Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Mindless TV watching and Simple Knits

I like watching TV while knitting. I used to listen to audiobooks, but that was when I had easier access to them. Now with a tighter budget, and no library card yet, I have instead turned to TV. I like things I can listen to and understand what is going on without having to keep my eyes on the screen, documentaries and DIY shows require too much attention. I don't enjoy reality TV, I think most of it is very catty and it encourages really negative behaviors and competitiveness instead of collaboration so  that leaves mostly series. I started watching Supernatural and then my husband jumped on the bandwagon, so we keep the series to watch when we're both home. So I needed a show I could watch on my own and knit to. And then I rediscovered my love for Korean dramas.

A knitting/crafting friend in Costa Rica got me hooked, by recommending The Coffee Prince, which I watched on YouTube in a week long splurge. I tried watching a different one, but it was incomplete, so I stopped and then life happened and I kind of forgot about it, except as an anecdote.

 I was channel surfing one day and found by accident a show called Secret Garden on Mundo Fox. I love the book The Secret Garden, so I wondered if it was a dramatized series or something. I found a completely different Korean drama, dubbed in Spanish but with English Subtitles! So I set my TV to record the episodes and I sat to knit lace while watching.


I am loving it. It is fascinating how culture is portrayed in shows, and I'm sure that Korean dramas have as much to do with Real Life as Telenovelas have to do with life in Latin America. I sometimes wonder if something I see has roots in reality or if it is soap opera fiction... I watch a webshow called Eat Your Kimchi that is made in Korea by Canadians explaining bits about culture and life in Korea, so now I'm kind of hoping I'll get to visit some day!

Back to the series. With only an episode a day and more knitting to be done, I decided I needed some more. So I did a quick search online, and found several on Netflix.  I picked one of the highest rated ones, Boys Over Flowers and after a couple of episodes, I was hooked.  However, my lace knitting was all but forgotten on my lap, since lace charts and subtitles (Series is in Korean with English Subtitles) do not mix.

So I brought out from UFO storage: the baby blanket I've been working on for close to two years. The pattern is easy enough that I can knit without taking my eyes off the screen for more than a few seconds, and I'm really enjoying the show, and feel happy about getting closer to finally completing the blanket. Win-Win.


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