well, so I’m sitting there up to my nose buried in my research which at the moment quite seems like a rainforest (secret book-studies pun intended that probably no one will get at all) without any kind of structure… (ok, no, that’s not really the case, there is structure but to me it seems like a mess and like I don’t really make any progress at all).
I guess I have to remind myself that this is what I want to do, that I chose to do this and that I will do a good job in the end. I’m sure I will.
Anyway, so I’m sitting there reading an autobiography written by an anonymous artisan in the 1850s about his childhood checking if it’s relevant (check… it is) and if it wasn’t all weird 150 year old language-wise it’d actually be almost enjoyable 
So this artisan as a boy had to help out his mother in the household, he knits stockings for examples and I assume he also mends them. He doesn’t really give any details on anything else. This is really so interesting on so many levels , the most apparent being that he had to help with all those things one usually attributes to housewives and like THE Victorian ideal being wife = the angel in the household, separate spheres stuff (ok well that’s more middle class ideals but still). And here is this simple boy who actually takes some kind of pleasure in these things and is made to help with it. His mother even goes so far as to forbid him to read before he finishes his knitting. And here the irony comes in. Let me get that quote…
If it were at knitting, I was forbidden to read until I had finished my allotted task. Sometimes when I tried to evade this law, I was detected, and severely reprimanded by my mother, whose maxim was, that two distinct things could not both be well done at the same time. (Memoirs of a Working Man. pg 25)
So you have three guesses what I was doing when I read this yesterday. Right I was knitting. The pleasure with my sweater design being that it’s mostly stockinette and I don’t have to look at it so I was able to steal some knitting time while I was reading.
Irony… These working class people writing their autobiographies often say how they never had much free time as children or young adults as they had to work but they managed to steal time (or money) for reading nevertheless. Be it by getting up even earlier than they had to or going to bed later than was healthy or, like this boy here, by reading while knitting stockings. (One woman even spent her money on the subscription library fee rather than on food). And here I am 150 years later, reading a lot but mostly not for pleasure but for research and wishing I could knit instead. I couldn’t help smiling at that quote up there. How times change…
I have to say though, that woman had a point… I made mistakes… no grave ones just like skipping a stitch so they were easy to repair I’m still not used to not looking at my knitting.
On a related note… holy cow did I make some progress on that sweater! It’s amazing what I can do if I’m motivated and set my mind to it. I finished the back of the sweater and started the front which is now some 15 cm long already.
Simply, purely amazing. My mum keeps telling me it will be too small no matter how often I explain to her that I did think this through and yes, that I do want it to be fitted. (She was a knitter herself back in the 80s and taught me the basics but never did shaping in her sweaters, I asked her… well I guess 80s fashion didn’t really call for much shaping). But anyway this is the back piece of my sweater:
It’s not blocking, I just pinned it down to take this picture, it’s actually rolling up on all side making it look in fact tiny. But I think it’s just about perfect and I can’t wait to finish the front piece.
