a movie about a hat

we have watched a lot of movies (and tv, and cartoons, and who knows what) over the course of the recent sickness. too many, even. actually, mostly it was the kid watching movies, with me trying to ignore them. but we did watch paddington together.

they really tried, with this one. it looks gorgeous, all-star cast, a zillion cameos (including almost the entire cast of horrible histories, it seemed), a ridiculously evil villain and wildly dramatic plot, and so many zany, quirky, whimsical touches, it made me want to scream "stop with the whimsy already!" gratuitous carousel horses as decor! flowering trees painted on the walls! teapots that doubled as model trains! there's even a quirky group of street musicians - just about the only non-white people in the film - that pop up here and there to contribute to the "fun" atmosphere. just stop.

one of the big focal points of whimsy was the mother, mrs. brown, played by the lovely sally hawkins, dressed like the middle-aged version of the most manic manic pixie dream girl ever.

but i must confess, i did like some of her clothing. i just wouldn't have worn it all at once. here, she's wearing a flowered tie-neck blouse, red cabled sweater, and heavily embellished cardigan. is it really that cold?

production design is important. wes anderson is the obvious master of sublime production design - but it is always in support of the story. it never takes over. paddington must have been so much fun for the set decorators and wardrobe (they reeeeeeally love knitwear) and props. it's almost as though a bunch of designers got together and came up with a "look" and then looked for a story to prop it up, and chose paddington somewhat at random. a classic, a longtime favourite, it's actually surprising it took them this long to get around to it. only, i kind of wish they hadn't, in a way.

unsurprisingly, director paul king has some tv credits behind him (he's a mighty boosh alum), but not much else. i dimly remember his only previous feature - bunny and the bull - as being so whimsical we were unable to finish it. there's a certain vein of "but the english are supposed to be eccentric, the more eccentric the better" that sometimes pops up in both film and tv, and generally leads to massively self-indulgent and unwatchable absurdity. meh.

still, i have some red yarn in need of a project, and i think i might make this hat (one of at least five hats she wears in the film).

here's what i've swatched so far:

and i can see making this cardigan for the kid at some point (i was actually cahrting up a different squirrel the other day). but i won't expect him to wear it over two pullovers in the bath.

casting on

wound a skein of madtosh into a cake during doctor who on saturday night, and worked a swatch yesterday!

i have a thing for argyle/diamond patterns, especially using texture rather than colour. i have about eight million diamond lace patterns. but as always, nothing is ust right, nothing can be left un-tweaked.

this swatch started with a stitch pattern i had printed off aeons ago. and i have to say... some of the instructions were completely inscrutable to me, so i just did something that seemed to get the same result. some i understood clearly what i was supposed to do, but i'm still not sure why... and some things i just wanted to change for my own design reasons. i switched the k2togs for ssks and vice versa, so as to make the decreases less "ridgy" and increased the overall number of sts per repeat, to give the pattern more "breathing room."

so here's my non-square swatch, starting with one pattern and ending up with another:

i'm quite pleased with the revised version.

and this yarn is absolutely gorgous to work with! i want more more more!

i did it!

survived my first craft fair!! a bigger turnout would have been nice, but what can you do. it was still a fine day and i met some cool people and made a few sales! unsurprising really, when a doctor who fan approaches a table of bowties. and now that i'm home, i've posted some of what i didn't sell on etsy - more to come - and realized i misspelled my etsy url on the tags. yikes! ah well, best to learn these lessons the hard way on a small scale, rather than a grand catastrophe.

exterminate!

eek, two weeks since i've posted! i still have to get around to charting the sleeves for the sweater i'm working on, and i am still working on the bonkers-tiny-gauge cardi for myself, and and i am still waiting for a quite hour or two to make up the secret xmas surprise, and i've started a little crochet project.

but what's taken up a lot of time lately is this:



basically all stuff that was lying around the house (or in the case of the foam, lying in the street): felt, quilt batt, cardboard boxes and tubes, miscellaneous bits of fabric and trims. purchased items: styro balls, project glue that promised to stick to the styro balls, a can of silver spray paint (used up the entire thing, or i would have given him another coat), and one baseball cap which cost a dollar at goodwill.



there were a few "what are you?" comments, and a few "a dalek!!" exclamations, but the highlight of the evening was coming across - you guess it - a dalek jack o'lantern! here's a pic of the two daleks together. i think we made each other's night!

finished except for finishing

i finished knitting h's new sweater vest! (tutorial here)



now, i just have to run in the ends.

oh i'm bad

i said i'd get a review up yesterday and i didn't. but i'm so busy and tired! speaking at a charity event tuesday morning (at seven-thirty! yuck!), parent-teacher meeting last night, and then a conference call for our parents' group - we're having a benefit concert with king cobb steelie this saturday! so, too tired to write coherently.

but, not too tired to knit on the subway...

a couple more pics...

for the zig-zag tutorial. here's a work-in-progress zig-zag with a few of the stitches and yo's marked:



the aqua yo's get carried along until they're ready to be knit with.

here's what it's starting to look like:

hmm?

i was looking at some doctor who-related things upon discovering that we'll be seeing some new eps starting this friday and i started thinking about the silly old sweater-vest that sylvester mccoy (the seventh doctor) used to wear. "i should knit one for harry," i thought, "before he is too old to hate me for it." and then i realised... i probably have enough of the right colours in scraps of briggs & little (depending on how much leftover yellow wo i have, that will be the kicker).

so... should i? if i can do it from scraps? or will the kiddo kill me for it?

i really think she's got it

the colourwork-in-the-round solution works! there was a trick to sort
out (and a resulting gap to sew up, whoops), but i've done it. now, the
question is whether i can write it up in a way that makes sense to
anyone other than myself. i guess i should google first and see who else
has done it already, there is no way i am the magellan on this one
surely. still, i feel quite clever today!

keep on keeping on

not much news around here... i am pleased with how quickly the amy pond scarf is knitting up though. it's never quick enough of course, but it is already close to two feet long which means i am about a third of the way done! (the plan is to keep going until the yarn runs out, so it might be longer or shorter, but i'm hoping for roughly six feet.)

does it ever bother you that your life doesn’t make sense?

I think that's the proper quote from the show, but in any case, close enough. My fingerless gloves are done! Just in time for a heatwave. But you wouldn't wear thrummed mitts or something in a heatwave, would you? No, fingerless makes much more sense. I've typed up the pattern, based on the supremely clever Tilting Tardis Cowl pattern by Novembergirl. Re-written to be in the round, and have thumbs, and with a few tweaks because I am incapable of leaving well enough alone. Enjoy!

have you ever wondered why your life makes no sense?

my latest project (notice how new projects have no relation to the to do list?) is a pair of red fingerless gloves and scarf inspired by amy pond on the current series of doctor who. i'm not being super-accurate here - i'll leave that to the redheads of the world - but i had a skein of wollmeise in a gorgeous red called "herzblut" which was crying for me to start something (and i think only wollmeise can follow qiviut - much as i love my briggs & little, i think it would be a huge letdown). in the "vampires of venice" ep she is wearing a lacy/cable-y scarf with no fringes, in "the pandorica opens" she has a different red scarf - bulky cables - and some plain red fingerless gloves. in some scenes in one episode the scarf looks almost like it follows the tilting tardis pattern, so i thought i would use that pattern as the basis, just to be hugely geeky.

i got glove one done over the weekend, and now that it's finished i know how i'm going to do it differently when i rip it out and start over! the lace is very loose, so my glove isn't fitting as snugly as i'd like. take two coming up.

happy hallowe'en!

presenting: the empty child! he wore the gas mask most of the night, but then decided it would look better on a pumpkin.

sick again? say it ain't so...

booo... we have to cancel our trip to the zoo today. but being sick is the perfect excuse to curl up on the sofa with my knitting and a movie, two of my favourite things.
in other news, we're getting in the hallowe'en spirit by getting started on h's costume - he is going as the empty child from doctor who. he needs a white shirt (got it), burgundy sweater vest (got it), grey woolen pants (got it unless they are outgrown), grey woolen jacket (i think?), and of course a gasmask.

more brit tv

was getting photos off of my phone, and found this cutie:



harry's outgrown it already - this photo is a couple of months old! - but he rocked this onesie and a tardis onesie (the classic doctor who good vs. evil), both of which came courtesy of erin's crazy craftiness.