Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Good morning

The morning inbox was awash with Boye steel hooks of every size. Thank you; I am so grateful, especially to know their original owners may have left off using them, but they still are in the collections of new owners, and probably will be attracted to another at the proper time. The Boye size 0 is on its way from California, View from my Window in Tehachapi.

I must add a probably long remark about what I do when I knit. I watch television. I am not sure how this works. I have a 17" television, to the sheer dismay of most who have seen it. I think it simply keeps things in perspective. 

The service is called Roku. It's like cable, without local news, which I miss. The amount of money required for television "entertainment" is staggering. But that's not where I was headed.

Of everything available on Roku, I use Netflix the most, and have enjoyed watching so many shows that have been recommended. For a time I was watching Last Tango in Halifax. I know it ends somewhere, but I haven't checked that out. I had to quit watching; every episode was a new disaster, and even reducing it to 17" was no good. Every show another fight, another death, another relative.

I quit Last Tango for Outlander. I watched a couple of episodes prepared to scoff at all the mistakes in presenting the lives of 18th century rural peasants. But what I do know about dress, about the history of clans, which the British treated rather like Americans treated Native People, was ringing true. 

Every episode of Outlander is a new adventure, and most are fairly rough. It was a rough time. I was in for the long haul when I saw the tax collecting episode. Claire, the female protagonist is commandeered into the tax collecting group for her skill as a nurse. Claire wanders into a group of woman in one village and is fit into the group "waulkin" the wool. 

A length of woven woolen fabric is being fulled by waulking. The length is rolled or scrunched its length on a long table and the women on either side pick it up in unison, slap it on the table, pick it up again further down its length, slap it on the table and so on, in time to a waulkin song, like a sea shanty.

I have omitted so far, the rest of the fulling process, which is moisture and heat. The wool has been saturated in warm urine. And so we have the three components of fulling, heat, moisture and agitation. Claire even has a pee into the communal pot of new heat and moisture. And this is how waulking occurs, to my knowledge.

The show goes intensely into the infliction of pain between two warring cultures, and there came a time when one show's action kept me awake far too long. And then I realized Outlander had become as predictable as Last Tango. Each new episode was another murder, kidnapping, extreme loss.

I had to know where it ends. I took to friend google and wound up on my other friend, Wikipedia, which has a one line synopsis of each episode. I read and read and read to catch up to where I am, and then read ahead a bit, then scrolled to the end. Yes, there are hundreds of episodes. 

For the present, I'm off Outlander, too. Picture from Google.



31 comments:

  1. Strange- I rather like "Last Tango in Halifax" although as you say, it's pretty much one disaster after another. I listened to all of the Outlander books and there are about a year's worth. But the series was too much for me. The violence and mostly, I think, the stupidity of war. Constant, constant war.

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  2. We watched the first 2 seasons of "Outlander" before wandering off and never coming back. I know lots of people love "Last Tango in Halifax" but I only watched one episode and could not get into it.

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  3. Hari Om
    Oh now you've got me started... Take from a Scot - no one here can abide that show. A load of tosh. Yes there are some facts but not well researched. I was given the book many moons past by a well-meaning pal and I could barely finish even that first one. I would not go back to it or any other.

    Two points;
    it was the ENGLISH who were oppressing the Scots (and still are). British pertains all peoples of the Isles of Britain, Welsh, Scots, Irish and English.
    Waulking started out, literally, as 'walking' the cloth. Folk love to play up the urine part, but all that was used for was to mordant the dye; the urine was stale (so none of this adding fresh piss to the pot) and only added as any mordant would be to the cauldron. Urine as used for its ammonia as a cleansing agent. Nowadays the process involves nothing more than pure water.

    A great many shows that make a hit of their first series find excuses for going on ad infinitum... thus become nothing more than soap operas. Maybe even not that good. I don't watch soaps. I look for limited series, a beginning, middle and end. Or read blogs... YAM xx

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    1. I agree absolutely. The English treatment of every peoples they subjugated was lower than reprehensible. Deadly. That the "facts" were broad brushed is evident. No craftsman would ever attempt weaving and finished weaving without research. I liked the attempt to flesh out the story, and especially the use of the word waulking.

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  4. Joanne, I read all the Outlander books and really enjoyed them. Watched most of the episodes on TV and was impressed that they did it really well. (So many book to TV shows aren't done as well - IMO). When they end a season and you have to wait forever for the next season - usually loses me as I forget where I left off. And I also enjoyed Last Tango in Halifax - but do get what you're saying. Sometimes the storylines are so similar... war, crime, mystery, and dysfunctional families.

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  5. I am a reader rather than a watcher. Waulking as a term is new to me, though (more reading I suspect) I knew of the practice. Colonists the world over did some horrendous things. Some worse than others. I was told while in India that British colonists, fearing for the weaving trade at home, cut off the thumbs of adult weavers in one area, and those of their children so that the trade could neither be done nor taught. I was appalled when I learned it and sadly unsurprised.

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  6. I am not surprised at your many offers of Boye steel hooks. Bloggers are kind like that aren't they! In fact, as soon as I read your post yesterday I had to check out some steel crochet hooks I own that previously belonged to my Grandmother. I thought I had a size 0 because one of them has such a tiny tip. But no, this one is a Boye size 10. I can hardly imagine how small a size 0 or 00 would be! The one I have is so old it is embossed in the steel the price of 40 cents.

    We also have Roku and we have several free streaming stations that also have news. There is one station that is all news called "Newsy" and it is actually not bad for national news. An example of many other free streaming stations are "Pluto" and "Peacock". We get You Tube through Roku and find many good free programs there including some British ones that I enjoy. You have to do a search on Roku in order to find and load these channels but once you learn how, it is simple and you will find many free channels.

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    1. I learned to crochet on a Boye size 14 hook. It was a girlfriend's wedding and I offered to make her garters. She was Scottish!

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  7. I get the Disney+ channel. I guess I prefer Jungle Book to some of the more gory movies.

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  8. That waulking process I've seen on the grainy film made by Alan Lomax, a kind of anthropologist who used to study folkways. It's about Harris tweed, and the songs were pretty gloomy. There were a lot of jokes about how seriously his subjects took him, and if they yielded to the temptation to make stuff up just to pull his leg.

    I'm the widow of a Scot who would straight faced get English people at New year doing all kinds of nutty stuff assuring them they were definitely authentic Scots New year observances! These were in addition to actual things like first footing that we really did. There's a history!

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  9. We don’t subscribe to any pay for it services and as there’s not a lot of free to air tv that interests me these days (apart from some sport) it’s the jazz or country channels that keep me company during the evenings Joanne.

    My friends looked at me in disbelief a few years ago when I said ‘Last Tango’ was the most miserable television series I’d watched....and that was only after a couple of episodes. I finally got round to reading the first Outlander book last year and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about..to me it was just another time travel tome with sex. Gosh I’m an old stick in the mud aren’t I lol.

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  10. I read all the books, years ago, and I prefer the "movies" and characters I made in my mind. I have watched most of the series, but I usually can't handle the violent parts. -Jenn

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  11. The last book I read for book club sounds like many of these shows; it's called "tragedy porn." It's one disaster after another and I am rarely in the mood to watch/read that. Glad you located the hook you needed!

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  12. I admit, I'm not really a watcher of any shows anymore.

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  13. I missed your note about hocks. Darn it. At least Carol had an O for you.

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  14. I have Outlander on a usb somewhere in the bowl that holds them all, but I've put off even starting to watch simply because it seems to go on forever. I tried to read the books, but they are also too long at several hundred pages. I didn't have the full set anyway, so gave what I had to the local thrift shop.
    Glad you are getting a new steel hook for your socks.

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  15. I liked Last Tango well enough but Outlander is not for me, neither to books nor the tv series. We are caught up in older episodes of Silent Witness, which are mostly well done.

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  16. I know nothing of Boye hooks, Last Tango or Outlanders, so have a nice day is all I say!

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  17. I have to admit to being a fan of Outlander. But there is at least one episode that was too much for me.

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  18. I read the books, one after the other each 800 or more pages. 8 books. and I hear she has written another one. so, I have never been tempted to watch the series.

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  19. At first I really enjoyed "Last Tango," but then it got weird. My husband and I enjoy "Shtisel," a Netflix series--now in its 3rd season--about an extended family of Orthodox Jews living in Jerusalem. There is nary a reference to the Palestinians, but still, it's a fascinating window on another way of life.

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  20. Halifax was good for a while and then jumped the shark for me, all too predictable and I took a dislike to the main female character and her limited range of expressions, mainly frowns. I recently watched "Bloodlands" and loved it but it might not have appeal to non-Irish as it involves the strife in Northern Ireland.

    XO
    WWW

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  21. The shows are so predictable these days but I think I might have seen it all before so there’s that...

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  22. I can't watch intensive shows. I had to give up on quite a few, too, because they were just so offhand and extreme in depicting crimes. I'm back to sillier fare, but it's more relaxing and fun to "watch" while cross stitching. I watch on a tiny old phone screen!

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  23. So glad friendly followers came through on the crochet hook. Last Tango didn't really end. It just stopped. I don't think you missed anything by not watching it.

    Love,
    Janie

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  24. Our TV is also 17 inches. Not only that, it's an old cathode ray model that we won in a lucky draw in 2000 - and it's still going strong. We don't have Netflix but we catch a lot of interesting programmes on Sky Atlantic and Sky Documentaries. I'm not a binge-watcher, I like to watch an episode of something and then digest it properly before I continue.

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  25. Isn't it funny that 17" is not considered a small screen?
    My family's TV when I was little was a black-and-white 12".

    I too like how the smaller screens don't flood me as much as the huge ones.

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  26. I can't watch programs with cruelty. There's too much of that in real life, so no more is needed.

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  27. We have ROKU as well. Fun fact: roku is the word for 'six' in Japanese. Last Tango was so well acted. I don't know if I wound up finishing the series or not. Outlander has stunning costumes. The wool neck wraps are a thing of beauty.

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  28. I don't watch TV at all, I haven't for years. Occasionally I'll get a DVD of a film I've wanted to see and watch that, but it's rare.

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  29. I've been watching a lot of things on Netflix too. I've read 8 of the Outlander series and for some reason didn't want to watch the series. I don't recall reading about the pee thing, however. Since that was probably in the first book... my brain can't hold things too long. We've been watching Stranger Things just because my husband likes science fiction and this was a crazy science fiction. I watch Call the Midwife myself because he can't stand watching excruciating birth scenes even though he delivered our son on his own. Hmmmm... maybe that's why. LOL

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