Stuff and Moonshine

Felt a bit listless most of this week— not sure if it was the weather or if the past year is finally getting to me. I don’t feel too bad emotionally, just physically.

Continuing with the knitting and the fanfic-writing. Also the David Lynch movies— today I finally watched Inland Empire. I’d previously heard this one described as weird and incomprehensible even for Lynch, but until I saw it I could not truly comprehend that this movie is two hours and forty-five minutes long, and at least 60% of the run time is Laura Dern’s face making ‘WTF is going on?!!’ expressions, and actually, I can respect that.

 Finished the sleeveless sweater from the Dollarama yarn, but the armholes are a bit tight and the neckline a bit high. Trying to work up the courage to unpick the shoulders and add a few more rows.



ETA: Added six more rows to each shoulder:

 Andrew has what’s probably a relapse of the ‘flu he’s had for a month, but we decided I’d better stay home today.

Finished the fairisle vest I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks:

The colours across the bust are neon-bright in real life.
Nana likes it:

 1. Almost done the baby sweater I have to knit to prove I can knit so I can potentially get some piecework as a test knitter. I'll have it done well before the ten-day turnaround time they need, though I've come to the conclusion that the hood is the most voluminous part of the hoodie.

2. Watched the 1931 Maltese Falcon a couple of days ago. I prefer Bebe Daniels' Miss Wonderly (they never drop the alias in this version) to Mary Astor's. Dwight Frye as Wilmer gets less screen time than Elijah Cook, Jr., but is equally nervy; he apparently kills Gutman (Dudley Digges) and Dr. Cairo (Otto Matieson) offscreen as they head back to "Constantinople." Digges isn't bad; his Kaspar Gutman makes me think he would have played an excellent Mr. Pickwick or, in the villain line, Charles Augustus Milverton. Matieson's Cairo is basically the same as Lorre's, but he misses putting it over the top like Lorre.

As Spade, Ricardo Cortez (born Jacob Krantz) is a completely different character from Bogart's detective. I feel like Bogart is a 1940s character and Cortez is a 1930s one, if that makes sense. He swings wildly between suave and goofily, snappishly sarcastic. He might even have the tiniest touch of sentiment, but only the tiniest. He was definitely sleeping with his partners wife -- for one thing she's Thelma Todd as opposed to Gladys George, who seemed flaky enough to have just imagined his interest, and who did not, in 1941, leave a kimono at Spade's place. There is a neat twist at the end, as long as you don't understand enough Cantonese to have been spoilered back in the first few scenes.

3. I have deleted my LJ, though I think it takes sixty days to believe me. I've located most of my LJ flist on DW, and feel rather as though we ought to have some kind of site-warming party, though it's not easy across time zones. Feel free to post hellos in the comments, however.

ETA 4. Also rewatched Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle which, if you've never seen it, is a movie that has absolutely zero interest in subtlety or psychological realism. Its cartoonish grotesquerie is more touching than a lot of Oscar-nominated films, probably because of the sincerity of Chow's love for the Shaw Brothers, the Warner Brothers, the Peking Opera (I'm guessing from the soundtrack), unexplained heel-face turns and fairytale logic. I'd like to see it in a double bill with Galaxy Quest, because the former is about storytelling as the greatest human invention and Kung Fu Hustle is the kind of ridiculous cheese that could inspire naive extraterrestrials to acts of nobility and heroism.

As it turned out, I bought enough yarn for a sweater, hat and lace-up fingerless gloves. All finished and photographed now.

My Knitpicks yarn arrived today, and I've started this sweater in dark grey.

Tried to find the glockenspiel cover of 'Where Is My Mind?' that featured recently on Criminal Minds; it's not on iTunes, but I came across a bluegrass cover that's kind of neat. Also, I was sure I had 'Wave of Mutilation,' but it's not in my computer, so I downloaded it too. I recall thinking before that if 'Shadow Over Innsmouth' was a surfing movie, this is what would play over the last scene as the narrator (possibly with his cousin who he's busted out of the asylum) paddles out to join the sea for the last time. It would continue triumphantly over the closing credits.

The fairisle sweater is coming along. I just hope I don't run out of the reddish-purple yarn before I finish the yoke (all the other colours were purchased for this project and I should have enough). I also made a chart after-the-fact for the fairisle motifs (I actually worked from charts scrawled in ballpoint pen on bits of scrap paper.)

ETA - found another ball of the purple yarn. Yay.

Taught a seven-year-old to knit. She was definitely getting the hang of it by the time she and her family headed home; mind you, she was still accidentally making extra stitches, but her parents have an instruction book at home, they can help her figure that one out. At least I mitigated her boredom for an hour or so.

ETA - picture link:

green_trilobite and Rob Sawyer at the trilobite panel.

Well, the kitchen is only slightly more organized, but the countertops are at least partly visible, the stovetop is clean and I have new dishtowels (bright green); also I knit a teacosy yesterday (magenta) and today's test suggests it works well (catches the drips from the spout.)

Trying to write a bit more for Deadwood S4, but so far I've just got a painfully-detailed description of Doc getting up in the morning. I went and looked at pictures of kerosene lamps/small heaters for kettles.