Up all night to get Loki

One of my jobs had a KAL of Vera Valimaki's Colour Affection. I had just seen Thor 2, and god damn I love a good villain*, and what better way to show that than through a scarf-based reference that only I will understand? Loki and I apparently favour similar colour schemes, too, so that was also a plus.

The green is Malabrigo Arroyo in Vaa, the grey is Louisa Harding Orielle, the black is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino. I knit it on 4mm needles, finished it, and realised it was impractically gigantic (and that was the small size). I found the masochism to rip it out, halved the number of all the section repeats, and was a lot happier with the end result (though i could have saved quite a lot on yarn if I'd known I was going to do that.)

I worked on this while I went to visit my best friend in New York in January. (I thought I would have something to knit on the plane, but then was too much of a chicken to risk taking the knitting needles on board and having them taken away.) One evening we were hanging out with her friends in the common room, me knitting and her solving a Rubix cube as we sat on the couch at the end of the room. One of her friends' friends was a film student, and commented on the fact that both of being casually engaged in activities as we talked made it look like we were in a film - characters flatly delivering dialogue is dull, so you want to have them doing something else, as people often are. I hadn't consciously noticed that before on-sceen, and now I can't not.

What I can also take from that is that my natural behaviour comes off as artifice contrived  to appear natural.

* I actually preferred the treatment of Loki in Thor and Avengers to Thor 2. A lot of the character's strength came from the fact that the role was written a little flat, and given a great deal of depth by Tom Hiddleston. It seemed like the writers of Thor 2 picked up on what fans liked about the nuances of his performance, and then wrote it all in explicitly. I found it a bit heavy-handed. Still a fun silly film, though.

Back from the dead

I forgot to post. And then I forgot to post some more. And then I felt guilty, and put this blog to the back of my mind.

Every time I've remembered that this blog exists, I've considered putting the patterns up as Ravelry downloads and deleting the whole thing. Most of the tiny number of people who follow it also know me in real life, and since I post pictures of everything I make on Facebook anyway (so people can tell me how lovely they are and stroke my ego), it wouldn't be any loss. What's held me back is the one or two people who don't know me, and how that affects me writing and posting. I sort of love reading blogs belonging to people I don't know, even - sometimes especially - if I don't particularly like them. It's fascinating to see what people are willing to share, what persona they try to create for strangers. Lifestyle blogging and image creation are pretty compelling. There are layers of narcissism to the fact that I like to skim over this and see how I try to come across to strangers. What interests us is finding out what we are like, mar a deirtear.

I've made some quite fun things in the last year, maybe I'll give them their own posts. Other ways I have been filling my time include having three jobs, joining a SCUBA-diving club, applying for postgraduate positions, taking up climbing, working through my to read pile, travelling, marathoning a lot of TV shows, and sitting quietly.