So, we knit in church. For me, it helps me to keep a hold on my tongue, so that I don’t dissect the sermon as it’s being delivered. When it doesn’t work, and I just can’t sit there, I get up & sit in the foyer to knit. It keeps things peaceful.
There’s one thing wrong with the equation, from the pastor’s point of view: we sit on the second or third row, and he can’t seem to not look at us knitting. He just can’t stand it, and has felt the need to comment upon it from the pulpit … which has nicely informed the congregation that it’s something that others do during the sermon. Those other knitters? They’ve started to bring knitting to church, too.
There are now about eight people who regularly knit during church. It’s fabulous. It’s so puritanically perfect of a way to drive the man crazy that it hurts. He can complain about the crying babies disturbing him, but how can he complain that knitting quietly bothers him even more?
Knitting as form of protest and passive resistance: distract the Attention Deficient into order.
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Ah. It’s the old “Disturb the Comforted, and Comfort the Disturbed” shout out to the ministerial sector of our population. I do think we are Leading Children Astray, as daily the number of knisters in the 10-13 year old category … rises.
Actually, what this whole knitting-while-someone-is-pontificating thing reminds me of? Is Madame DeFarge. It’s all a matter of waiting to see whose head will roll…
I have often found knitting the only way to get through a lecture, pontification, fill-in-appropriate-verb-here. Never took it to a church service, though, only because I hadn’t thought of it. Rats!
And thanks for the etymology (is that the right word?) on our surname. I had read bits and pieces of that in times past. I think lime marler is a nice way of saying…’occupation=manure spreader’. And perhaps I’m still doing a bit of spreading on the blog!
i have tried various times to leave a comment on this post but nothing seems to quite capture the various feelings or images i had while reading it. so i will offer a simple standing ovation accompanied by a hearty “bravo! knit on!”