Changing
Ever played the casting game? You take one film or TV series and try to recast it using a specific criteria. One of my favourite ones was the "Lord of the Rings gone Hollywood bad" challenge. That one had Dolph Lundgren as Aragorn and Pam Anderson as Eowyn. My latest recasting involves the Inception cast. Apparently Christopher Nolan presented the idea to a Hollywood film company in 2001. So, if the project had been greenlighted in 2001, who would have played the various characters?
The central character, Cobb, a charismatic action hero with underlying trauma? Tom Cruise, of course. He did Vanilla Sky around the same time and was at the height of his career. As a result, I'd say that Penelope Cruz would be a shoo-in to be the 2001 version of Marion Cotillard. Julia Stiles might work as the young architecture student, now played by Ellen Page, but I struggle when it comes to the other actors. Who would have been the 2001 equivalent of Tom Hardy? Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Cillian Murphy? It's a silly game but I have been playing it in my head ever since I saw Inception last week (which is a peculiarly fitting way to think about the film, I suppose).
And now for some knitting.
I cast on for Kim Hargreaves' Opal shawl/scarf last night. I had some Kidsilk Aura in my stash from one of my recent stashing downfalls. The colour is really interesting - it is grey but with a blue undertone. It looks a lot like wet asphalt(!) and also like the colour of the haematite gemstone. Normally I would not touch a colour like that, but I think my Scandinavian minimalist wants out at the moment.
The pattern is incredibly easy - so easy that I decided to mess it up three times by not paying attention to the instructions and just playing it by ear. I find easy patterns the most difficult ones, actually. I got back on track, though, and the shawl is zipping along merrily. I am going to up-size it slightly as a I had a brain-blunder when I ordered my needles. For some reason I ordered 8mm needles instead of 9mm .. and can I just say that the KnitPro acrylic tips are not my favourite? The actual tip of the needle is wonderfully pointy, but the needle itself feels cheap (like bog-standard plastic needles) and the acrylic makes the yarn drag a bit. If I had known, I would just have gone for regular circulars and not expensive interchangeable needle-tips.
Hopefully I will finish it today or tomorrow. Hopefully it'll stop raining so I can post a photo. Hopefully.
My Favourite Obsession
People who lived through a certain obsession of mine will get a kick out of knowing I have found a pattern for Moulin Rouge mittens. Yes! Mittens with cancan dancers and a big red windmill! My life is complete! Maybe I should knit mittens based all my film obsessions. Any suggestions for Trainspotting, Velvet Goldmine or Hedwig & the Angry Inch mitts? Of course I already own Hedwig-themed yarn thanks to Ms Old Maiden Aunt. And no, I'm not asking about Star Wars patterns because there are plenty of those around..
I saw this little Ten Ways To Ruin Your Sewing tutorial over at Colette Patterns and thought it applied really well to knitting too. Here are the best bits but with a knitting slant added by yours truly:
- Stupid self-imposed deadlines. I have been prone to thinking "I need to get this pullover done so I can wear it to XYZ." End result: I never finish the pullover because I work on it 24/7 and end up hating it. Or it ends up looking a shoddy mess and I won't ever wear it. Besides, no-one but myself cares if I wear a new pullover to XYZ.
- The wrong fabric yarn. So you like that indie-dyed cashmere? And you're going to use it for a baby cardigan? Really?! You might want to talk to someone about that. Yarn recommendations are there for a reason. Substitute the recommended bulky-weight merino yarn with a 4ply cotton yarn at your own peril. If you are allergic to a fibre or the recommended yarn is out of your price range/you don't like the colour range, get clever about your yarn substitution. Also, using alpaca for a summer top = no-no.
- Inaccurate cutting. Okay, there might not be an equivalent knitting faux-pas .. except if you ignore the given tension. I've tried that. I tried to knit Mr Greenjeans without checking my tension. I ended up with something which was four sizes too big. I do these things so you don't have to.
- Winging it on a new technique. "Aha! So this project calls for a provisional cast-on? I don't know what that is, so I'll just use my normal cast-on. Oh, I need to unravel the cast-on and pick up new stitches? Where are my scissors?" Okay, so I have never done that, but that is because I love learning new techniques. But you get what I mean.
- Expecting every pattern to fit “out of the box.” "It’s a rare person that most patterns will fit without adjustment of some kind. Sewing knitting patterns (and ready to wear) are made for a statistically average body, and chances are high that that body is not yours. I know it’s not mine. Learning to make the adjustments you need is just a fact of sewing crafting life." (quoting this for truth)
- Being dishonest about your measurements. This is the big one for me, personally. I have a weird, distorted view of my body shape so unless I'm careful (and honest with myself) I end up knitting things that just do not fit.
Another great post is courtesy of the new Twist Collective: Shop Talk, by Sunday Holm, hits so many of the marks for me. "Requesting that the shop photocopy a particular pattern to avoid paying the full purchase price of a book." is a huge pet peeve of mine (can you tell I used to work in publishing?) as is Getting a less than warm welcome which I remember vividly from a certain defunct yarn shop here in Glasgow. Sunday's article is well worth a read and even a re-read.
Finally, Jess and Casey of Ravelry-fame and -foundery are coming to Glasgow. Join us all for a knitting picnic in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens - more information on Ravelry in the various Scottish/Glasgow groups - and a big thank you to Vonnie of The Life Craft for alerting me to this! See you there?
The Shape of Things To Come
In time you'll recognise that love is larger than life
And praise will come to those whose kindness
leaves you without debt
and bends the shape of things to come
that haven't happened yet
One of the loveliest things ever sung.
Today is a tired, quiet day at Casa Bookish. I have booked train tickets for a trip to West Yorkshire next month. I am spending nearly five hours each way travelling through Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Durham and York until I reach my destination. It sounds heavenly: me, my iPod, my knitting and beautiful vistas. True to style I have already begun plotting my knitting project and have settled upon Peace with a Kidsilk Haze self-designed scarf as back-up plan. Meanwhile, my Millbrook cardigan is flying off the needles. I separated for the sleeves today.
And around the web:
The secret to Farmville's popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics. Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others' farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity.
A very interesting look at the curious popularity of Farmville.
Those who wonder whether the social media will "affect the outcome" of the [British general] election are asking the wrong question. It is affecting the outcome of everything, from having an idea, buying a pair of jeans or going on a date. It is not the dweeby tweets of campaigners, or the sad slanging matches between beer-fuelled political hacks that matter. What matters is that a new conversation is out there, and the first politician to look vaguely like they knew this got a (what may be short term) boost from this.
Paul Mason looks at how technology may be shifting electoral behaviour. I am not eligible to vote in the UK general election, but I still follow the election with a mix of bemusement, incredulity and curiosity. Earlier this week I checked the main candidates running in my local area - let's just say, it was interesting.
Finally, can you believe that these people get to make calls on how we all look? No, me neither..
The Other Things In Life
First of all, a huge thank you to Fineskylark and Paula. Ms Fineskylark sent me these gorgeous oak buttons (made in her part of Canada) and Paula has given me the official (and very cute) Ravelympics 2010 pin starring Ravelry's mascot, Bob the Boston Terrier. Thank you, ladies.
I wish I could say that I knew exactly which cardigan calls for those oak buttons, but my knitting mojo has gone AWOL. I'm about to graft the toe of the first Monkey sock, but my Frankie Says .. pullover is languishing in my knitting bag. I love the pattern, I love the yarn but I'm beginning to have second thoughts regarding the shape of the pullover. I'm, well, "top-heavy", as the professionals say, and I'm unsure whether a cropped pullover in quite heavy silk/cotton will do my figure any favours. I'm beginning to eye Blithe from Rowan 47, but I'm not quite ready to change my project just yet. I might need to talk this over with my knitting group.
Moving on.
I was disappointed in humanity when I came across this MetaFilter post about a recently discovered mass grave in England discovering during work on the 2012 Olympics site. The grave contained over fifty beheaded Vikings, possibly killed during the St. Brice's Day massacre in 1002AD. My disappointment arose after reading several MeFi comments of the "Vikings, LOL!" variety. I know this may come as a surprise to people who generally know Vikings as bloodthirsty barbarians from films, comics or Christian monks' annals, but, hey, they were actual human beings. Actual human beings who were my ancestors and I fail to find the funny side in beheadings or mass-graves. Show some respect, please. The only good thing that came of the entire Viking thread on MeFi was a link to Star Wars re-written as a saga .. in Old Norse. Now that's hardcore.
Finally, I'm trying to decide whether to go see A Single Man or, ahem, Legion. I need to make my mind up quickly as I suspect neither will be shown in cinemas for much longer..
The Little Things In Life
First, the obligatory "It is Spring!" photo. Of course I am convinced we will soon see a return to snowy gloom and doom, but I do enjoy being able to walk outside wearing less than five layers.
Secondly, a sock. My first pair were a bonafide success and so I think I need another pair to keep my toes warm at night (it's more hygienic for one thing). I'm using The Yarn Yard Bonny which I bought almost two years ago. Yes, the colourway looked very, very different on the website, but at least there is very little pooling. It is not nowhere as nice to knit with as the Araucania Ranco I used for my Ravelympics project either. I actually tried to swap the Bonny yarn about three weeks ago but nobody cared.. and so it is now becoming a pair of Monkey socks.
And Larry is done! I was putting the final few touches to him on Knit Night Tuesday when we realised that Larry really likes dancing about to silly pop songs. You should see those thin legs swagger. More seriously, I can see a few things wrong with Larry but they are my mistakes (damn time constraints) and not pattern mistakes. It was a fun little project, but I'm not rushing to knit another sheep (besides, Larry would get jealous). Larry will leave Casa Bookish for good tomorrow and I wish him a pleasant new life.
Finally, take a look at Hermes' collection at the Paris Fashion week. It's enough to make my knees wobble with love. Cor.
Confessiones
When I started university many, many, many moons ago I fell in with the wrong crowd. Looking back, I can see how it happened. The nice girl living next door to me in student hall invited me in for tea and soon after she was offering to "lend" me things. "Nothing bad was going to happen", I was told, "everybody's doing it and it's perfectly normal". And this is when I began playing role-playing games.
I had long wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons, but the only ones playing RPGs in my erstwhile home town were boys hanging out in the library basement, and they had a strict "no girls" rule. When my student hall neighbour, Liz, offered to lend me the Player's Handbook 2nd Edition, I felt vindicated. To this day, most of the D&D players I know are women. And they are hardcore, I tell you.
Eventually most of my Copenhagen social circle was composed of RPGers - this is not to say that we only hung out in order to slay orcs, but most of the interesting people I met also just happened to be gamers. Smart, interesting people from all walks of life with real jobs, real lives and actual social skills. They were interested in communal storytelling and in imaginary flights of fancy. I miss them. Sadly I have not been able to find a gaming group here in Glasgow - the ones I have found all meet on my knitting night! - but I keep toying with the idea of starting up a small group.
So, imagine my reaction when I read that a murder spree was linked to the perpetrator playing D&D.. yeah, I was not impressed. As someone in the comments remarked: "1989 called, and it wants its favourite baseless accusation back."
A few apt links:
- Dicey Knitting - let a d20 guide your knitting
- A Cthulhu dice bag pattern
- A d4-shaped dice bag pattern
- Impaler - "this battle helmet features bobble rivets and a pre-bloodied spike" (I felt this pattern name needed to be written in bold)
- The awesome Cthuhluclava
Monday Linkage
Just a quick little link dump today as I have managed to pull a muscle in my back/shoulder region which makes typing a tad uncomfortable.
- I bought Elephants On Acid & Other Bizarre Experiments as a Christmas present for a good friend of mine. I based my purchase entirely on this line from an Amazon review: "Personally, I feel that the first chapter is ill-placed as it's heavy on the animal decapitation and I think that might put some people off". Not that my friend is into animal decapitation, but he would find it interesting, if you know what I mean.
- Oh, stereotyping! Stereotyping People By Their Favourite Indie Bands and Stereotyping People By Their Favourite Author try to pigeon-hole people (in a humorous way, it should be said). So I'm a gay man living in Brooklyn who likes wearing hunter green (or I'm everyone).
- The Hype Machine has collated data on the fifty bands/artists most frequently blogged about in 2009. It's not that interesting, except the list is accompanied by stunning artwork commissioned especially for this list. My favourite is Jamie McKelvie's artwork for the La Roux entry. McKelvie's one of the creative brains behind the wonderful Phonogram comics which I strongly recommend if you are an ageing Britpop relic like myself.
- The Geeky Tattoos Blog is showcasing a knitting tattoo (for knitting is geeky, apparently). The entire blog is worth a browse, although I'm slightly scared by the amount of bad anime tats I see. Thanks, Z. for sending me the link.
- And, finally, I'm halfway in love with this dress though I struggle to explain why.
Kettle Pot Black
I have always been slightly uneasy about my geek tendencies, but there is no denying them. I worked briefly for a computer gaming magazine in my early student years, I have a respectable selection of polygon dice, the shelves boast both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Gibson, and I have seen Star Wars more time than I care to admit. I even saw Revenge of the Sith twice in theatres which is geek dedication, I will have you know. But I won't stand for just any dross just because it has a spaceship, clever future technologies or a ray-gun. No, I like my genre indulgences to be smart, interesting and ambitious (.. or have Ewan McGregor wielding a light sabre).
We watched Franklyn tonight. A strange little genre film starring Ryan Phillippe and Eva Green - the sort of film B-list actors do between mortgage-paying big studio films and which often end up their best showcases (Gangster No. 1 is still Paul Bettany's best film, for instance). I liked Franklyn, I really did. It felt like a British cross between Dark City and Donnie Darko with beautiful photography and stunning art direction to boot. I am not sure it would appeal to people with little interest in "geek stuff" but if you like your slightly surreal alternate realities and high concepts, this film might just appeal. As David said to me earlier: "If I had watched this two days ago, it would have been my favourite film of 2009".
Speaking of "high concepts" I was mildly amused to see Adam Roberts' review of the new Jasper Fforde opus in The Guardian.
A kind of pleasant implausibility has always been at the heart of Fforde's appeal. (..) Shades of Grey, while not laugh-out-loud funny, is agreeably and pleasantly eccentric, cleanly written and nicely characterised. (..) The first 250 pages are narratively underpowered and rather diffuse. Fforde's young protagonist, Edward Russet, putters around his world, and the reader slowly builds up a picture of how things work. The second half is more gripping, and a climactic expedition (..) becomes page-turningly exciting. (..) I finished it with the sense that there's less to it than meets the eye. The narrowness of the high concept is, finally, too much a sort of meagreness, and too little a scalpel edge.
Compare this with my own recent review of Roberts' own Yellow Blue Tibia (in which I sadly omit to mention the strained comedic tone to the first 250 pages and the painstakingly eccentric characters which litter the entire novel):
I read Adam Roberts’ Yellow Blue Tibia this holiday season and I wanted to love it. Its premise sounds like something I would like – Soviet Union, science fiction writers and the possibility of multiple realities – but I ended up being disappointed. Roberts’ writing is sloppy (as is the editing), the tone is uneven and the book does not live up to its premise until fifty pages from the end when you get the feeling Roberts is finally writing the book he wants to write. I was very unimpressive with a running gag about a man with Asperger’s Syndrome which was wholly unnecessary to the plot and jarred badly. Still, the last fifty pages or so redeemed the book from being merely a bad read. It was an uneven and occasionally interesting read.
Maybe Roberts should have called his book Kettle Pot Black instead.
In Kansas City With My Favourite Tattoo
On Tuesday, northern Norway experienced a strange light show. No, the photo you see on your left is not a Photoshopped image. It is the real deal. But what caused this bizarre phenomenon? Bad Astronomy can tell you (incidentally, if you are not following the Bad Astronomy blog, do so! It is great).
All that aside, my first reaction was: "Oh my giddy aunt, northern Norway? Philip Pullman got it right!" This reaction was quickly followed by: "Northern Norway? Wonder if there is a Bad Wolf Bay close by..? Oh no, not Rose again?!" And then I realised that maybe I am a bit of a geek after all..
Speaking of which, we watched Duncan Jones' Moon the other night. I enjoyed it, although it did not move me (but I do not think the film intended to move me and I appreciate that). A man stuck on a lunar mining base with a three-year contract about to run out, a robot to keep him company and an unreliable video link to Earth. Space is not a brilliant, adventurous place. It is lonely, cold and remote and it forces people to address questions about human identity, the frailty of memory, and the relationships between Man and Machine. Maybe this sounds dry, but Moon is a good film. Recommended.
And the other side of my geekiness: literature. This photoblog of literary tattoos has me wishing I wasn't so scared of needles, because, seriously, there are some really amazing tats there. One of my favourite songs of this past decade (and just maybe of all-time) is about a literary tattoo: The Lucksmiths' "Fiction"(youtube link)
Oh, and the new Drops Summer Collection has just been unveiled. Voting decides which ones will be given full translation priority, but I just enjoy looking at the patterns. A few look interesting, but, really I'm not that bowled over. Perhaps it's because it's not even Christmas yet and they are talking about summer designs?!
Those Who Cannot Remember the Past..
.. are condemned to repeat it.
Or, in other words, try reading this news article about Switzerland banning minarets, replace the words "minaret" with "synagogue" and "Muslim" with "Jewish" and then ask yourself what it reminds you of? A simple semantic trick, but a very useful one.
Meanwhile, I have become slightly addicted to Galaxy Zoo. When Earth becomes a bit too much, it's nice to disappear into space. Literally.