An online crafting zine that I’m fond of always provides suggested entertainment to go along with its projects. These take the form of songs or movies or books that will get you into the right mind frame for your crafting experience.
I like the idea. In fact, I usually do have something that I’m watching or listening to while I knit that I come to associate with a specific project.
Sometimes they’re appropriate enough. I did a lot of the hand sewing for my Regency gown while working through the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, for example. More often, though, I mix my genres.
Disclaimer: It should be noted that the concept of genre is highly subjective. Ninety percent of the entertainment I absorb is science fiction or fantasy. The following pairings may seem relatable and interchangeable to an outsider, but folks like me know that if you mean to say “Star Wars” and instead let slip with “Star Trek” amidst the wrong company, you could get your ass kicked.
I might as well have knit the words “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” into my first pair of socks, which is innocuous enough. Though I have a relative who would be shocked, disturbed, and dismayed to know that I knit his Harry Potter accessory while chewing through the Twilight series on audiobook. Ironically, I’m now going through the Harry Potter series (again) while I stitch away at Christmas presents.
I cut my teeth on my first cabled project – a hemp scarf – while going through Season 2 of Buffy last year. Boy, was that a big mistake. Every time David Boreanaz walked on screen all the cables started to twist the wrong way. The pattern for my Penny gloves may have been based on a girl who grew up lost and lonely, but they were knit on board a torn up Battlestar fleeing from a fleet of cylons who supposedly had some kind of plan. And the fact that my knitting needles were deep into those gloves through Season 3 was the only thing that kept me from tracking down each and every one of the writers and smiting them with those same needles, so say we all.
Both the porpoise and the wallaby have earned a few lines in Topher’s chair. (“Did I fall asleep?” “For a little while.”) And the watchful eyes of Wolfram & Hart oversaw my progress on a small crocheted Grim Reaper. Well, okay, that one fits.
There is this whole concept of prayer shawls in the knitting world where people pray about happy, positive, healing things while they knit so that when they gift the shawl to someone, they’re wrapping that someone in all this good energy. It makes me wonder what I’m imbuing into baby hats that I work up while the Klingons are hacking up Dominion soldiers in the battle for Cardasia Prime. Qaplá, little ones! It is a good day to spit up.
Ultimately, I don’t think it matters much what’s entertaining me while I’m knitting for you. Your knitwear is what you make of it, not what I made it up of. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to smile to myself when I see my very anti-teenybopper-romance cousin wrapped up in yarn saturated in Bella and Edward. Is that scarf warm or cold, I wonder?