I have a secret project to share this week for Yarn Along. I can show you but I can’t tell you why I knit them.
Man, it’s so hard to take a picture of your own hand. The pattern is here. It was a quick and easy knit but the designer had me changing needle sizes every few rows. It was very annoying. The yarn is leftover blue from my Clock Socks. I really hope it wears well, but I think it’s too acrylic and will pill with use -we’ll see.
At school we are supposed to be reading Pilgrim’s Progress, The
. Wow, not sure how they expect youngish children to get into that book. I put it down after the first couple attempts. So to fill in the gap we are reading the Little House series. We’re almost done Little House in the Big Woods
It just really struck me today how Ma changed through the books. The Ma in the “Big Woods” book is more like the mother on the Waltons -firm and determined to raise good people, but very loving. If Ma becomes ‘cold’ (says a woman living in the 20th century with no chance of her children starving/freezing to death/being killed by animals or Indians) later it’s because she is living for decades in survival mode. If Pa hadn’t dragged the family around pillar to post chasing a dream he never managed to catch, I think Ma would have had the luxury of being as soft and loving as a modern mother.
At Home With Us 
Wow good point Paula. I just always felt that Mary was the perfect domestic one and Laura was more Tom-boyish. I know personally I was always closer to my father, I was the only girl in the family. Sometimes we perceive our parents out of our wants and needs. I could never and still never fill my mother’s desires. I gave up 40 years ago when I was a child, I still am not close to her. I always understood my father. This is how I understood the relationship of Laura and her ma, what I personally knew. Can you imagine living as a pioneer for real? Read Roughing in the Bush by Susanna Moode. No thanks.
I think there was a lot of that too. Ma didn’t know what to do with such a tom-boy. I was just struck by the difference between Ma in the Big Woods and the older Ma. When they were safe and comfortable in Wisconsin she had the time to be ‘fun’ Ma, making pictures on the frosted windows and making maple syrup treats. When you are honest and admit that Pa was never a successful farmer you can see how Ma had too many worries to be ‘fun’.
I’ve read Roughing it in the Bush and Backwoods of Canada (Catherine Parr Traill). It’s amazing ANYONE survived back then. The small, rough houses and so easy to lose your children. It’s easy to see how easy it would be to just slip into survival mode.