Its all true, the boogie girl is real, and you've found her. She knits, sews, spins, does pottery and writes it all down in this blog.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Movie Knitting
I admit it, I knit at the movies. I'm pretty sure there are others of you out there that do the same thing. Even if it's a good movie, I knit through it. Why? It keeps me from fidgeting. I think I've explained before I'm no good at sitting still. There are a million things that need to be done and sitting still drives me nuts. If I can keep my hands busy at least, I can keep my butt planted.
Knitting in the dark can be somewhat of a challenge at times. I always bring a plain stockinette project. Back and forth, who needs to look at the stitches when they're boring old stockinette. The challenge comes in when your watching something that makes you lose your concentration. Someone's head gets chopped off, a persons car skids off the road, a Heffalump suprises you, or a little prehistoric squirrel does something that makes you laugh until tears run down your face.
What happens in those dramatic scenes is not that you get suprised or you laugh... no...those aren't the real tragedies. The problem is that you drop a stitch. Then you scream for real and it's not in keeping with the movie. By the time you scream they've moved on to a funeral, a romantic scene, or your sitting in a kids movie where you shouldn't be screaming louder than the children.
Then you're sitting there thinking about the dropped stitch. You don't care that yous creamed anymore. You dont care that something major is happening on screen. You can't pay attention, you're distracted. I want to knit. What happened to that stitch? You start to rationalize, if I continue to knit anyway then I get the stitch later when I have light and ladder it up. But will it look the same?
The knitting sits forlorn in your lap and you are permanently distracted until the lights come on. Then you know you have to make the people with you sit and wait until you get that darn stitch back on the needles. NO! You can't get up and leave until the stitch has been found.
I have a solution:
That my friends is a little clip on book light purchased at Staples for $1.99. I purchased this little number specifically for movie knitting. It folds up so it's small and hidden, I carry it with me at all times now. No more screaming over dropped stitches. Just switch on the little light for a few seconds, pick up the lost little stitches and I can watch the rest of the movie happily knitting.