I gave an exam yesterday morning and knitted (on the current Toasty Twisty scarf) while invigilating. That always makes me happy, for a couple of reasons: first, I get some knitting time in,* and second, I think of the old photos I've seen (I think I first saw them in "Folk Socks") of a woman, somewhere in the British Isles, walking and knitting on stockings - I can't remember know if she was following her sheep, or walking down to the pier to meet her man as he came back from fishing, or what. But it made me happy...and it makes me happy now to tuck the ball of yarn up under my arm (just as she has) and roam around the classroom and knit while checking for "eyes on your own papers" (I've never caught anyone cheating...and I've never seen evidence lately on test papers of it happening ... so maybe my fairly active mode of invigilating serves to discourage it.)
I can knit while not looking at what I'm knitting, so I can watch the class.
And this is one of the relatively few eccentricities I have where I don't really feel upset by the thought of people talking about me doing it or even laughing at me for doing it behind my back.
(*Actually, I am much happier when I can kind of start the day with knitting. I wish I could make time for it as a reality every morning. I don't dare knit while working out because I'm afraid of getting tangled in the mechanism of the Nordic-trak. And I'm not sure giving up the 20 minutes of early-morning piano practice is a good idea. And I'm unwilling to push my wake-up time back to 4 am most days just to fit it in... I suppose I could bring knitting for the usual half-hour to two hours of office hours I have before my first class)
I tried to find a photograph of the woman in question online...I can't quite turn one up. But here's one of the actress Mary Pickford knitting for the Red Cross. I've also seen other photos of women knitting - in all the "big wars" since the Civil War. (Even know, people knit helmet liners for the troops...I guess even Afghanistan can get cold in the winter).
And Sojourner Truth knitted. (Actually that person's flickr stream has many nice historical knitting and crochet pictures on it.
And I don't really care if it's a historical figure (like Sojourner Truth), or a sweet, idealized painting of a young girl knitting (the well known Bougereau painting), or an anonymous peasant woman photographed as she knits and walks - these old photos make me happy because of the feeling of having a tie to the past. Of not being stuck in this time and place with nothing to refer back to or learn from.
And it makes me happy to see the women who walked and knit: it seems to me that here are clever people, taking bits of time that might otherwise be wasted, and using them for something productive. (I've also seen paintings of women walking and spinning on a drop spindle, which I'm guessing takes more coordination. I can't spin - my few experiments with drop spindles have been failures to date - but I keep thinking that someday, someday, I will get a chance to go somewhere like the John Campbell Folk School and take classes in it...and in stuff like weaving and even learning to play the dulcimer. There's so much stuff I want to DO, and my schedule tends to prohibit me from getting to most of it)
That said: yes, I realize that the woman walking and knitting as she walked may well have not been happy about it. I'm sure I wouldn't be as eager about knitting stockings if it was how I had to try to earn my bread - or if it was the only thing between my family and frostbite in the winter. It's very different when you knit for recreation and amusement. ("Work consists of what a body is obliged to do. Play consists of what a body is not obliged to do.")
But still...it makes me smile to think how similar my posture is to that unnamed woman in the old photograph, standing there with the yarn tucked up in my armpit and my elbows sort of relaxed, walking as I knit. (It does tend to encourage a very upright posture, I've found - I don't generally slouch normally, but you especially cannot when you're knitting and walking.)
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