Shivanaut Scarves – Oh My Stars and Garters!

My current project is a set of seven scarves, for Havi Brooks’ Playground Shop at The Fluent Self.  They are knit with Lion Brand Jiffy yarn (Shocking Pink, and Black), which I bought from a fabulous online yarn shop called Banyan Tree Yarns. Georganne Cauchi, the proprietor, has been helping me with many of my latest projects – determining how many skeins I need is a very simple maths calculation, which my artsy-fartsy brain seizes up on.

14 August, 2011: I’m starting the sixth scarf today! The first five were knit with stockinette stitch, and unfortunately roll inwards; that’s just the way that stitch behaves. So with the remaining two scarves, I’ll do a garter stitch and see if they stay flattened.

04 November 2011: I’m about a third of the way through the seventh and final scarf. It’s also being done in garter stitch, and it turns out that this type of stitch does make the scarf stay much flatter.

“Oh, my stars and garters!”

When Beast/Hank McCoy says this in the movie X3: The Last Stand, it’s not the sort of thing you’d expect a brawny, furry fellow to exclaim, which is why it’s funny. Ordinarily, you’d expect something more brutish to come out of such a tough-looking guy’s mouth. But Beast, as we learn, is a well-educated, cultured, and refined gentleman (who quietly bemoans his eternal torment of shedding on the furniture; I can only imagine how much he spends each month on lint rollers to keep his suits immaculate!).

I went searching for the origin of the phrase and found this:

Meaning: 

A jocular exclamation or expression of astonishment.

Origin

‘Oh, my stars and garters’ is now very much an American expression.

‘Stars’ has been a favourite in British exclamations for many centuries; for example, ‘bless my stars’, ‘thank my lucky stars’ – both 17th century coinages. This usage of the word dates back to at least the 16th century, when it was used by Christopher Marlowe in the play The troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, circa 1593:

“O my starres! Why do you lowre [bring down in rank] unkindly on a king?”

The stars in question are the astrological bodies and one’s stars were one’s position in life, or disposition.

Moving on to ‘garters’ and the connection isn’t with astrology, or even hosiery, but with chivalry. The Noble Order of the Garter is the highest heraldic order that the British monarch can bestow…’Stars and garters’ was used as a generic name for the trappings of high office and, by extension, the people who occupied such; for example, this piece from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, circa 1712:

“While Peers, and Dukes, and all their sweeping train, And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear.”

‘Oh, my stars and garters’, when used as a humourous exclamation, appears to be a merging of the previous ‘star’ exclamations and the ‘stars and garters’ associated with the honours given to the great and the good.

(Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/my-stars-and-garters.html)

Way to go, furball.