Knitting at the Movies

I like cinema enough to hold a season ticket for the Dublin Film Festival; last year I decided to take along my knitting as I like that too.  I opted again for cowls, being relatively non-intrusive work in terms of disturbance of fellow audience members - and to stick with a straightforward pattern involving no contortions of the K5tog kind, or rustling in bags for cable needles

- here are some results.. and that particular red one was made for Siobhán, as hardworking as sweet natured, who slaves away in the festival every year so the rest of us can sit back and enjoy ourselves ...   

Each took five skeins of Paloma on 9mm needles, but I must have been working pink during a tense thriller or harrowing war documentary (for which knitting is remarkably cathartic, by the way). Or maybe that one evolved during one of the movies I really hated because I knit furiously when I'm angry. No matter what the tension, however, there's still something tangible there to show for my time and eradicate the occasional twinge of guilt over whiling away quite so many hours at the movies.

I also discovered that knitting in public can be a lot more controversial than might be imagined -although before I did it, I don't think I really envisaged any reaction at all.  I learned, however, that some people actively sought me and my knitting out, while others positively fled.  Most watched for a while and maybe chatted amiably

- they once were knitters themselves, was a regular remark from women especially;  they'd take it up again too, was another - if only there were time...

- and money, I'd always add, because I like to do my bit to offset the widely held and wrongheaded notion that knitting is linked somehow to thrift and second best. 

I was told many times also - mostly by men - that they found watching someone knit restful - when pressed about why, the answer inevitably boiled down to having had mothers who knit when they were children.  

Once a man accused me of suffering from OCD - and I thought about that, and remarked that even compulsive energy harnessed usefully can't be so bad. He seemed quite disappointed that I wasn't just offended.  Another time I took out my needles, and the lady next to me said in a towering rage "Well if you're going to keep that up once the film starts, I'm sitting somewhere else" and did. ... and glowered back at me from a few seats away ....in a way that made me think she was possibly a bit disappointed I wasn't offended too.  I'd have stopped, if only she'd asked politely. Probably. If I could, of course (...!)