Bronte sisters instead)

and boy is there a lot of description about camping out on the route west, with nothing but a wagon and a dog and two horses. Corn cakes assembled and fried in pork fat over a fire, coffee ground and brewed in the open air, washing done in a tub of creek water and laid out over the clean fresh grass to dry...

And not so much as a whiff of knitting. Some mending, some ironing, a lot of tidy. But no knitting

(yet.)

I don't know, guys. If I had to choose between a clean house and a creative house, I'd go with the creative one. I just hope that someday I'll find a happy medium. And in the meantime, it's a good thing movies provide such an easy screen for the Things That Need Vacuuming.

* * * *

BSJ update: I have bits of it on holders now and I think I'm into the last 30 or so rows. If it were portable and I wasn't thinking about sewing something for a small friend's birthday tomorrow, I'd probably be able to finish it today.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There is *definitely* some knitting in the first of the series, Little House in the Big Woods. Promise.