here he is...

not felted yet, but here's the to-be-felted totoro all sewn up:



question is, do i have any black wool lying around in the filmcraft stash waiting to be used for his nose and pupils. but what to do about whiskers? part of me wants to twist some wire through yarn to make nice stiff whiskers, but i have a feeling the baby-safety people would freak out over that. and i have to worry about that kind of crap now. maybe starch would work? make whiskers stiff but not lethal? anyone have any ideas?

hmm

well, i woke up at six o'clock this morning, so i though, what better time to start knitting those slippers i mentioned earlier? i've done all the heel shaping, with progressive consternation, and finally when i shoved the half-finished product on my foot, i realised my fears were justified: the thing is huge. hmm. the plain janes slipper pattern didn't mention a size at all, but since i have gigantor-style feet (size 10 - 9 1/2 if i'm lucky) i was initially worried that they'd be too small. but i figured oh well, knitting is stretchy, right? i even had the tension down exactly. maybe it's because i decided to make them all in stockinette instead of garter. oh well, i guess it's itme for me to make up another pattern.

finally!

finally filmcraft has photos again! tg had the old crummy digital camera with him, so i've been able to take a few pics of totoro and upload them.

here's his body, which looks right now like osme kind of creepy ghost:



here's his ears - one lying flat, the other folded and ready to be sewn:



here's what the base and tail section looks like flat:





well i'd better get stitching... enough of this day has been thrown away already!

more argh

what a waste of an afternoon... i started rooting around tg's den (the den of iniquity, i call it) and eventually turned up the ol' webcam which used to be installed on my machine, but hasn't been used in over two years (approximately).

i googled to try to find the drivers, located them, tried to download them, had to sign up for a dumb website to access them, clicked through pages of no-thank-yous to various free! offers to complete the sign-up process, finally downloaded the thing, it didn't work (didn't even have all the components for the installation), tried the second version, it downloaded okay and seemed to install okay, but that doesn't mean it actually works. gah.

i can't believe how much time i have wasted on this thing... oh well, tg is home now, maybe he can help...

argh

so, totoro's body is done. his ears and tail are done. he's ready to sew up and felt and stuff and i want to get going but i want to take pictures first. augh! just killed some time looking around for old, crappy digital camera that we had before we got (and lost, grr) the nice one. can't find it; presumably tg has it with him. so - no news at all here, really, i'm just grumpy. i'm half inclined to just crawl back into bed and watch the last five episodes of honey and clover.

but a ray of hope for y'all: once i get him felted and stuffed, and he has proven to be a passable representation of the creature, i will post the pattern i made up, so you can knit one yourself.

if only i had a camera!

bon bad

once i've done totoro, i thought i'd make these slippers to take to the hospital in january (yes, i'm getting ahead of myself, be quiet). but, i am ashamed to say, i've never done a three-needle cast-off before. as luck would have it, there are great instructions at yarn magazine! it's a great source for other info, too. check it out:



meanwhile, another movie recommendation (being pregnant and sitting quietly in a dark room are two activities that go together well): bon cop bad cop.

normally i'm not a fan of the cop/buddy genre, but this one has some clever twists on the old genre. in this case, the odd couple is a french cop (patrick huard) and an english cop (colm feore) - guess which one is the wild child and which one is uptight. a body is found at the québec/ontario border - whose responsibility is it? this dilemma is decided in the most hilariously gruesome manner, which sets the tone of the film to follow. there's a lot of violence (it is a cop flick, after all), but all cleverly done and with humour. i can't remember the last time i laughed that hard at a film (or coughed that hard - i apologize to anyone who had the misfortune to sit near my sick husband and myself!).

whee!

i finished totoro's body on sunday night! now i just have to work out the ears and arms and such.

in other news, last night we watched brick, which was awesome. i have always loved film noir dialogue, so it was great to hear it reworked in this setting. one of the friends we watched it with said they found the patter disconcerting at first since it is so unlike how "real teens" would speak - but how many screenwriters successfully use naturalistic dialogue? those who try (woody allen, david mamet) are mocked for their "idiosyncratic" style. in fact, real people do stammer and repeat themselves and say "like" too much and talk over one another. that's the problem with naturalistic dialogue - it can be difficult to listen to. i think most of us would rather shoot ourselves rather than listen to two hours of real teen talk. i get enough realism in real life; when i'm watching a film, i would much prefer to hear something clever and snappy.

feeling nesty

okay, so i'm feeling nesty and wanting to make things, but have too much hip pain to do much! fortunately, that won't stop me from knitting. so, i've gone back to a project i started months ago, before the Time of Much Sleep.



unfortunately our digital camera has gone awol, so no pics of thr project-in-progress at the moment. i am currently about halfway done the body, using white buffalo unspun. soon, the felting will begin.

the cop-out post

i really haven't been doing anything. i just don't have the energy. but project constant gardener has kept going without me. everything is out of control, actually. the pumpkin is completely taking over, growing a metre or two every week (this isn't even the most recent picture, and already it looks small to me here):



and i've got a ton of lettuces going too:



i spent some time staking up the tomatoes today (they got knocked down by the pumpkin vine) and discovered that there were green beans, which i had given up on! also a couple of cucumbers on the way. it's no surprise then that we're having salad with dinner tonight, with vinaigrette with fresh tarragon and marjoram.