Manufactured Quaintness
In case I haven’t mentioned this already about a gazillion times on social media, we’ve been moving house over the past couple of weeks. It’s been a bit (a lot!) more intense than I anticipated, but is finally done.
As I settle into the new place and start to get my bearings, I am noticing how much the move is impacting my workflow. And not just for the obvious and expected reasons of creating a physical interruption and generating stress. But… and this may sound odd as I grasp for the right words to express myself… for the conceptual upheaval it has created.
The house we have moved into is new. Not new as in new-to-us, but new in a literal sense. A new construction. Contemporary, medium sized, reasonably bright and airy, and stylistically neutral.
I have never lived in a dwelling that looks and feels like this before. In a dwelling with tidy rectangular rooms, with a high bathroom to bedroom ratio, with a fully functional central heating system. In a dwelling without peeling paint, crumbling walls, broken floorboards, and water-damaged corners of the ceiling. In a dwelling without history or pre-existing character.
With the move completed and my daughter off to her new pre-school, I was finally alone in the house and sat down with my knitting. And the first thought that echoed through my mind was… What now?
Against the backdrop of the un-blemished modern table, the yarn and needles looked unfamiliar. And in the tidiness and comfort of the light-filled kitchen, I felt a bit lost.
Until that moment, I was not fully aware how much my interest in knitting went hand-in-hand with my emersion into what I acknowledge as a self-generated quaintness. Because living in dilapidated houses surrounded by wild, haunted landscapes is certainly not the norm in most developed countries, including Ireland. The norm is living in a fairly recently constructed home, in a bustling housing development.
To forgo the latter in favour of the former is a deliberate lifestyle choice, resulting in a highly curated experience that does not reflect the wider culture and aesthetic of the local area.
Then again, knitting - or making things in general - does not reflect our wider culture and aesthetic either. Which is perhaps why it is so commonplace for knitterly social media to feature overgrown gardens, crumbling homes, old furnishings, faded fabrics, various forms of basketry, and other objects to create an atmosphere of exuberant old-timeyness. Of character, tradition, soulfulness.
And please do not mis-understand: I am not mocking this tendency. Rather, I am deconstructing it now that I see it from the outside perspective for the first time.
In an empty house devoid of pre-existing character, I have no choice but to infuse it with my own. To call upon my creativity in a way I frankly never had to do before.
And as I sit upon a modern grey-upholstered chair, knitting in hand, it dawns on me that perhaps this is not such a bad thing. There is a space for knitting outside the world of quaintness, and I am going to carve it out for myself.
