theknittyvritti

maybe the baby will speak french?

As I've said, the baby blanket I'm working on is about a ten movie project. Well, as it happens, two of the movies I've watched while working on it are in French. Wouldn't it be weird if neonatal influence extended to what a knitter was doing while she made a blanket for a baby?

No, I'm not serious. At all. But I did want to recommend these movies. Both, it turns out, about tortured souls and creativity. But these two souls couldn't be more different.

The first was "La vie en Rose", the story of Edith Piaf. The story is not so interesting since it's been done , done, and re-done. Talented singer wastes it all by ruining her life with drugs and alcohol. Now we just have to wait for the Amy Winehouse version. But the acting was amazing. The actress who played Piaf just tore up the screen and held my interest from the second she appeared.

The second was "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". Julian Schnabel made a good decision, I think, to do this movie in French. His reason was that the character, a man who suffered locked-in syndrome and wrote a memoir about it, was French. As an English speaker watching, though, it forced a deeper level of engagement, and highlighted the foreignness of the man's experience. As in the past, Schnabel's artistic vision meshes seamlessly with his story-telling. A true artiste.

There you have it. I'm waiting until it's complete to show you the blanket again. It'll be soon, since le bebe is almost ici.

And there will be les gants (that's gloves to you) on Vendredi!

madame la farge at the movies

Part of the birthday fun, of course, was a movie. Now that we have what I call the BFTV (BF for Big Fucking---the thirty two inch TV was called the bftv, so what are you gonna call the forty-six inch one?), we rarely go to the movies at the theatre. Every twenty-two dollars we save by watching movies at home goes towards justifying the expense of the BFTV. The BFTV has made a TV watcher of me, which does not necessarily justify it's presence in my home.

The hat was going along so well, and the stitch was so simple, that I knew that I would be knitting at the movie, a lost pleasure in my non-knitting years. We saw the new Coen brothers movie, No Country for Old Men. It wasn't my pick, having heard that it was over-the -top violent, but I do love the Coen brothers and their impeccable eye for detail. Like Fargo, this one had plenty of local color and droll moments. And as promised, it was a relentless procession of deadly encounters, having little more sense than any other mass execution, including the French Revolution. Somewhere before the end of the movie, I began to feel like Madame la Farge, knitting away as the heads rolled, on and on. It was not so oddly soothing to be working the needles.

A few hours after the movie, happily ensconced at home on the night before the first snow of the year, the hat was completed. It is a success. Warm, soft, even flattering, which is always the gamble with hats. I would be happy to knit it again in any color or even colors he wants. The pattern is the Ribbed Watch Cap on the website vintageknits.com. Thanks guys, for saving the birthday!!!