Tuesday, September 13, 2011

shawlette + movies for the queue

A friend of mine has a beautiful, peaceful urban garden, and yesterday seemed like a perfect opportunity for a photo shoot.
pattern: Berger shawlette, by Lisa Fliss
yarn: Orange Flower MCN fingering weight, "boysenberry"
~ 300 yds (2/3 skein)
needles: Clover US 7 bamboo circs

notes:
Easy, free pattern. Seriously, this knit up in an instant, as the stockinette body goes lightning fast. I absolutely love the yarn -- I used a different colorway for my Wandering the Moor shawlette, and it holds up beautifully and has a good balance of drape and body. Plus it's super soft.  Overall, a win-win project. The pattern requires a small amount of yarn, so it's a great way to use a short-ish skein of fancy merino sock yarn.

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film recommendations

I'm always on the lookout for movies that are different and interesting (no Transformers for me, thank you very much), and these two fit the bill lately:
Trollhunter -- a Norwegian mock documentary about film students following a man they suspect of poaching. Surprise, he turns out to be a grizzled, slightly disgruntled government employee -- on the Troll Security Service.

Junebug -- a film that explores class and cultural conflicts, as a newly-married couple heads from Chicago to the husband's hometown not just to meet the family, but for the wife to convince an "outsider artist" into signing up with her gallery. It's a film that does a good job of showing rather than telling, and it's uncomfortable at times as it explores how people negotiate relationships, their day-to-day lives, and their anxieties. Paul wasn't too keen on this at first, but really came to appreciate it in hindsight. Junebug does a good job of building characters, which I (like Ebert) value.

Does anyone have film recommendations to share?  I also saw Bridesmaids, which was a hoot (plus it was great to see Milwaukee on the silver screen), but everyone knows about that one already.

8 comments:

kim said...

The shawlette is very lovely!
For film recommendation, I'd suggest Attack the Block-- its by the guys that did Shaun of the Dead- and is about aliens invading a small dangerous part of London. Silly, slightly scary, and fun!

Katie M. said...

I love the shawlette -- the color is beautiful!! As for movies, I saw "Tabloid" not too long ago and it was a hoot! Also, I always love "His Girl Friday" just because.

Mia said...

I love that color!!! And the garden is lovely as well. Just think you will have a small quiet oasis of your own soon.

I am hopeless on film recommendations. Netflix is my friend.

Chris said...

The shawlette is gorgeous!

Rachael said...

Recently we saw The Amateurs, very sweet and funny, and Wild Target - if you dig british black comedies, Feed the Fish - very sweet, and a Korean movie called Man from Nowhere, very moving and fairly dark. (pretty shawl!)

Wendy said...

What a beautiful shawl!

I'm rubbish with films, the only thing I've seen recently is the Inbetweeners film - that's hilarious

Stephanie said...

I saw The Help in the theater on Fri and both my friend (who had the read the book) and I (who had not) enjoyed it. There are lot of characters, so even in a 2+ hour movie there isn't time to have full development on all of them, but there's enough there to understand how they add to the overall story.

Rue said...

Lovely shawlette! That color is gorgeous.

We saw Contagion last week and really enjoyed it. The ending wasn't at all what I expected from a medical disaster movie. It was tasteful and nicely done.