Dort tanzt Lu-Lu!

Okay. Triple post today. Whatever.

IT WAS AWESOME. They didn’t do anything significantly after 1930, and I do love their pop song covers, but… man. Brilliant, anyway. And so, so stylish, with their tuxes and Max Raabe himself in tails, for god’s sake. And the voice! The style! The understatement! The way you could HEAR his facial expressions, and the way he had the audience cracking up with one word. Which was ‘often’.

‘Singing a love song in your lover’s brain goes straight into the… pineal gland. And from there, via the cerebrum, into the cerebellum, if you want to know it exactly. And so the cerebellum doesn’t roll around like a marble in a big bowl, the rest of the space is taken up by the cerebrum. [Long, rhetoric pause, then deadpan] … often.’

So, yes. The title of the tour is ‘Heute Nacht oder nie’ (tonight or never), and it was mostly songs about men and women and love and the general confusion that comes with that. (Which is funny, since I and some other sources are pretty sure he’s very much gay, but hey. Who cares.)

The crazy thing is… everyone in that band? Demonstrated they play at least three instruments at least reasonably well, AND they can all sing. And the guy who played the banjo (and guitar, and one of the violins) rocked the whole thing. He was kind of doing all the great rock gestures, only… in a tux, and sitting down, and with the banjo.

Did I mention they had a sousaphone? And a xylophone? And… bells? And a big ol’ stand-up bass? And… everything?

And I wore the Monster. I mean Muir. It is, as it turns out, really very much too large to be anywhere near practical, but it is warm and awesome and really, after the amount of time I spent making it, there was no way I was NOT wearing it.

So, yes. We’re buying tickets for next April.

I take a look at my enormous…

(Ahem. If you don’t know what I’m alluding to in the heading – you have GOT to listen to this)

So, Muir.

I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the thing relaxed, but as it turns out, the monster’s a grower as well as a shower.

(I’m just gonna see how far I can take the penis metaphor in this post.)

This morning, while I got ready, I soaked it, then did the whole squeeze-until-slightly-damp routine, took it back to my room, and started sticking aluminum rods in.

*evil overlord laugh*

*strokes white angora kitty*

Let’s just say… it’s big. Huge, in fact. So big that I have nothing even remotely approaching the necessary size to handle this correctly.

Well, maybe the hallway, but I don’t want dog hair all over it (or the dog, for that matter), and you can’t stick pins into laminate floor.

So, anyway, the aluminum rods I bought are obviously not long enough. So I’ve come up with this nifty contraption that features Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ box set, my backpack, and an armchair.

I have no idea how many times I’ve stumbled over this thing already.

I dare not measure this thing, but seeing as my bed’s 1.20x2m, I’d say… 95cm x 2.40m. Maybe 2.50m. Holy crap.

But it’s pretty. I just wanna stroke and fondle it.

And after over a hundred hours, I think I’m entitled to a bit of quality time with the Big Huge Monster (TM).

*whistles*

(As a side note, I have no idea why the pictures turned out so grainy. Weird.)

Enjoy the Silence

I’m proud to be able to consider myself a good friend. I’m loyal, I make great tea, and my friends know that if they need me, all they need to do is call and I’ll be over there as fast as I can.

But dude, I don’t remember it being so exhausting. I went over to Christian’s last night, because he was pretty beat up about the trouble he and his boyfriend were having yet again, and the time-tested solution to that is company, tea, alcohol and some movies you can geek out on. Which we did, and I lent a sympathetic ear and knit a bit, and we went to bed late and got up around 12 or so, and it was all like old times.

But now I’m home, and I’m so… drained. I just shut myself in my room; I can’t bear company right now. Or sound. I don’t even have music on.

How did I ever survive our hard-core seeing-each-other-every-day-for-two-weeks times?

**

To distract myself… STUFF I’VE MADE.

Awesome tomato soup (pureed tomatoes, crème fraiche, chicken broth, spices including lots of basil and a bit of chili).

Another Baktus, in Zitron Gobi (40/30/30 Merino/Camel/Alpaca), that I did as a big-needle-fat-yarn-instant-gratification project after Muir, and gave to Saskia because I realized I don’t really wear purple. I’ll have to buy some more of that yarn though, it’s delicious. Not in purple, though.

A plain garter stitch triangular shawl, to use up my sock yarn scraps. None of that pansy thin-stripes shit like the first SYS, just take a scrap ball and knit it till there’s nothing left. Seriously, I need to get rid of so many tiny useless balls that I somehow can’t seem to throw away. Cast on yesterday as I was taking the tram to Christian’s; very proud of my progress.

AND LAST BUT DEFINITELY NOT LEAST

The thing that’s been giving me grey hair since June, that I’ve been obsessing and worrying about, until it became my anchor and… friend, I guess, and still I’m beyond relieved it’s finally finished, though as of yet unblocked… Ladies and gentlemen, I give you….

MUIR!

Still need to block that bitch, though.

Don’t you cry no more

4.00pm – finished last pattern row of Muir, i.e. Row 1 after the last pattern repeat. Now, only a bit of purling and garter stitch to go.

4.16pm – a bathroom break and a couple of Supernatural expository scenes later, I AM DONE WITH THE BODY OF THIS BITCH. Now only the border to go. Will have to decide between another SPN ep or Cheaper by the Dozen in half an hour; money’s on SPN though. So much work got done on this baby watching scary shit, I figure I should be keeping with the theme right to the end.

6.09pm – a cracking tomato soup made and eaten as well as finished the last row! Now, only 157 stitches to bind off. Plus all those teeny tiny picots.

7.26pm – sluggish progress, but… I’m done.

Holy fuck, I’m done.

I see before me a new horizon

I am inching closer and closer to the end of Muir. I’m, for the last time, on row 20 or 21, which means I’m done with over half of the last pattern repeat. After that, only the border to go.

The pattern calls for 13 repeats, I’ll have 18. The pattern has three repeats of the pattern next to each other, I have four. The pattern calls for 940m of yarn, I’ll have used twice that amount.

Holy cow.

I knit at Starbucks today, in my favorite seat right next to the window, with a Caramel Brownie and a Chai Tea Latte. I always order a Chai, and it’s gotten to the point where I pop in there and just specify whether I want my drink to go or not, cause the baristas know what I want anyway. Maybe I should change up my habits a bit, but it’s just so tasty and you don’t drop off the high quite as fast as with coffee.

Anyway, it was pretty packed, and an elderly Chinese gentlemen sat down opposite me. And kept making notes in Chinese, and stealing glances at what I was doing. He eventually did ask me what I was doing and how long it had taken me to do all that, and we chatted a bit in German and English after that, and I finally got to ask someone how long it takes for Chinese kids to learn to read and write properly.

Five years, he said. FIVE YEARS. – Dude, if I was a Chinese kid, I couldn’t care less about being literate. Some people would probably jump down my throat for this, but honestly, phonetic writing systems are far superior to ideogram-based systems. For ease of understanding alone.

Speaking of phonetic writing systems, I had my second Spanish class today. It’s hella exciting. And after watching Saskia struggle so much with Chinese, I have a deep-seated appreciation for the clarity and straightforwardness of Spanish. Yes, it’s gonna be a lot of work. But it’s supposed to be, and if I can get to B1 in two semesters, all the better. Plus, really. Spanish is so intuitive. It just makes sense. It’s like Latin, just with fewer rules. (I’ll probably revise this opinion when I get to the tense trickeries, but for the time being, let me cherish this illusion.)

So, an exciting time. Spanish is pretty awesome, Muir is almost done, and I and I can almost ignore the fact that I’ve been getting my ass kicked repeatedly by the February Beret. I’m gonna have to rip it back for the fourth time, somehow I seem to be unable to deal with a seven stitch wide pattern. Sigh.

There’ll be peace when you are done

HOLY SHIT ONLY ONE AND A HALF REPEATS PLUS BORDER TO GO

Also, Saskia and I just test-stretched it between us… holy shit, this baby is gonna be even huger once it’s all blocked. I still need some sort of blocking wires, since there’s no way in hell I’m blocking that shit with pins, but… omg. Omgomgomg. So close.

Granted, now that I’ve gotten all cocky about it, I’m probably gonna discover some huge torrential mistake halfway down the line… and I think I’m just not gonna care.

ItsalmostdoneitsalmostdoneitsalmostdoneIT’SALMOSTDONE!

PS: Supernatural is really wreaking havoc with my language. Any day now and I’ll be starting to say “y’all” all over the place.

The wheel in the sky keeps on turning

You know your life is slow when knitting for six hours gives you a head rush. Because you just finished one repeat of Muir.

So, really, this post should by any rights be called ‘Steady as the Beating Drum’, but I’ve been watching more Supernatural than Disney, and so classic rock quote it is.

Anyway. I can now proudly proclaim I have 15 1/2 repeats of Muir plus the lower border done, which equals about 85 hours of work, plus what I spent on knitting those 1.5 repeats and ripping them back because of a simply retarded mistake, so it’s probably closer to 93 hours. Plus I often just pick it up, do a row or two or a half, and then move on to whatever, or get distracted while still holding it in my hands, so I’ve probably spent well over 100 hours with it in my hands already.

And what’s really baffling about these numbers is that for most of that, I’ve been watching stuff. The sheer, mindboggling number of episodes of Doctor Who, Torchwood, Supernatural, Star Trek, Stargate this thing has witnessed… it’s been with me through all my recent phases. It’s crazy.

It’s also now so long I can wrap it around my shoulders to keep me warm while I’m knitting the other end. It’s insane, it’s huge, but it’s not quite long enough. So, yeah, I’ll probably be using all of the yarn I have. I still have 35 grams left, which should yield another… three repeats, so two and a half plus border.

Plus, I mean, I’ve already slogged through 1380 meters of yarn already. That’s only 300m to go. That’s… that’s a pair of socks. I can do that.

It’s funny, now that there’s finally an end in sight – I kinda wish it could go on for a bit longer. That is clearly insane and I’m probably developing some sort of Stockholm’s, but on the other hand, it’s gotten to this semi-meditative state where the pattern is so ingrained that I’m always pleasantly surprised when I look down at my hands and I’m way closer to the end of the row than I thought.

And there’s this rising pride. How much yarn that is! How much fucking yarn! And I’ve almost finished transforming it into something gorgeous and wearable and warm and gorgeous! That I have to figure out how to somehow block, and then… then, I can wear it with pride, pride, and some more incessant pride to the event I planned it for.

And I can finally go camping, and use the monster as a tent, sleeping bag  and air mattress all at once.

**

Because no post is complete without something entirely unrelated to knitting…

… have some awesome weather and some fucking fantastic soup.

People think I’m insane

I pretty much spent the last two days doing… nothing. Well, nothing the rest of the world would deem particularly productive.

I did cook – and pretty splendidly so. I’d bought a rather large savoy cabbage (or at least that’s what I think it is in English – I’m referring to Wirsing) that I made half of into my favorite dish, with mince and béchamel sauce. The other half is still hanging around in the fridge, I’m not sure what I’ll do with that, but, eh. Then, today, I made beef broth from scratch, and added tons of veggies and tried my hand at marrow dumplings since I’d bought two marrow bones for the soup. So, yeah, I’ve been feeling a bit like an epicurean, and I’m loving it. I’ll make that soup again, just with fewer veggies.

Seriously, I bought marrow bones. I’m feeling like a 1950s housewife. Just a bit.

To offset that, when I wasn’t eating or cooking, I spent my time knitting – the endless Muir, which is up to I think 13 or 14 repeats. (Had I known how much time I’d spend on the bus in London, I’d’ve taken it with me. Lost opportunity there.) But it’s good TV knitting, which is just as well, since I’m developing new fandoms.

As if I need any more geekery in my life.

But I’ve started with Merlin (which is fantabulous) and I’m halfway through the first season of Supernatural, which is even better. Because there’s random pop culture and geekery, and awesome old music like Black Sabbath (who I stole this post’s title from), and demons galore. Big ol’ oil tanker full of nightmare fuel, but entertainingly so. Plus, even in the first season, they have this insane tendency to fanservice, which in later seasons (as far as I’ve seen) reaches almost ridiculous proportions. Awesome, I say.

And… it’s funny, but in a way, there’s a lot of parallels between Doctor Who and Supernatural. I mean, we have two people zooming from one place to another to solve mysteries and keep the apocalypse from happening. And making, let’s face it, somewhat morally dubious choices all over the place. Nevermind the whole money thing (credit card fraud vs. sonicing ATMs), or the brilliant taste in music. And very intimate relationships that don’t feature sex. Not that I’m opposed to that (and I do admit to having checked out naughty SPN fic on more than one occasion, to say nothing of DW), but it’s nice to have a dynamic that is subtly different from about any other dynamic on TV.

So, yeah.

Merlin, on the other hand, is just plain fun. I mean, come on. You’ve got a cute, gangly  and snarky Merlin, a bratty but sometimes surprisingly insightful Prince Arthur, you have Giles as King Uther, AND there’s some dragons and other mythical shit thrown in for good measure. Not to mention Gwenhyfar twisted into a rather likable servant girl to Morgana, and some pretty awesome guest stars. Like Eve Myles in the first episode, and that chick from the last DW Christmas Special as super-hot evil witch.

And obviously, because I’m back home and have access to a host of fabulous yarns… I’m dragging out sock yarn leftovers and knitting the Quant headband from what I didn’t use for these two pairs of socks, held together.

And let me tell ya – I’m having a blast with the entrelac. It’s kind of a scary concept, which is why I’d queued it more than a year and a half ago (Feb 13, 2008 to be precise) but never actually worked up the courage to start it. Well… it’s great. It’s a way to hone my mad knitting-backwards-English-style skillz, and it’s so entertaining! Cause you have tons of stitches on the needle (well, 18) but you only work a maximum of six at a time, and all these small squares are done in what feels like no time at all. And a couple of Supernatural episodes later, you’ve got yourself three quarters of a headband and a new knitting skill. Honestly, I can only recommend it. It’s not nearly as hard as it looks, though you do have to keep an eye on it, and it’s super-impressive. And the wrong side doesn’t really look as wonky as everyone keeps saying, either; I find it more intriguing. I’ll take pictures tomorrow, when there’s actual daylight.

When the moon is in the 7th house

It’s 3.20, the middle of the night, I still have a cold from hell, and instead of sleeping it off, I’m blogging. Marvellous.

I still haven’t decided what to post as 100th Ravelry project. This is starting to sound rather silly even to me, but I just can’t. decide. (whether you should live or die, oh you’ll probably go to heaven *does Master dance routine*) However, I have worked on Muir a bit more, done about three and a half rounds on the TARDIS socks, crocheted an entire TARDIS potholder AND done a Baktus scarf in only three days, so the cold’s at least good for something.

No, really. Knitting makes me forget about my headache. At least a bit. At least if it’s garter stitch.

Now, crochet is a whole ‘nother thing. Especially cotton, which isn’t my favoritest material at the best of times. But potholders kind of require cotton, and I found some in just the right shade of Tardis-blue, and potholders are quick… except I hadn’t anticipated how fiddly this was going to be, and how much I’d be ripping back.

I don’t think I’ve ever ripped back so much. Especially not on what is essentially a rectangle with a tiny bit of shaping on the top and bottom. And those weren’t even the parts I kept ripping back. No, at one point, I had this clever idea about crocheting in the windows. So I ripped back twelve rows, crocheted the windows in, then realized it wasn’t going to work, and ripped the twelve rows back again. Started going on in plain blue, realized after eight rows that I’d missed a single edge stitch, ripped back. Went on for six rows, discovered I’d missed the edge stitch on the other side. And so on. And when it got to crocheting on the doors and windows and all that shebang… oh, man. The windows were quite easy, because I crocheted the panes in white embroidery floss, sewed them on, and then just edged them. But the rectangles under them? A nightmare to match up. I ripped back every single one of them (except for the last one, I think) at least five times.

And I still haven’t put ‘POLICE BOX’ on the top. I might just skip that part. Seriously. And so something simpler for the other one. Like… a Dalek. Or make the other one a simple blue rectangle, because there’s only one TARDIS. (that’s actually a pretty good idea… to avoid Belgium!)

Then, Baktus. I chose it because it was simple garter stitch, I kinda needed entertainment while I was out useless on the couch, and everyone in the Gut Betucht shawl/scarf comm on Ravelry was absolutely raving about it. So I wound some HandArt (in Vulkan), with my sister holding the skein… the first obstacle. Honestly. Never met such a dispirited swift-person in my life. Kept losing strands, kept getting tangled up, and didn’t move an inch so the whole occasion took way longer than it should have. I’d venture to say that it didn’t take much longer for Saskia and me to wind 100g of lace yarn, and that’s twice the length of a measly 100g of sock yarn. So, yeah.

Now that I’m finished with Baktus, I have to say… maybe the yarn was a bad choice for this. I dunno. I do love this yarn, I made my Autumn Lace Scarf out of it last year around this time (hooo, that’s creepy! finished baktus exactly a year after ALS!), but somehow with this pattern, it looks a bit like camouflage. It might just be Baktus, though, cause seriously? I don’t know why everybody seems to be so absolutely crazy about it.

I mean, it’s obviously an easy pattern, nothing much to memorize, customizable to no end, you just have to weigh your yarn so you start decreasing at 50%… but let’s face it, it’s a freaking garter stitch triangle. It’s nothing special! I mean a kind of special that goes beyond the holy-crap-I’m-making-fabric-from-a-bit-of-string special. It’s not special in the way that you just have to grit your teeth and plow through the miles and miles of garter stitch, until your persistence pays off in the end. It’s not some great design feature. There isn’t this extraordinary spark of design in it that has you gasping and staring and exclaiming to your non-understanding family, ‘I can’t believe she took this one stitch pattern and this other stitch pattern and this shape and combined into something totally different and unique’. It’s a freaking garter stitch triangle. In 420m of yarn. Which is not much at all.

So, dear Baktus designer, if you read this, don’t take this personally. Please. I did enjoy knitting your pattern, but, you know. It’s not like nobody’s come up with something like this before you.

**

So, anyway. I’m going to London on Monday! Which is massively exciting and equally terrifying, considering I haven’t done any preparation at all due to being all congested and feverish and generally being a lazy layabout. So tomorrow… well, today, actually, I’ll have to go to the bank to get me some good ol’ Pounds Sterling (legal tender, thank you, Michael McIntyre), wash some clothes, write up a packing and a to-do list, wire some money about, apply for voting by mail, call a company because of my broken bedspring, properly resew the buttons on my leather jacket cause they’re loose, and generally do a lot of random shit I’ve been procrastinating away for about a week.

Oh, and I have to really get cracking on the (not yet cast on) Rose’s Wrist Warmers, because for some reason I did not pack any and what was I thinking, wanting to go to London in September without any sort of hand protection? For all I know, it could be freezing with 24/7 rain when we’re there, and that is just not acceptable without mitts. Good thing I bought that random yarn, it might be just right for this.

Don’t be discouraged

After careful, painstaking mathematical calculations… I’ve discovered I have pretty exactly 63% of Muir done. I think. 11 repeats out of 18 – that’s 17 reps I’m aiming for, plus two borders, of which I already have one. I just rounded my progress up on Ravelry, because proudly displaying 65% gives me such a rush of achievement.

**

Quick, very quick, movie review, because it is almost four in the morning: Secret Smile, available on Youtube, broadcast as a two-part serial on ITV back in 2004. About a stalker, kind of. Not the type of stalker you think of when you think stalker, one that ‘only’ follows you around wherever you go. No, this one’s a stalker that gets into your life after you dump him, destroys your life, your family, your friends, just because you dumped him, and then moves on to live happily ever after. Well, sort of. Well, not really.

Anyway. The movie (or serial, rather) does have some surprising plot twists, and is mostly very gripping. I think there was a bit of a lull in one place, but otherwise, it’s pretty good. I don’t know if I’d buy the DVD, but it’s worth watching online for free any day.

Cause, you know. Here’s the thing. This overcontrolling stalker guy (Brandon’s the name, by the way) is played by none other than our favorite Tenth Doctor. Before he became the Doctor. So you get David Tennant, in his beautiful Scottish accent no less, being very intense and, well, bullying and totally getting off on the power high. And saying THAT line. The one that goes something like “I kept looking at your mouth. It’s beautiful. And I thought, ‘I’d come into that mouth!”, which knocked me a bit flat and had me exclaim ‘Doctor!’ despite Casanova having been a lot more explicit. Probably the Scottish accent. Did I mention he plays the role in his Scottish accent?

Things that kinda bugged me about this film: first, it was pretty quiet. There wasn’t a lot of music, and there was total crickety-cricket silence during the sex scene (which by the way happens less than four minutes into the movie). Well, except for DT sounding obscene with nothing to distract from it. Kinda disturbing if you’ve been watching Who all day, especially since he has about five lines of dialogue, if that, before this, so you don’t really have time to get used to the different character. The other downside to this being a mostly quiet movie is that you turn up the volume so you can understand the dialogue, and then somebody smashes something and the sound shatters through the whole house.

Then, some of the scenes moved very, very quickly and seemed a bit pasted together without any real transition. Felt a bit jerky, in my opinion, but I guess at the end I’d gotten used to it.

But really, jerky is what describes the overall feel of the movie pretty accurately. At least, that’s what if felt like to me. The scene changes were kind of abrupt, just like Brandon’s mood swings, and the cutting was very hard in some places.

At times, it also felt a bit like a soap opera. YMMV at this, obviously, but the fact that after she dumped him, he got together with her sister and then some kinda reeks of early-evening entertainment. Also the fact that nobody believes her on account of everybody thinking she wants him back. Of course, nobody ended up impregnated with their mother’s half-stepbrother’s alien baby, and there’s a distinct lack of hair-pulling, so some of the pillars of soap opera are quite missing.

Things I liked about the film: it was really interesting, from a terrifying angle. What on earth would drive somebody mad enough to try and destroy another person’s life so systematically. How does he split up a family that seemed relatively close-knit in the beginning? Brandon, for the first ten minutes or so, seems like the most ordinary guy in the world – how do you tell if somebody you know might turn out a psychopath? For the most part, David played him with an almost deadly calm (and a Scottish accent), threatening in a quiet voice, with his words ringing louder than a shout. There were so many times where the madness just showed in his eyes, quite subtly. Brilliant.

What I also thought interesting was my response to Brandon. The deeper we get into the movie, the more controlling he gets, the more bullyish, I guess. He gets off on the power bad. And he wields it with such terrifying calm and self-assurance and confidence that it’s almost attractive. Except you have to remind yourself that this power trip he’s soaking in comes from effectively making a woman’s life absolute hell. So, watching myself watching this movie was fascinating and leaves me a bit conflicted. After all, don’t we just all like the bad boys?

I… kind of liked the end? I’m a big fan of justice being served, and I’m also a big fan of unusual endings… I wasn’t prepared for this one. I was already leaning back and then came the final shocker. I’m still not entirely sure whether I liked it or not – I half-feel it was probably just a bit too much, but then, it was also quite understandable and, in a way, made sense.

So, general conclusion: worth watching, especially for free, but don’t watch too much Ten beforehand. Cause you don’t want the Doctor sucking his fingers suggestively after the mention of oral sex. (Then again…)

**

These are the days, where ‘quick, very quick movie reviews’ are almost 1000 words long -.-