Tuesday 22 January 2008

Colours

I'm afraid I dropped the Mavis and the Kidsilk and ran up a little bit of instant colour gratification. When I won the lovely Cheesehead's comments competition and she sent me some beautiful coral pink Louet Gems merino fingering, she also sent me some Americana in the form of four balls of washcloth cotton. You can see two of them here - one Peaches & Creme and one Sugar 'n' Cream.
I can remember knitting a cotton dishcloth many, many years ago which was just a plain old lump of garter stitch in white cotton. I must have knitted it at school, because when I took it home my mother laughed. I can't really say I blame her. This is an entirely different kettle of fish. It's the ballband pattern, which can also be found here, except that I accidentally did a variation. I'm going to try not to get obsessed, or at least not yet, but I can see that's going to be difficult. Criminy Jickets got obsessed and had a dishcloth deluge. I've put a washcloth jigsaw in the sidebar.

Talking about washcloths, the cutest one ever can be seen on the knitty bloggy baby bumbers blog. I'm racking my brains to think of someone who's expecting a baby.

I watched The Bourne Ultimatum the other night and was really disappointed. Too many chases and not enough plot. The script was poorer than the others and it had some really clunking lines; poor David Strathairn had to deliver a lot of them and had to look like possibly the stupidest man working at the CIA as he kept issuing orders which were either contradicted by Joan Allen or were executed and completely failed to achieve the desired effect. He kept telling people to do the things they would already have done and I kept expecting one of them to say, 'Well, d-u-u-h.' I decided some years ago that if I were watching a television drama and a character came in and said, 'Listen up, people,' it was probably a good idea to change channels. In the film, it's said three times. (Actually, they said, 'People, listen up,' but I don't think this is a big enough difference to support any claims of originality.) I sometimes think there's an inverse relationship between the amount of technology used in a film and the attention paid to the script

I found the scene in Waterloo Station at the beginning quite exciting, perhaps because I know the station and could understand where they were; in the other chases I lost track of that. But I kept on thinking that if Jason Bourne were trying to direct me away from assassins by giving me instructions over a mobile phone, I probably wouldn't last very long because I would be saying, 'What? Did you say left? Which escalator? I can't see a newsagent.'

It's a pity because I enjoyed the first two but I suppose as my mother used to say, you can have too much of a good thing.

What sad news tonight about Heath Ledger. He was a very gifted actor and was one of many excellent things about Brokebank Mountain; he gave the character of Ennis such depth. He was only 28.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice washcloth! :)

And I agree with you on the inverse relationship of technology used to attention of the script! I've found some of the best movies on the Independent Film Channel lately that we get over here.

CrazyFiberLady said...

Helen, that is a nice washcloth! I have yet to succumb to washcloth knitting but I have a pair planned as end of year teacher gifts, along with soap and gift cards.

I couldn't agree with you more about the relationship between tech toys and script. The same problem exists with films heavy in FX. Special effects really don't make a movie and far too many makers don't quite get this yet.

I have to say, Mavis is gorgeous!

Anonymous said...

very nice wash cloth. I knit dish cloths when I need some instant knitting satisfaction. Any chance you will make a jigsaw puzzle from the wash cloth/

Knitting Linguist said...

I love the colors in that dishcloth. They are addictive, aren't they? Almost as addictive as your puzzles... I'm totally with you on that last Bourne movie; not only was the plot pitiful, but the camera-work actually made me motion sick in the theater, which really took the fun out of that one!

Anonymous said...

"Listen up"-- you're so right, that's usually a sign of a dopy script.

I see many of my favorites listed among your fave movies. What about "LA Confidential"?

Anonymous said...

I really like this washcloth...but I don't knit...I'm what one would call "needle challenged"..I crochet and i can't really see the detail...Is there a pattern???