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  • IFF

    I Finally Finished

    something…..

    IMG_4366 Actually, a scarf.

    Pattern:  February Lace Scarf by Laura Nixon-Corfield (Ravelry Link)

     

    Yarn:  Cascade Venezia Worsted, which is 70% merino wool, 30% silk, in color 167, a deep green.

     

    This was not a particularly original choice.  I came into possession of one skein of the Venezia and I simply ran a Ravelry search to determine what other people had done.  Someone else had used this yarn for this pattern, which was written for a fingering weight alpaca, and I thought it was pretty.  That is one nice thing about scarves, you can probably knit them out of most anything and the results will vary accordingly.

     

    IMG_4363 Needless to say, I am very happy with the final result and I will happily wear it.  It feels luxuriously soft and silky against the skin, and it is warm but not too warm.  There are days when the not too warm part is very important. 

     

    I couldn't capture the actual color in either photo, it is somewhere in between, not as blue as it appears draped on the brown chair, but deeper and with more of a silky shine than is apparent in the second photo.  It being winter and light being what it is up here in the NE at the moment, especially during yet another snow/ice storm, I can live with these results.

     

     

  • New Vogues

    Well, the new patterns have been posted over at the Vogue website and I have been waiting for them since the magazine arrived despite the fact that I am still sorting through our accumulated possessions and don't yet have the sewing room actually set up.  Perhaps all I need is a little inspiration.

     

    There are several patterns I adore and desperately wish I could make, but they would not look good on me and I don't have anyone to make them for, so they have been put aside.  There is no point in mooning over these things.  There were quite a few other choices that are far more suitable, such as these two dresses by Donna Karan:

    V1219 V1219

    Vogue 1219

    V1220

    V1220

    Vogue 1220

     

    And then there is another Donna Karan dress from the DKNY label:

    V1221 V1221

    Vogue 1221

     

    Then there was some sportswear.  I picked this multi-sized pattern primarily for the interesting ruched sleeves, but the jacket also has other nice details, including the neckline and the peplum and it would be a good jacket for me overall.

    V8718 V8718

    Vogue 8718

    Then there was another cute little top/jacket/layering piece, also with a peplum,  

    V8714 V8714

     

    and a nice little vest.

    V8713 V8713

    Vogue 1813

     

    I'm actually far more interested in the shorter versions of the vest than the longer view, which completely opposite what the more youthful version of myself would have chosen.

     

    And then since there is a sale for club BMV members, ending today, I also ordered a dress pattern from McCalls

    M6279 M6279
    McCalls 6279

     

    At first I was going to get the Pamela Roland shirt dress in the Vogue pattern lineup, but when I went over to McCalls and saw this dress I knew this was the one, and I've already got a vision of how this dress will be made in my head.  I'm so happy that this pattern was available as the double breasted look has always been and remains one of my best looks.

     

    Now I'm wondering if I can get the sewing table and the cutting table organized before the patterns arrive.

     

     

  • Monday Miscellany

    7885118 Read:  The Recessionistas by Alexandra Lebenthal.  I was looking for a light, escapist read to see me through a rather stressful weekend, not this one just past, but the one before when I happened across this book.  It seemed  like just the thing and I was not disappointed.  It reads more like a series of bullet points with overlapping stories and timelines, a technique which serves the subject well.  One of the strengths of the book is the way the author brings the unfolding events  that cause the collapse of the banking system into the story and looks at these events from the point of view of each of the characters.  For the most part the characters are not likable but I do think they are accurate to some extent, and there are moments when one does feel sympathy for them.  Or perhaps I just increasingly recognize how easy it is to get wrapped up in the machinery of one's own little place in the world, whether that place is one I could relate to or not, and forget that there other worlds, other perspectives, other ways of life.

     

    Watched: I've also finally been making tiny, very tiny, inroads into my netflix queue.  It is likely I am never going to be up and current with whatever is going on in the film world.  I don't mind going to movies by myself, but there are other things I would rather do when I am out alone and I don't particularly mind seeing a film late, especially if I have the opportunity to snuggle comfortably on my own sofa, perhaps with a bit of knitting.

    Crude was an interesting documentary about the battle between indigenous Equadorans against Chevron for dumping toxic waste in the Amazon.  Joe Berlinner has a good narrative instinct with some very powerful images but in the end I found it rather depressing and unenlightening.  Perhaps this is because the case is ongoing, but I think I would have appreciated a more in-depth approach to the research behind the case and a little less of the he said/she said back-and-forth between the sides.  

     

    The Joneses was pretty much what I expected.  Light entertainment and a fun romp.  It was a good knitting movie as I didn't have to really pay that close of attention but it was interesting enough that I didn't fall asleep on the sofa.  Demi Moore was  warmer and more likable than I have found her in recent films, interesting that she was playing a character who was not supposed to be warm and likable.  David Duchovny played his part with a wry humor that went over very well.  I laughed more than I expected; the movie was smart and funny, but kind of fizzled as a social commentary, as if the writers were afraid to go too far.  The concluding scene felt like an afterthought and it made no sense given the utter lack of any relationship between the two main characters.

     

    When I saw The Secret in Their Eyes I thought it was the best movie I had seen in a long long time, and then I saw I Am Love.  But even so it still stands up as a fabulous movie.  The plot is much more compelling than Love and the film is a very interesting and intelligent combination of mystery, crime story,and love story.  Even the blending of past and present is well done, adding layers of both subtlety and complexity.  Great acting.  The dialogue is probably far more witty than the subtitles suggest, or at least so I would believe from the parts that my not so great Spanish allowed me to pick up. Highly Recommended.

     

    Tim Roth was excellent as Vincent Van Gogh in Vincent and Theo, playing the role with admirable restraint.  The cinematography was fabulous.  Altman framed the shots as if they were seen through Vincent's eyes and the framing and use of the camera in this film is just gorgeous.  But the film was lugubrious and dragged interminably at times.  The relationship between the brothers was intensely portrayed with fine acting by both actors but I still felt the film fell short, leaving me wishing for more understanding.

  • A Failure

    IMG_4339 I promised a finished object.  There is none.

     

    Or actually, there was one, finished, modeled, photographed, complimented.  It did not look bad; some said it looked quite good.

     

    But it was not what I wanted.

     

    I thought I would live with it anyway.

     

    Then something occurred to me.  If I will not purchase something that is not perfect and does not make my heart sing why on earth should I settle for less with things I have made?  I should not.  

     

    What was finished is no more.  The sweater has been unknitted.  The yarn will be washed and dried and rewound into balls. 

     

    In time the sweater will be reborn.  The same pattern; the same yarn.  Perhaps better decisions will be made the second time around. Would that we could always have second chances.  

  • I Am… cold, tired, and eventually overwhelmed… A review of I Am Love

    I have a finished knitting project to share with you which I had planned to get it photographed so I could show it to you today, except that yesterday slipped away before I knew it, at least until there was no chance of having enough light for photographs.  Not that the light was ever good as it was a snowy white day with the kind of flat gray light that seems to emphasize the closeness and stillness, mashing everything together into seemingly a single plane.

     

    I couldn't complain however as we only got about 14 inches out of a predicted 24 inches of snow, or that it was all over by late morning.  I was out by noon shoveling out the walk and the paths to the propane tanks and to the fill valve for the oil tanks.  While I was out, I heard the town plows going by and figured I had better walk up the hill to check as we had been plowed out long before and the town plows tend to leave a considerable pile of slushy icy mess across the end of our driveway.  Good thing I did too, as there was a knee high wall of mixed snow and ice blocking our access to the road and I would have been very upset I had I waited to try to break up that icy mess today, after it had a chance to solidify overnight.  

     

    90 minutes after I went out I came in rosy cheeked and rather exhausted, ready to curl up on the sofa with a movie.  And this is where that big fancy high definition television and sound system I got G for Christmas really paid off.  I watched I Am Love, a movie I had missed catching in a cinema and worried about seeing at home, but I have to say that spending the afternoon curled up on the sofa with my sweetie, a fire, and this stunning movie was a real treat.  In fact the movie was so stunning that neither one of was eager to pause the play to fetch more soda or any of that stuff, although we certainly could have done so.

     

     Of course I had read about the movie several places, from anticipatory articles before it was release to reviews, both pro and con, to various bloggers' reports, but still I think I was unprepared for the power of the cinematography of this film.  In fact the film is not so much for plot or even traditional character development and yet it is a visually profound film. So much was conveyed through use of the lens:  history, the power and almost stultifying weight of culture and tradition,  art, emotion, and yes love and life.   There were snippets of flowers and grass and insect life buzzing about seeming unrelated to the world of architecture and wealth with which it was interspersed, immediately dividing the world into that which is lived versus that which is endured, or, as I mentioned above, of  love, emotion, and art versus civilization, expectation, and tradition.  

     

    My thoughts concerning the film are still knotted up in an overwhelming muddle and I can't quite pull together a coherent review.  My mind lights on bits and snippets, all of which reference the whole, but which I cannot yet piece together clearly, so I am afraid the disparate bits will have to suffice here.

     

    Throughout the film the camerawork is truly incredible, and works very well with the score as well, creating the story as much through judicious lens work as through the actual acting.  Two segments are particularly lush, creating scenes that are both sensual and sensuous, in fact deliberately playing with and blurring the lines between the two.  One is a scene in a restaurant where the sense of the food through the focus of the lens plays up the pure emotional sense of it, without actually tasting it of course,  bring out a palpable emotional awakening and savoring of experience that stands apart from the icy perfection that is much of the film before this.  And of course this a pivotal point in the development of the leading character and a transformative point in the film which leads to another incredibly intense merging of photography and music and art, again blurring the lines between sensual and sensuous and creating one of the most compelling sex scenes I believe I have ever seen. 

     

    Of course the clothing is stunning.  I think I first read about the film in Vogue, where of course they talked about the clothes, designed by Raf Simons of Jill Sander, but even early on one is very aware of how this movie uses images to define almost everything, far more than it uses words or action.  The clothing and the setting define the characters, especially Tilda Swinton's character.  Swinton's clothing in the opening scenes, spare and rich and extremely elegant, is extremely minimal:  the perfect dress, the blouse and slacks, the perfect coat, the long strand of large pearls.  The clothes convey not only wealth but also the constraints of wealth.  Here we come back to that same paradigm of the architecture of wealth and class:  the spare, almost architectural, perfect clothes, seen on a version of Swinton who is softened and contained with long elegant hair, usually perfectly coiffed, exactly as expected.  But as the character changes, the clothing changes as well, although subtly at first, just as the fracture lines in this perfect life appear subtly at first, before they take on a momentum of their own, before Swinton, with shorn hair and ravaged by grief and emotion presents an entirely different kind of face.

     

    I find it interesting the role of the shearing of hair in this film.  The daughter cuts her hair when she discovers love, a lesbian love that will not be understood or accepted by her family.  Emma cuts her hair when she finds love with Antonio and rediscovers and reveals her true self, the self that was cast aside when she married and became Italian, but not merely Italian but a part of a class and structure that is completely contained within itself.  

     

    I can't even write about the ending of this movie yet but the conclusion is so compelling and condemning on so many levels that I am still overwhelmed by it all.  But shocking as I found it all, I also saw that it had been prefigured from the beginning in small comments and seemingly unimportant gestures, seducing the viewer in ways that perhaps life seduces us as well, allowing us to see what we want to see, and blinding us to the dangers. 

     

    I have to say I highly recommend this film although I also recognize that it would not have been nearly as intensely compelling without the big screen and the sound system.  The music by Adams at times subtle and at times profound could easily be missed without excellent projection. The profoundly beautiful use of the macro lens and the cinematography in general would be lost if you couldn't almost wrap yourself in its pure visual feast.  

  • There were gifts: A Bauble

    IMG_4318

    Amethyst.  Silver.  Gold.

     

    Seems perfect.

     

     

     

    IMG_4320I always thought I liked the deep dark amethysts, but I never found one I really wanted, even though I wanted a purple ring in theory.  

     

    Actually G found this one and despite how it looks in the  photo above, it is not deep purple at all but rather a hazy light purple, not too washed out, but not to deep either, which I just love.  Perfect to wear with jeans and a sweater.

  • I’m Sorry, Apparently I Just Crawled Out From Under a Rock

    Yesterday we got a new caregiver in the house, Mary, and she seems very nice.  Soon after she arrived I had to go out to run a few errands and she asked if I could pick up some dinner for her at Burger King.  She said she wanted a burger and fries, or at least that is what I thought she said.  I actually thought she said a "buh burger" and some fries, so I asked if she wanted a particular kind of burger like a whopper and she just said just a "buh burger", so asked if she wanted a plain hamburger and she repeated herself again and then when I asked yet again, she said yes, a hamburger.   So I said OK.  What else could I say?  It was pretty obvious that I was a bit confused, and the truth is that I haven't been to Burger King in at least 4 years, maybe more and have also managed to remain pretty much oblivious to any advertising from the franchise or any of their competitors.  

    So eventually I get to Burger King.  And I am thinking that I have no idea what I am doing, what kind of burger I should get, and I had better not go through the drive up window, so I park and go inside where I am faced with a big wall listing all the various options. And then I thought I would go outside and call Mary and just check to be sure she wanted a burger and fries.  I suddenly recalled that she said she only ate goat and chicken,  or was it that she only cooked goat and chicken?  Perhaps she wanted a chicken sandwich and I had completely misunderstood.  So I stood outside by the highway where I could barely hear and she said she wanted a "buh burger" and I thought that I didn't remember her having such a stutter, but that I had better just buy a burger of some sort and so I went back inside.  

     

    I asked the girl at the counter what was the most popular burger and she said the "BcBurger" or at least that is what I thought she said.  I wondered if I needed to have my hearing checked.  Then she said the one on the poster up front, but I didn't see it.  I've known I badly needed new glasses for at least a month now, but I did think I should be able to read a big advertising poster.   I saw a poster for BK Burger.  I thought that perhaps I was out of date and a BK Burger was not pronounced "bee kay burger" but "buk burger" so I asked what came on that and told her to go ahead and get me one with an order of fries. 

     

    It wasn't until I was back in my car with the burger and fries safely on the passenger seat that I noticed the sign.  It said Buck Burger and it suddenly struck me that Mary was asking me to pick up a buck burger, meaning a burger that sold for a buck.  I could have just stepped off the shuttle from Mars for all I knew about what she was saying.  I could only shake my head and smile, and think of all the stories the nice girl at the counter would have to tell her friends about the crazy old lady who had never been to Burger King and couldn't understand English.

     

    I really do need to get out more.

  • Book Review: Wrong

    41ZNMqfNnnL._SL500_AA300_ I picked up Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us and How to Know When not to Trust Them  by David Freedman on a whim.  If anything I was biased toward enjoying a book like this ever since I read Good Calories, Bad Calories, which made me incredibly angry even as I questioned everything, both the research which Taubes referred to in his book, and Taubes own conclusions.  

     

    But Wrong is not nearly as good or compelling as Taubes' book.  Although the book was somewhat interesting, it really offered very little that was new or particularly enlightening; it was more useful as a reminder of how even well-meaning and well-constructed research can go wrong as well the realities of publishing and the ways in which the need for new and compelling materials magnifies the problem.  All of this is interesting but not interesting enough to fill an entire book, a book that basically tells the reader to trust his or her own common sense and approach expert information with a healthy dose of skepticism.

     

    The simple truth is that we are all overwhelmed with too much information and too much media all competing to win our attention and loyalty.  We want simple answers and are too willing to accept them simply because it makes life easier and less frightening.   I think this book is appealing to that all too human desire to know how to know who you should believe and how to discern the difference, but of course any simple answer to that question would probably be wrong.

  • First snow of 2011

    Only six inches this time instead of the 20 we had after Christmas.  But it is still just as pretty.

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    I love the way snow blankets the world in silence and the almost mystical whiteness before the plows scrape the snow into gray-brown piles and sounds of civilization resume.

  • What I wore.

    IMG_4279 I had mixed feelings about this coat at the beginning of the season.  It obviously fit. And I've always loved it, but perhaps I have been reading too many style books or something because I struggle with whether it is attractive or appropriate or just dowdy. 

    I like the elongated double-breasted cut and double breasted jackets have always been good on me.  I do love the length, but it is difficult to wear.  A shorter coat is easier for the car.  It is too long in sloppy weather.  I have to hold it up to climb stairs so it would be impossible to wear if I had to take public transportation.  I read that long coats make one look dumpy.  So what?  I love it anyway. I feel glamorous and romantic when I wear it.  Do glamorous and romantic go together?  Can one be romantic in a tailored double breasted coat?  

     

    Now that I think about it, every year I tell myself it is too long, that I should get rid of it, that it is not attractive or practical.  And every year I end up wearing it more than I anticipate.  After 4 or 5 years it still looks good.  Who am I to argue?

     

    IMG_4273 Yesterday I put it on because I was wearing a tunic-vest with an asymmetric hem that hung in points below my knees and therefore below the hem of several other coats.  This drove me crazy.  With this coat the pointy bits were all hidden.  With the coat, the look was completely different than without.  I liked that.

     

    Most of these items are new.  Well most of my wardrobe is new as the old stuff no longer fit, or just looked old, or both.

     

    White turtleneck, Carlisle, is rayon/lycra and several years old.

     

    The striped vest and slim pants were purchased in mid November at a store in Cold Spring called Art to Wear.  It was my first solo shopping trip in several years, and I was a bit apprehensive, thinking I wouldn't find much, but I found several pieces and everything I took to the dressing room fit and worked.  I've been living in these clothes ever since.  Both of these pieces are by a line called Comfy, frankly a name which I would not have sought out as it evokes images of shapeless fleece. But I was wrong. I bought three pieces and I love them all.  Truthfully the pants are a bit short on me, but they are slim and warm and work perfectly with boots.

     

    I obsessed about a pair of over-the-knee boots with wrap ties all last year and never bought them.  When I saw these in September I realized that this was obviously not just a passing fancy and bought them.  I have no regrets.

    The earrings are the same ones you saw here.

     Obviously I've been fooling myself if I believed my style was "classic".