Wednesday 15 July 2009

Back to Knitting

I reached the half way point with Karius and have started to decrease - I'm just using the Baktus pattern, See, but in stocking stitch. Oh and I did the increases by knitting front and back, not a YO. I'm looking for beads for the points and must have a look at what I've already got first. It's not really worth photographing just now.

I did get beads for the hemp top but I haven't started swatching that yet.


I didn't allow myself to knit anything else at all until I got to the half-way point with the Baktus, because I suspected that if I put it down, its eternal growingness might put me off picking it up again, but now that I'm on the downward side I know it'll get finished and I allowed myself to go back to the off-blog project. Here's a tiny peek.


I've been following Anhinga avidly on Ravelry. This led me to Smashing Puffin's blog, which further reminded me that Kemp's are selling Rowan Bamboo Tape at a fairly silly price too (as well as Jet, I mean). You can guess the rest. I'm going to wait and see how Ravellers get on with the front panel of Anhinga before I cast on - well, that's the plan, but I dare say I might just cast on a little sleeve...

Viewing
I tried to watch the BBC2 docu about the French Revolution but I ended up skipping great chunks of it because it made me so cross. Those stupid reconstructions are so distracting, everyone with perfect teeth and either languid Oxbridge tones or Cockney accents. And the way they kept running some unidentified old silent movie about the Revolution in the background as if it were archive film - I don't actually know that it was silent but it looked old enough to be, certainly old enough to be lacking in academic rigour. The lucid moments provided by Simon Schama and others were scattered very thinly, like silver sixpences in a very large and stodgy Christmas pudding.

Rather less intellectually impressively , I watched Armageddon again on Saturday night. I do like that movie: lots of hommages to The Right Stuff, a script stuffed full of good one-liners, and actors who can deliver them. There's some surprising casting, like Billy Bob Thornton as a NASA suit, but it all works so well.

Rowan
The exhibition for Rowan's 30th anniversary last year stopped off in Fife but I din't get to see it: however, I have belatedly discovered that Twist Fibre Craft, who hosted it, put up a slide show. It's well worth a linger.



Lots of favourites there.

New Rowan Mag
There's a new Rowan mag out, number 46. You can see pics on Jannette's site. Lovely Rowany stuff, lots of cables and gloomy girls.

2 comments:

Knitting Linguist said...

I love the colors of those beads -- right up my alley. I need to start using beads more in my knitting (to which end I'm taking a short beading class with Sivia Harding at Sock Summit, hooray!). The off-blog project looks stunning -- can't wait to see the results :)

Lisa R-R said...

If you ever have a chance to see Peter Watkins' experimental film La Commune
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Watkins
you may enjoy that approach instead.
It is odd - there are "reports" from rival television stations etc.
Yet unforgettable!