Froggy Went A Courtin'

I said something in my most recent post about frogging some knitting I've been doing. 'Frogging' in knitting terms refers to the unraveling...or as I more aptly refer to it as "ripping the damn thing back to the beginning"...of a current OTN project when a mistake(s) in the knitting has been discovered somewhere along the way. Usually the only way to correct it is to unravel it to the point of the mistake and redo it. The term frogging came to be because when unraveling knitting, it makes a 'ribbit ribbit' sound. Sort of.

Anyway.

I do on occasion rip back something I'm knitting. Believe it or not, it typically doesn't frustrate me when I have to do this. I just kinda take it with a grain of salt, do what I gotta do and move on. I LOVE to knit and would rather be doing that than most any other thing I can think of, except maybe sing and get lost in my music - it's a very close race there. Most knitters find frogging a rather offensive action to take, especially if one has invested countless hours and miles of yarn in current said project. But this doesn't mean that I NEVER get flustered about having to frog something. I've had my moments. A few of my frogged projects have found their way to being balls of crinkled yarn filled with catnip for the cat. He gets the better end of the deal in this thing.

OK. So after rambling on about frogging here, I'm getting to the real point of this post: When I find the need to frog some knitting I have in hand, my brain ALWAYS finds it's way to a Tom and Jerry cartoon from my childhood. Don't ask me why this happens. It's just the way my brain seems to work.

The cartoon is called "Pecos Pest". Jerry's Uncle Pecos comes from Texas to visit his nephew and is preparing to be on a TV show. Uncle Pecos carries around his guitar and sings pretty much all the time. He also breaks guitar strings like they grow on trees...or in this case, on Tom's face. [Insert a fearless Uncle Pecos and the plucking of long whiskers here].

The song Uncle Pecos is constantly gracing us with is "Froggy Went A Courtin' Crambone". His version of it is WAY better than the version I learned in first grade. Especially with the stuttering and the substitution of other words because the stutter prevents him from singing the correct words here and there.

The very talented Shug Fisher (aka Shorty Kellum in The Beverly Hillbillies) voices Uncle Pecos in an otherwise wordless feature. It's mind boggling how well he voices this part. Throughout the years of their existense and popularity Tom and Jerry were never given speaking roles except in very early shorts where out of the blue Tom or Jerry may say one word...but very rarely. The animated shorts relied entirely on sight gags and silent voice slapstick, a method that worked very well for Hanna-Barbera.

It's a a full six and a half minutes of hilarity. I'm sure I've seen this cartoon short a thousand times in my life time and it NEVER fails to make me guffaw like the very first time I saw it. It's a kind of humor I grew up with and relate to. Again, don't ask me why. It just is. The creators of Tom and Jerry, Hanna-Barbera, were sheer genius in their day.



Last night I was knitting along and even without having to frog what I'm working on, Uncle Pecos and his Froggy Went A Courtin' came to mind. I've been humming it ever since. I woke up this morning with the tune in my head, complete with all the cartoonish sound effects that make it so great.

I've included the animated short here for your enjoyment. I hope the next time you must resort to frogging some knitting, Uncle Pecos and his little ditty will pop into your head. It really does keep the production of cat toys to a minimum.

Dig them c-c-c-c-c-c-c-razy boots man!

Have a knit pickin' good day ya'll.......Ohhhhhhhh doodle bop nop bop Crambone!