The body's done...

Last night, I finished the head and nose of the "sea pony" and stitched them together. I still have to do the ears, horn, fins, and back-fin. I decided to stop and do the hair first, partly because if I needed to I could use a plain worsted in red for the fin tips and back fin (if I ran out) and also I wanted to see what the novelty yarn was like to crochet with.

It makes nice spiral curls, but it's a little bit of a pain to work with. (I should probably hunt around and see if I have an H hook kicking around and use that instead of the G I'm trying to use - the novelty yarn is thicker than the worsted I used for the body).

I was thinking yesterday - it one one of those long-unconnected-train-of-thought things that led to it - about imaginary friends. I had imaginary friends when I was a kid, but, at least when I remember having had them, I also remember KNOWING they were imaginary. I had some kind of weird two-track thing going on in my mind - making up stories about them and enjoying it and being completely invested in it, while at the same time being well-aware that these characters had no existence (well, at least in this dimension*) outside of my imagination. And that didn't bother me, even though in other ways I was a remarkably literal-minded child.

I guess it still doesn't bother me, really. I have quite a few amigurumi I've made, and a few teddy bears and other animals I've bought over the years. And really, I recognize that they are not much more than oddly-shaped throw pillows. And yet, also, on some level I would rather have THEM than a throw pillow....I don't know if there's that willing suspension of disbelief involved (the same thing that allows me to accept that a younger member of a British noble family would have a reformed thief as his gentleman's gentleman, and would live in a smallish flat over a police station) or what. (But I wouldn't bother to tuck a throw pillow up in the crook of my arm while I was reading...)

(*there's an idea, I think I read it in a story somewhere, that just as some physicists posit that multiple dimensions other than the one we inhabit exist, that perhaps in some of those dimensions, the characters in books actually have "real" existence....and perhaps OUR lives are what is written about in THEIR books. I've also heard some people suggest that the Afterlife is actually one of those other dimensions, which is an interesting idea....)

I don't know. I often bristle at any suggestion I might not be "mature" or a "full-fledged adult" (sometimes those assertions come from people who apparently believe you must marry and have children in order to attain that status). Or sometimes that assertion is actually hinted at, I've noticed, as a way of getting me to go ahead and take on some thankless volunteer task I really don't want to (and probably shouldn't have to) do. Perhaps the reason I get so touchy about that is that I recognize it's not typical for a woman in her 40s to spend time crocheting toy animals (other than, perhaps, to give to her children or grandchildren). Of course, almost no one (outside of the readers of this blog) know that fact about me, but still.

Anyway. The odd train of thought - I'm trying to "train" a new Pandora station, one I have named the "This is supposed to be British Light Music darn it" channel. (Name given because it keeps feeding me stuff that is not the category of music I wanted). Yesterday it was playing one of Mahler's symphonies, which moved me to tweet that I felt like saying "NO MAHLER! NO MAHLER EVER!" like Joan Crawford reacting to a wire clothes hanger. Oh, not that Mahler is so terrible, it's just....he's way too heavy for what is supposed to be a "light" music channel.

But after clicking "thumbs down" on a number of pieces (and being subjected to listening to one in its entirety because I used up my quota of 'skip this pieces,') it played a piece called Puffin' Billy:



People of a certain age will remember that (or at least elements of it - apparently the theme was rewritten around 1974) as the Captain Kangaroo theme music. (I probably vaguely remember the pre-1974 version; I would have been around and been watching it in that era, at least starting in perhaps 1971). And I got to thinking: what other early, early shows from my childhood do I remember, and what do I remember of them? With Captain Kangaroo, I pretty much only remember Mr. Greenjeans and the animals he used to bring on the show, and Mr. Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose and the ping-pong ball thing. And I think also there was a tiny little marching band, that only the Captain could see? (Or maybe that was in a later incarnation of the show, when my brother was watching it) - at any rate, that was what lead to the imaginary-characters thoughts.

I also remember New Zoo Review, back in its early-70s incarnation. (There was a revival of it some years later, but it was *different*) - Henrietta Hippo, Freddy the Frog, and Charlie the Owl. (Why they broke alliteration for Charlie, I don't know). These were humans in big suits, kind of like the college-mascot suits. The biggest thing I remember was that the animal character suits had giant googly eyes as their eyes, and they would rattle around crazily (and a bit disturbingly, I think now) when the character would move. I don't remember any of the plotlines though I suppose like a lot of those kids' shows they were about things like not making fun of people different from you, and accepting help when it's offered, and not boasting. (Hm. I wonder if that's partly why I like MLP:FiM - there are echoes in it of the "moral of the story" shows I used to watch as a child).

I also watched the standard PBS shows that most everyone knows - Mr. Rogers, and Sesame Street, and sometimes Electric Company. (I didn't like that one as well, it seemed too loud and too chaotic to me). My favorite part of Mr. Rogers was when he did a segment on a factory or something, for example, a short film showing how crayons were made. (I still kind of enjoy that and occasionally watch "How It's Made" or similar shows).

I was thinking, though, in lab yesterday afternoon - I bet none of my students (they are all pretty much "traditional" aged college students) would know who Captain Kangaroo was, or, if they did, they wouldn't "get" what he was about. (The 1970s were in some ways a more innocent time to be a child; some of the stuff that would seem laughable now was reasonable then). Or the New Zoo Review, which seems (from having talked with other people of my generation) to be even more obscure than Captain Kangaroo....