Blogtoberfest Day 2: A Plain Knitter

Recently when I was scanning my current projects, I realised that most of them are lace of some variety. Two of them are very fine, delicate lace. Two of them are less so. At that moment, the words of a knitter I knew very briefly a few years ago came back to haunt me. I knew her through a lunch time group of crafters who met in my department in 2005. It was short lived as a group, everyone drifting off after only a few months.

As I sat there in a sunny conference room we were using for our lunch time gatherings, this woman said to me, 'You're a plain knitter, Helen, aren't you?'

Was I? I hardly knew. I looked down at my project. I recall it was a vest (I made quite a few in 2005). It was bright green, Patons Bluebell, acres of stocking stitch. I suppose it was plain. But what did she mean?

Was it a put down of my work? Or simply a comment? To this day I don't really know but I took it as a slight on my skills at the time. I was still new. Of course I was going to be doing plain stuff. What on earth could I do to change it? And did I want to?

I was knitting garments. Garments I was wearing with pride. To me that was the epitome of what I hoped for from my knitting. I had no idea yet of doing anything like socks, or lace! I doubt I even knew you could do such a thing. The thought of it! I grew up watching my mum make cardigans and jumpers we all wore for years. Nearly always stocking stitch, garter stitch or rib. Good, proper, plain but beautiful knitting. I was simply doing what I thought knitters did.

The woman's words haunted me when I was going over my lace projects and I wondered if instead of seeing what she said as a slight, I could see it as a starting point for when I began to try and do bigger, bolder things. Maybe. Maybe not. I think it was quite some time before I began to expand. I hadn't found knitting on the internet in 2005. I didn't know people were out there doing amazing things, making incredible pieces in such clever ways. I only knew about my 'plain knitting.' I thought a bit of shaping for waists or shoulders was downright clever.

On the bus yesterday, I was working on a garter stitch bib for Baby Alice. Could it get more plain than a cotton, garter stitch bib? I ran my hands across the neat, even rows imagining when in a few days I'll put it around Alice's neck and watch her dribble pureed fruit or some such down it.

There's a place for plain knitting and it's beautiful and comforting and I won't ever stop doing it. For me it's always been about the stitches, neat rows stacked on top of each other making something wearable and wonderful. Plain or otherwise.

Bells

Going like the clappers

When I wrote recently about my brother's pi blanket, I used, somewhat mystifyingly, the phrase 'it grows like the clappers.' I used it to mean that the blanket knits up really, really fast.

This was mystifying because it's not actually a phrase I use in speech, and worse still, it was a bungled version of the actual saying which is 'to go like the clappers', not to grow. So let's just put it down to one of those funny slips and get on with exploring the origins of the saying. I'm doing this because enough of a our American friends raised virtual eyebrows over the appearance of said phrase and it got me to thinking.

Here is a funny aside. I have a very clear memory of the first time I read the phrase and this should demonstrate how bizarre my pop culture memory can be. In the mid-80s, I was reading a teeny-bopper magazine, most likely Smash Hits, and the phrase appeared in an interview with the two boys from Wham. Andrew Ridgley, the other member of the band, the one of dubious talent, explained that he had bought a car for his mother with his pop music earnings. He said that the car he bought 'goes like the clappers' and for some reason, that has always stuck.

I wonder if I am one of the few people on the planet who, having never met Wham's other guy, has something he said etched forever on my memory?

So when I read in my research that 'to go like the clappers' is an English phrase, not widely used outside the UK and considered archaic even there, it struck me as funny that a young guy in the 80s was the last time I could remember stumbling across it.

The best article I found on the saying is here. It makes good reading and covers not only the strongest theory on its origins but also a range of more amusing theories including a reference to rabbits and that thing we all know rabbits do well, although whether they do it fast I don't know. Can't say I've ever watched a couple of rabbits going at it, like the clappers or otherwise!

The most likely origin, the one that gets the most coverage on the various websites devoted to this subject, refers to the ringing of bells. It was most likely coined by RAF pilots in World War II.

From here:

What 'the clappers' refers to isn't entirely clear, although by far the most likely derivation is as a reference to the clappers of bells. An early form of the phrase was 'go like the clappers of hell' and, given that bells have clappers, it may be that it may that the rhyme of hell and bell is significant. RAF pilots were often from English public schools where the ringing of handbells to mark the time was common. Bells were rung more vigorously as the time remaining to get to class/chapel etc. was about to run out. The image of schoolboys dashing to class while handbells were being energetically rung matches the meaning of the phrase very well.

As funny as it would be to think that the saying has reference to rabbits and procreation, I think this one sounds more plausible.

I must ask my mum if she remembers using it. She is, after all, English, and I'm sure that phrases from her childhood and family are a part of the way I and my siblings speak now.

So I hope that's cleared it up for the Americans who were wondering. No, it's got nothing to do with having the clap! Now there's a saying I might go and read up on. What a strange one.

Bells

Why I Don't Dance

I don't dance.

I'm inspired to write about this because yesterday I listened to a wonderful podcast by English comedian, actor and writer, Stephen Fry. It was an old episode, since I'm working my way back through his archives, entitled Bored of the Dance. It got me thinking about my own desperate aversion to dancing.

What was so encouraging about listening to Stephen Fry explore how much every fibre of his being loathes dancing is that it made me feel OK about the same trait in myself. I have decided, from this moment, to stop apologising for it and to stop accepting the criticism that this means there's something wrong with me. There isn't. And nor is there with you either, if you don't enjoy dancing. Anti-dancers unite! (Conversely, if you do love to dance, that's great. I'm not here to sneer.)

One of my favourite sob stories to drag out when the subject of why I don't dance comes up, dates back to a school dance in, I think, 1987. So I was fifteen.

Back then, I tried to be like everyone else. I wore a bubble skirt. I wore my hair as big as I could manage. I went along bursting with the kind of anticipation that only a school dance, when you have no other social life, can create. There was undoubtedly some gorgeous, unattainable guy I was hoping would notice me. There would have been a lot of Bon Jovi played that night and I would have loved every power-chord filled moment.

I danced. I am sure I did OK but I was awfully self conscious and no matter how much I loved whatever music was filling the school gym, I was excruciatingly aware of the fact that I could not possibly look as coordinated and rhythmically gifted as the girls who looked like they were born dancing, the girls who looked like they were actually having fun and not just pretending like I was.

Knowing what I know now, probably the gym was oozing discomfort, awkwardness and agonising self consciousness. Undoubtedly, I was surrounded by teenagers struggling with self doubts of their own. I didn't know this. I truly believed my awkwardness on the dance floor was obvious to everyone around me, that everyone was secretly sniggering at my aimless, jerky bopping and laughing. But I tried really hard to pretend it wasn't happening, striving instead for the appearance of ease and enjoyment. A little voice said to me, 'Really, you look fine. Just have fun.' I copied the others as much as I could.

It was all going ok. We were in a circle. We being the girls I loosely called friends, because I don't think I particularly liked them and I'm pretty sure they only tolerated me. That's a whole other story, but at least I had some sort of clan to call my own, even if there was actually no real friendship there. In truth, high school is all about appearances.

What happened next is one of those moments that stays with you forever. You never forget. I'm sure in my imagination there's a great big spotlight over me when I picture my fifteen year old self in a bubble skirt and teased hair.

Kylee was a girl in my group I did not like one bit. She was small and mean. She had a nasty habit of cutting people down, telling them what she really thought as if it was her God given right. You were expected to change whatever it was she deemed wrong. She was right near me and she called out, 'Helen, you dance like a penguin.'

Like a penguin. There's no way that could be meant kindly. She imitated me then, clapping her hands, as I must have been, somewhere in the vicinity of my pelvic region, and soon everyone was joining in and laughing. Public humiliation. I don't remember what happened after that. I may have passed out.

This story isn't the reason, per se, why I don't dance. It's not like I never went on to dance after that. I've tried. Many times. A few times when relatively drunk I've even had a moment or two of something approaching fun, but the moment has to be exactly right. It has to be a song that I simply adore; I have to be with people who I know won't laugh at me; I have to have had a minimum of two drinks. More is better.

But in the end, I just really don't like it. Mostly I dislike very much the kind of music that's played in venues where dancing is expected. I feel just a little bit silly jumping around inexpertly to good music; to music I don't like, it's even worse. It all just feels so pointless. Couldn't I just sit and listen to the music and have just as much of a good time? Yes, I could. And I usually do.

If you say you don't like dancing, people leap to conclusions that you're uptight and in possession of all manner of unappealing traits. Maybe it's true that I don't seem to be able to relax my body enough on a dance floor to it in a way that makes it an enjoyable thing. I probably lack the ability to relax my body enough to jump off a bridge headfirst into a canyon with a big piece of elastic attached to my feet too but I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

Nope. I get my kicks in other ways. I will happily spend the rest of my life appreciating music with my ears and my voice and the rush it gives me without making me feel any urge to tap my feet or wriggle around or gyrate in a way that makes me feel silly. Other people clearly get something happening physically that I don't. And I don't mind. Honest. I'm not missing out. I'm just not wired that way.

Stephen Fry doesn't think he's missing out either, and it sounds as if he loves music as passionately as I do. It's quite ok to love music with your ears and to enjoy the spine tingling and the thrill of a great voice, an amazing chord progression, or melody that stops you in your tracks. Just don't ask me to wriggle about on a darkened dance floor or suggest there's something wrong with me because I won't do it.

Bells