September 18, 2004
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Natalie (http://knitting.xaviermusketeer.com/ ) has a contest going for favorite knitting-related lines from movies. Cheating slightly, I nominated the Sock Gap scene from Coupling. Then the second season DVD arrived and it contained the following exchange:
“He’s gorgeous!” “How gorgeous?” “Knitting pattern!”
Now, they are British, with all those explosive Ts and no R, so I backed it up to make sure that was the line, and it was. I was home from work early because I am sick. I was lying on the couch, feeling as though I had a sauna going in back of my eyes and a bird in my mouth scratching my throat with its feet (yes, I do feel awful, thanks), so I might have imagined the whole thing. But no, that was the line. A line or two later, she says “You can put down your knitting needles.”
Is this common British slang, based on Cockney rhymes we will never be able to guess? Or is it a reference to the type of model preferred for illustrations of British knitting patterns? The guy fishing in Alice Starmore’s Fair Isle waistcoat will be classically handsome, you can be sure, with maybe a bit of a five o’clock shadow to complement the vampire make-up on her female models. Or maybe the chaste beauty of knitting patterns themselves has inspired the term’s use.
I don’t know. But it does seem like a discreet way to discuss the subject, at least for Americans. “Knitting pattern,” you could say, with a glance toward the guy serving the coffee. Your companions would not miss the opportunity to admire him (and actually the guy who serves coffee at our local bakery is the handsomest man in town, at least until #1 son grows up), but neither you nor he would be embarrassed.
Unless he has also seen the show.
Comments (3)
That’s really good because I can’t come up with anything that I remember that I heard in a movie that had knitting. I think the last time I saw someone knitting was in the movie that takes place in Japan with Bill Murray I believe. The girl he almost has an affair with is knitting a scarf in her hotel room while her husband is busy with no time for her in this foreign country. Every time they showed it I tried to get a better look. That would be neat to have a sorce to go to about all the knitting info for knit items that appeare in movies with instructions for making them. By the way, the arms and legs of the doll are made of a carved bone. Concerning the curls, I was kinda wishing that the movie Purl Harbour came out that those styles would come back. I was good at pincurls in school and those are my favorite do’s. Everyone wants things fast and now adays with the lives we live not many people have the time to sit for that kind of hair service. Here’s to feeling better soon! : )
well i’d say that physics is just a way humans have created to characterize the things that happen all around us/inside us/in the universe/etc. in a “knowable” way. i mean when a ball is thrown through the air, it isn’t a series of mathematical abstractions that are flying through the air. its a ball, flying through the air. the mathematical abstraction stuff is just a mode of knowing that event. on the other hand, I feel that linguistics is different since it isn’t studying events that are inherent to existence and the universe, but rather another human convention. I agree they both share the quality of being theoretical in many aspects, though. Linguistics, however allows for a much wider range of possibilities since it is based on a human convention. at least that made sense when i thought it… haha…peace
Why the tuba player? He so made The List. He looked slightly like a young Rex Smith (as do half the men in the world right now thanks to this shaggy hair fad). He was an amazing tuba player (tubist?) and, while it is true that they look mildly drunk while playing, he was so into it. I got his autograph and, sadly, I gushed. I complimented him to the ends of the earth on his amazing tuba-ing and he said “Thank you so much for coming! I’m glad you enjoyed it. And I really like your wrap there.”