Category Archives: Film

January Round-up

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Well, here we are at the end of January and I’ve already stuffed one of my New Year’s resolutions: not to have more than three knitting projects on the go at any one time.

I was doing really well at first: I had an overdue baby blanket, a rectangular shawl that I cast on in December 2010 and I joined the Through The Loops Mystery Sock KAL. That’s three. Then during a post-Christmas knitterly meet-up, Ling of Socktopus threw me a skein of yarn that I’d been admiring but not dared to bring home with me and said that I could knit them a sample.

So I started that.

And then I felt the sudden urge to change my mind about my colour choices for a pair of colourwork mittens, which resulted in me having yarn that no longer had a purpose, so I decided that I needed a new hat.

A hat with what feels like a giant tassel.

Pattern: Wood Hollow Hat, by Kirsten Kapur (Through The Loops)
Yarn: Quince & Co. Lark in Winesap
Needles: 4.0mm

So even though I finished the hat, I still have four things on the go rather than three. And I’m about to cast on something else. It’s all gone a bit wrong, but I figured that maybe it’s okay, and it’s me being genuinely excited about knitting again. I fully aim to finish the overdue baby blanket before the end of February, though, so that should help clear my conscience… if I ever had one to begin with.

I did, however, finish spinning a bump of fibre. This braid here:

became this skein of yarn here:

Fibre: Spindlefrog Oatmeal BFL in Woodland
Specs: 4 oz, 130 yards, 11 wpi (DK weight)
Wheel setting: Spun at 1:13.7, plied at 1:9.5
Technique: worsted-spun, short forward draw

I pretty much threw this fibre into the wheel and waited to see what would happen. I’m currently in an odd love-indifferent relationship with spinning, where sometimes I’m happy doing it, and other times I sit there, staring at the singles on the bobbin, the fibre in my hand and genuinely think: “What is the point? It’s still crap.”

I know I can’t get better at spinning without actually, you know, spinning. But I constantly feel like I’m having to relearn a lot of things, and making the same mistakes despite all my trying. I’m probably overthinking it all, and I did find that the spinning was easier going when I had an audiobook to listen to, so I’m sure it will be better.

I thought just for fun I would do a post at the end of every month also rounding up the books I’ve read and the films I’ve watched. So for January:

Read: Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King (from the library). I’ve always preferred his novellas and short stories, and this was a nice collection. I liked Fair Extension best, because it was simple, cheeky but horrific in its normality. 1922 I thought was the hardest to get through, but it was one of those stories where I kept checking how many more pages I had to go, not because I couldn’t wait for the story to end, but because I didn’t know how much more of the claustrophobic horror I could take before its conclusion. It’s that sort of good.

Still reading: Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio (Kindle). It’s my second read-through of Stories, though I never read the last story by Joe Hill, so while I can’t say anything about that one, I can safely say that my favourite stories in this collection are Gaiman’s The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains – there is a moment in this story where I had to exhale in satisfaction, because something that was at the beginning caught with something near the end – and A Life in Fictions by Kat Howard.

Songs of Love & Death, edited by George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (hardback). I’ve only got through six of the sixteen stories so far, but it kicked off with Love Hurts, by Jim Butcher, set in the Dresden Files, so that was a great start. I really need to keep more short story collections around. These have been fun.

Watched: Thor, dir. Kenneth Branagh, 2010 (LoveFilm). We rang in the New Year with this, and it’s just ridiculous fun. It helps that Chris Hemsworth is rather nice to look at, and while that’s all well and good, I really want to see more of Tom Hiddleston. It tickles me that Kenneth Branagh directed this. Who knew he could come up with an Asgard that was so beautiful to look at that all Nick and I could say was, “Damn. We need a bigger screen for this.”

The Rock, dir. Michael Bay, 1996 (BBC1). I have a soft spot for this film. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it harks back to a time when daft action movies still had Don Simpson, and Michael Bay hadn’t got the idea that he might be the best thing since sliced bread. But I can quote this movie in too many places, and I own the soundtrack. I am not ashamed.

Four Lions, dir. Chris Morris, 2010 (LoveFilm Instant). A film is a great comedy about radical Islam when each and every time I laughed, I thought whatever God was in charge of this world would strike me dead. Within the first ten minutes Nick and I were quoting bits to each other and laughing like idiots. It’s bittersweet near the end, but as any good satire, it made me wonder about all the people out there who do think like Barry (Nigel Lindsay), or who are perfectly innocent like Waj (Kayvan Novak).

And there goes January.

How To Train Your Black Dog

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It is with some hesitation and difficulty that I find myself writing about depression. I normally wouldn’t. After all, this is a crafty, clever blog with bright colours and interesting things and pretty pictures and wondrous accomplishments. But I know that the sporadic nature of this colourful, interesting, pretty and wondrous thing is very much due to what people have termed ‘the black dog’, and that’s no fun for me, and certainly no fun to anyone who reads this blog, and – I hope – anyone who actually wants to read me more often.

I’m still trying to work out how this works, or doesn’t work, as the case may be. I’ve got a few safeguards that seem to work, but more importantly, most importantly, I have a wonderful, supportive husband, a network of wonderful, supportive friends, and a wonderful, supportive GP.

Note that ‘wonderful’ and ‘supportive’ are a common theme. I think it has a lot to do with how I’m still as much myself as I can be.

Dee, of Posh Yarn, writes incredibly eloquently about depression, and I have good reason to thank her for what she wrote. Not because it gave me the miracle answers to my problems, but it’s made me consider a great many things and has inspired me to work even harder at finding the solution to the nearest thing to a normal life. Everything is a little slower, and a little more considered, even deliberate, but it is whatever works, and everyone who goes through this have their own ways of getting through the mire and seeing off the big black beast.

During my most recent visit with my most brilliant GP – and wonder that she is, she insists on seeing me every 4-6 weeks, whether I’m sick or not – she asked if it helped to think of things that would immediately make me happy, things that would send the black dog running.

I thought of two. I only told her one of them: the fact that now I know how to drive to RHS Wisley in Surrey on my own, so if I have no agenda and feeling a little crap, I can just get in the car and drive the hour or so out there and be in what is increasingly my element: the garden.

Seriously, I am my most academic and my most 4-year-old when I am there. Nothing could be better.

Now, I don’t really have a reason for not telling her about the second one, other than that maybe it’s a little silly.

It’s this:

Some time ago I talked about how much I fell in love with Pixar’s Wall-E. And while I still love that little hunk of bolts, I watched Dreamworks’ Kung Fu Panda more times that should be considered normal for a thirty-something. I’ve watched that film so many times I can quote it almost line by line.

But now, there is How To Train Your Dragon. And the love I feel is endless. A boy who doesn’t live up to an entire clan’s ideals. Some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen. The most gorgeous score. Scottish accents (I’m easy to please). And a dragon that is essentially a black kitten with wings.

To my disgrace I missed this film at the cinema. So no 3D for me. I also failed to rent it, or buy it for ages, because for one reason or another, the film kept slipping my mind. Then a few weeks ago I went hunting for a couple of kung-fu movies and finally saw it on the shelves and said, “That’s it. This time, you’re coming home with me.”

Nick and I watched it the same evening I brought it home. This rarely happens. We curled up on the sofa and watched this thing, and I cried a lot. And at parts when, if you think about it, don’t really warrant any tears. But I’d fallen so in love with it that by now I’ve watched it about half a dozen times, and I have the soundtrack on my iPod.

Look, seriously: do yourself a favour. Even if you haven’t seen this film. Just go here and in the main title bar of the article there are links to Sound Clips. Please click on the one that’s called Test Drive. Mind your volume setting, though: John Powell does like his scores brassy.

If your heart does not swell, then I am sap, and I am proud to be a sap.

I thought about all the places in the film where I was reduced to tears, and imagine my surprise, or lack thereof, when I found out that the two guys who co-wrote and directed the film also directed Lilo & Stitch. The only other film to have me fall to pieces at seemingly random points. Clearly these guys live in my head.

All film geek gushing aside, this little film – by no means a children’s film alone – is one of those things that helps with this ominous elusive thing called depression. I hold on to this like a drowning man to a liferaft, as any of us would hold on to something that makes things better.

I like that from now on, for now, by summoning up that quasi-Celtic score, I can see off that black dog with a boy riding a little black dragon.

So. What do you have that sees off the grey, the black, the dark?