"I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure."

When there's pretty knitwear in a film, I like to try to work out the construction of it. It's like the opposite of my "But that's not even what DNA analysis -! And evolution doesn't mean -! And you can't -!" knee-jerk, or every scene with computers for programmers, I imagine.

Gandalf's gloves were the easiest-glimpsed knit in The Hobbit! When I went to see it with my family, my mum asked me during the film if I could make them, and my brother said afterwards that he noticed Gandalf's gloves looked like there were made by me. My mum also asked whether the villains in a particular scene were goblins or orcs. She tries.

So I made Gandalf gloves out of leftover yarn! The first time I saw it I thought they were garter stitch, but on second watching I think they were reverse stockinette, so I knit them as such.

They're by no means a perfect replica. They're too dark a grey, but this was what I had (Debbie Bliss Rialto, on 4.5mm needles), and I wanted to make it into something I would get excited over. I also added a little ribbing at the top, to avoid stockinette curl. (I assume no stockinette curl means either machine knitting or a million hours of blocking. It would be awfully sad if Gandalf had no-one to hand-knit for him. :( ) But they were a simple thing that makes me happy in a silly, nerdy way to have made them, and I assume that I now get to be friends with both Gandalf and Sir Ian McKellen.*

Gandalf would have loved crosswords, I assume! (Tangent: I miss Crosaire. I wish they'd recycle his old crosswords. Crossheir has a lot more "Well, I guess it has to be ___. I can kind of see how that makes sense." than "Ohhh, that's clever!" I'm sure he's a lovely person, and he has big boots to fill, and I certainly couldn't write a clever crossword, but Crosaire 4 lyf.)

Other Hobbit-related things:

• When I was younger, I assumed that anything that could plausibly be natural (beards, hair) was. (I thought Christopher Lee grew his hair for years to play Saruman, for example.) If I still believed this, James Nesbitt would probably be my favourite person  in the world. His moustache even matches his hat! (He also had some cosy-looking seed stitch gloves that will float around the back of my mind until suitable yarn presents itself, and maybe Oin's diamond-patterned ones, and I have oddly specific problems.)

• This sequence makes my heart smile. I've never minded having a bad singing voice, but now I think perhaps I should work on it, in preparation for being whisked away on an adventure.

*Can the Queen call on the likes of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart to fight as knights in a battle? That would be the best battle.