On indefinite hiatus

Sadly, due to my schedule I will be unable to blog about my knitting regularly. I am leaving my posts up in case someone finds them useful. Happy knitting!

Man...

...am I glad I forced myself to learn LaTeX last year. It seemed sort of stupid at the time to spend two days reading tutorials and typing up nonsense, but it is really paying off now!!

Buttercup Bag

I made a Buttercup Bag (free pattern!) recently. It takes a fat quarter of fabric for the outside and another fat quarter for the inside lining. I found that the triangle-shaped scraps from the last A-line skirt I made were enough. I did have to flat line the lining fabric to some heavier cotton twill to keep the purse from being too floppy. I also inserted cotton webbing into the handle to make it stronger. The outcome is a nice, small shoulder bag.

New Skirt!

I realised recently that some of my favorite skirts are getting a bit ragged. The weather has been so bad most of the summer that I hadn't started wearing skirts most days until the past week or so.

I thought this was a perfect time to try out a new book I recently got, Sew What! Skirts. They have instructions for drafting a basic A-line and a basic straight skirt to your measurements. Then there are lots of customization ideas. I tried the A-line with a side zipper, and I am very happy with the results. Now I have my own pattern to use again and again. Not bad for an 11 USD book (on Amazon).

Plus, and this was super exciting for me, I learned to use my serger! I got it as a wedding present over a year ago, and I hadn't even opened the box until this weekend. But Mike helped me get over the fear (knives! two needles!), I successfully figured out threading it, and I was able to use it to finish the interior seam allowances.

Movie Review: Harry Potter 6 (Half-Blood Prince)

You know what the problem is with the Harry Potter movies? They've been coming out forever. By the time they all come out, a decade (give or take) will have gone by. There's nothing per se wrong with this, but it means that I never remember everything that happened before when I go to the theater for the current installment. I could fix the problem by watching them all again before each new release, but that would mean subjecting myself to the sketchiness of the early movies. I nearly fell asleep in the theater during the first one. I also don't own all of them (only movie 5). And reading the books in a marathon session beforehand, like my husband sometimes does, probably won't help either. Then I'll start focusing on all the little (and big) things they changed to translate the stories to film, which will also annoy me.

Leaving aside this fuzzy memory feeling, Harry Potter 6 was a good experience. The movie was exciting most of the way through (though it was a bit episodic), and Daniel Radcliffe turns in a solid performance. They got really lucky in casting him, since there wasn't a lot of evidence he could act in movie 1. He happens to have matured into a dependable performer.

Green Day at the TD Banknorth Garden, 20 July 2009

I saw Green Day (with opening act The Bravery) last night. I have gone to see them in the past, but the last time was a little over 7 years ago. I was impressed with their performance. They were just as good as I remembered them, with better production values (they were not as flashy on the previous tours I saw them, probably because they weren't as popular at that time). Billie Joe was, as usual, very into audience interaction, calling up three people to sing Longview and another kid to play guitar on Jesus of Suburbia (which is quite an ambitious song to try that with, btw). Their set was of good length too, over 2 hours, I believe. Much longer and I would have collapsed from too much dancing! Plus, The Bravery was also impressive, with the lead singer really delivering melodic, energized vocals. He did have a weird habit of sitting down on the stage or facing backwards while singing, which looked odd on an arena stage. But it made me want to buy an album by them, regardless. I'll check out their itunes offerings tonight.

The Boston Globe review is here.

Movie Review: Taken

This was an incredibly simple movie. The always watchable Liam Neeson plays a retired spy who left the business in order to spend more time with his teenage daughter (played by Maggie Grace). He reluctantly grants her permission to travel to Paris with a friend, even though he's nervous about her safety. Of course, it turns out that his fears were warranted, as his daughter and her friend are almost immediately kidnapped by a human trafficking/prostitution ring. The rest of the movie follows Neeson as he works to save his daughter.

There is nothing special about this movie. The action sequences are tight, but not groundbreaking; Neeson's performance is solid but not astonishing. However, at only 1.5 hours long, it doesn't wear out it's welcome, and it is clear that it doesn't have delusions of grandeur.

??????

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. So this is the natural progression from zombies?

My husband Mike suggests the following next installments:
Northanger Abbey and Neanderthals?
Persuasion and Pirates?
Mansfield Park and Midgets?

Movie Review: The Quiet American

I got this through Netflix. An interesting little film about a journalist in early 1950s Vietnam, before the French pullout. Michael Caine stars as the journalist Thomas Fowler stationed in Saigon, living with his Vietnamese mistress Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). Fowler's comfortable life is disrupted when an American aid worker, Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), arrives and begins to compete for Phuong's attentions. Pyle is idealistic and energetic, committed to defeating the communists in Vietnam and hoping to offer Phuong the marriage that Fowler cannot. This love triangle goes through a number of tense battles and then ends predictably in tears. Meanwhile, the war in Vietnam continues, and it appears that the French efforts against the communists are being supplanted by those of enterprising locals. But is unclear who is funding these new players...

Overall, I found the movie a bit odd but still thought provoking. The love story and the war sequences are not well-integrated, but it was interesting to see a film about the Vietnam conflict before large-scale American involvement. The book by Graham Greene upon which the movie was based was published in 1955, before all of that occurred. But given that this movie was released in 2002, my watching of it was colored by what I knew was going to happen in Vietnam during the 1960s.

Movie Review: Up

I saw this the past weekend. It's probably the best movie from 2009 I've seen so far. It also continues the Pixar streak: they haven't made a bad movie yet. This is an amazing achievement, and I keep thinking a clunker is coming, but somehow it doesn't. A Bug's Life was probably the weakest Pixar, and that's really saying something. Especially given the standard being set by other children's cartoons out there.

I was a bit skeptical of the premise for this film: man goes on a trip to South America by turning his house into an airship. Boyscout kid tags along. Sounds a bit wierd, right? But instead of being some crazy technicolor adventure, the movie turned out to be about aging, death, divorce, and finding joy in one's life, however one can. It was pretty heavy for a children's movie, which was evidenced by the confused questions some kids were whispering to their parents at the showing I attended. But despite that, all the kids I saw after the movie seemed happy and excited by the experience. I left the theater feeling the same way.

Best movie title spoof ever

The Phaeton and the Furious: Derbyshire Drift.

Movie Review: Star Trek

I wasn't super eager to see this one, but Mike was. So I went to see it last weekend. I watched Next Generation a lot for a couple years in grade school, but then I switched to police procedural shows and never looked back. Therefore, I just wasn't that interested in this movie. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it.

What also made me skeptical about this movie was its director, JJ Abrams. I used to be a faithful watcher of his TV drama Alias, but that show had a drop off that began in Season 2 and ended in a spectacular crash and burn in Season 5. Really, it was embarrassing. Mike assured me that since Abrams was working within the confines of a 2 hour movie, there was no way it could get that out of hand. I was still hesitant. But you know what? Abrams did keep things under control. The movie plot was pretty simple (even though it involved time travel) and well-paced. I was afraid when that ball of "red matter" was revealed (longtime Alias fans will remember that annoying red ball of water stuff that was involved in many stupid plots), but that turned out not to be a problem.

Plus, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are great. I liked that Quinto's Spock seemed just a bit different from Leonard Nimoy's Spock. That makes sense, because they've had different life experiences. Sometimes time travel can get messy, with the main characters either worrying too much about changing events or thinking that they can't change anything because it's already done. This movie did neither. The characters accept that some things will change and make a new future. The result is fluid and freeing.

Matlab.....

Slowest program ever. Argh!!!

Book Review: Rattle His Bones

Rattle His Bones by Carola Dunn

My review

Rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a very simple mystery, but I enjoyed it. It is set in the British Natural History Museum, and carefully explores the relationships between the different curators and museum staff. I found this interesting, because it touches upon rivalries between related scholarly fields and the big egos common in academia. Really, the book could quite easily have been set in a university department and had a similar flavor (though there wouldn't be an excuse for jewel theft!).

Book Review: Battle for the Cowl

Batman: Battle for the Cowl by Tony Daniel

My review

Rating: 3 of 5 stars
First thoughts: I'm reading this in floppy form as it's released. Currently I have read issues 1 and 2 out of three. I have also been following the tie-ins (Gotham Gazette, issues in Batman, Detective Comics, etc.). The action is moving right along, which is nice. I guess that's what happens when the main series is only three issues long.

Update: I finished the third (last) issue. I found it confusing that there was apparently some action that happened between issues 2 and 3 that was missing. That stuff probably happens in a tie-in that I missed (damn you, DC, for your large event cross-overs!). But besides that, this was a sensible ending to a simple story. I don't mean that as a criticism, but rather as praise. It was nice to read a straightforward "comics event," instead of the time-jump-around-y stuff that Bendis always writes. I am looking forward to what's in store for the new Bat books coming this summmer.

Movie Review: Wolverine

This was okay, but not as good as it could have been. The relationship between Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Sabertooth (Liev Schreiber) was interesting, and some of the other mutants on Wolverine's government special ops team (like Dominic Monaghan) were decent. Otherwise, we get a sequence of sometimes standard and sometimes super weird action and character moments. (What was up with the fat man boxing bit? Or the naked Wolverine running through the woods bit?) Gambit and Emma Frost don't add much, sadly. A bit of a waste.

Baby Hat and Booties

I made these for my advisor, who is due to have a boy in a couple weeks. She's always wanted to learn how to knit, so I knew she would appreciate these. The patterns I used are here for the hat and here for the booties (ravelry links). Both were well written. My only issue was that the hat pattern wasn't clear on the gauge, but that doesn't seem to matter so much for baby hats. I didn't do the fold-down cuffs or the eyelets for the booties. I hope they stay on his feet!

Book Review: Styx and Stones

Styx And Stones by Carola Dunn

My review

Rating: 3 of 5 stars
This installment of the Daisy Dalrymple series was much better than the last. Although the setup was a bit wierd (Daisy's brother-in-law asks her to help find who has been sending him letters accusing him of adultery), the whole story flowed much better than in the previous book, Dead in the Water. This book concentrates a lot of Daisy's relationship with Alec's daughter, Belinda, and those scenes add depth to both characters.

Overall, I think these books are just a little too short. If they were about fifty pages longer the mysteries would not have to be so simple (and wrapped up so quickly) and we would have more time to follow the Daisy/Alec relationship (although Dunn does a decent job of highlighting it already).

Book Review: Dead in the Water

Dead In The Water by Carola Dunn

My review

Rating: 2 of 5 stars
I had read the earlier installments of this series several years ago, and I had always meant to read more. I finally got around to it, but this book was not really worth it. The mystery is not well constructed, and the ending is rushed (both figuratively and literally--for some reason we get a wierd foot-chase scene that was really out of place). What I found most distasteful was Daisy's attitude. She kept thinking unkind thoughts about the other characters, and then only sort of regretting her meanness. I didn't remember Daisy being so unlikeable before. Since these books are short, I will give them another chance. But they better bounce back quickly.

One note for me, since I've also been reading Robin Paige's Victorian Mysteries: these books take place only 30 years after Paige's, but here finger-printing and other methods of modern forensics are used regularly. In Paige's series the police look upon these methods with a lot of skepticism. The turnaround from distrust to acceptance of these techniques is interesting.

Movie Review: State of Play

I saw this on Saturday. Mike, being a big fan of journalism movies (All the President's Men, Good Night and Good Luck, His Girl Friday, Zodiac) wanted to check it out. I definitely enjoyed it (Russel Crowe, Helen Mirren, Ben Affleck, and Rachel McAdams give great performances), but there was something lacking in the plotting. Mike described it as about 80% of the quality of Michael Clayton, and I would agree with that. It's not quite as amped up as Clayton, so you're not waiting for some one's car to blow up the entire time. Nor are the plot twists quite so twisty, and the ending just sort of putters out. The constant whining over the death of print newspapers is also a bit much, making the movie feel a little grumpy. Also, how in the world are we supposed to believe that Russel Crowe and Ben Affleck are close enough in age to have gone to college together? In real life about 8 years separate them, and Affleck has a perpetual twenty-something look to him. Overall, a tasty snack but not a full meal.