Not Much To See Here

I wanted to write a post tonight but I'm really too addle-pated* to manage very much so this will have to do.*

Knitting
Knitting has been  going round and round,

then rippity rippity,  then round and round again.

I am suffering mild anxiety about having enough yarn. There doesn't seem to be any white Jet left in the UK but there's pale blue so it will be saveable if the worst comes to the worst. I will know soon.

 This is a Chruchmouse Yarn and Teas Shoulder Cozy, which I have had my eye on for a while. When I wear the Crispy Crunchy Cowl I find myself shrugging it down to keep my shoulders warm but it isn't really deep enough so I've decided this is the answer. It's a bit like the beautiful Shadow[] Box, but not nearly so much knitting.

 It's designed to be made from Rowan Summer Tweed and Kidsilk Haze held toogether, but I think it's good in Kidsilk Aura too and I have a few balls of light and dark grey which blink at me balefully from my stash from time to time. Actually, I don't think I've seen any of these on the Ravelry project pages that don't look good, whatever the yarn and it looks good worn as a cowl in the neck of a coat too.


I was well enough to get out last week and meet a friend for coffee (hi, Lindsay!) and she was wearing a beautiful Opal shawl in lilac Aura. Opal is another pattern that looks good in almost any yarn and I wondered for the umpteenth time why I don't have one, so I've ordered another couple of balls of Aura in Coral to add to the two I already have. I love my Miss Marple but it isn't quite big enough. I'm not a huge pink fan but I do like coral and have arrived at the age where I need a touch of pink near my face to stop people asking me if I feel all right. 

 Ryan is still thinking about knitting, and us.

 from The Handmade Ryan Gosling

Telly
Inspector Montalbano has finished for a while. I was getting very used to my weekly dose of Mediterranean sun and Sicilian insults. I used to think how lovely it would be to go and stay in Montalbano's house and go swimming in the morning and drink coffee on the balcony - as a sort of hopeless dream because of course it's fictional, but then I discovered that actually you can: it's let as a bed-and-breakfast in the summer. This means that I have considered it and decided not to go, so I can't have the same idle dream now when I watch it, which is rather a shame. BBC4 has been showing them out of sequence but it doesn't matter a great deal: the sun is always shining, Livia is always cross with him, Mimi is always chasing a woman, and the food always looks delicious.

It's been replaced by The Bridge, A Swedish / Danish co-production.  It looks promising but I'm concerned that the heroine is too bonkers even for a televison maverick detective. She exhibits so much asocial behaviour that one can't really believe she has come up through the ranks of any police force, and as usual on television, although she's distracted to the point of incoherence, she knows how to put an outfit together, usually one which involves a ration of cleavage.  Funny, that. I gave up on Homeland because Claire Danes just seemed to be batsh*t crazy all the time and I could only believe in it when Mandy Patinkin showed up and put in a spot of calmness and good acting. I don't see the point of inserting female main characters into these shows if they're just as unhinged as the male ones we're used to, but that seems to be the way it is.
 
This grumpy little cat was on LOLCATS ages ago and I've kept her on my desktop ever since. It's not so much that I acknowledge the state of mind in myself, although I do, but that it takes me right back to work and certain colleagues.

 *I've just spent five minutes trying to remember the word 'cognitive'. That doesn't bode well, does it?