Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Yarn Along -6 April 2016

yarnalong_gsheller_aqua

I have a secret project to share this week for Yarn Along.  I can show you but I can't tell you why I knit them.


Man, it's so hard to take a picture of your own hand.  The pattern is here.  It was a quick and easy knit but the designer had me changing needle sizes every few rows.  It was very annoying.  The yarn is leftover blue from my Clock Socks.  I really hope it wears well, but I think it's too acrylic and will pill with use -we'll see.

At school we are supposed to be reading Pilgrim's Progress, The
.  Wow, not sure how they expect youngish children to get into that book.  I put it down after the first couple attempts.  So to fill in the gap we are reading the Little House series.  We're almost done Little House in the Big Woods.  Remember the review of From the Mouth of Ma: A Search for Caroline Quiner Ingalls?  The author considered Ma so cold and unfeeling.  I realized today that she had based her impression on Ma on all the later books -you know when they were trying really hard not to starve to death??  The Ma back in Wisconsin, when they had a good home and family and friends and safety was loving and kind and much more like a modern mother.  It's obvious in "Little House in the Big Woods" that Laura adores her mother and doesn't have an ambiguous relationship with her (as implied by the "From the Mouth of Ma" author).  Maybe Ma became 'cold' because she had all the cares of the world on her shoulders trying to keep everyone alive?  Maybe she could have stayed 'fun Ma' if Pa hadn't dragged the family away from a fairly good life to chase hopeless dream after dream out in the unsettled, wild lands of early America?

It just really struck me today how Ma changed through the books.  The Ma in the "Big Woods" book is more like the mother on the Waltons -firm and determined to raise good people, but very loving.  If Ma becomes 'cold' (says a woman living in the 20th century with no chance of her children starving/freezing to death/being killed by animals or Indians) later it's because she is living for decades in survival mode.  If Pa hadn't dragged the family around pillar to post chasing a dream he never managed to catch, I think Ma would have had the luxury of being as soft and loving as a modern mother.

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