Still Life, With Cats

The Harry Potter movie saga is now done, and overall, I’m mostly happy. Of the remaining four, I think I’d only seen the first Deathly Hallows before, so the others were brand new for me.

I know that when they turn a book into a movie, that things have to be cut out, and in some cases I am fine with it (see yesterday’s comment regarding the hacking out of most of the Quidditch Tournament). But there were a lot of things that popped up in the movies that were never actually *explained*, like the fact that Harry keeps peering into a piece of glass. In the movie, no one ever explains why he has it, or what it is, or how it works – it’s just some random bit of glass he pulls out from time to time. Considering that it’s fairly central to the plot, that was a big disappointment. Oh and let us not forget that all along Harry’s been convinced Snape is evil, yet when he’s lying there dying, Harry is right there to take his memories and do exactly what Snape says.

And some things that were left out entirely. Removing the entire subplot with the house elves? Okay, that’s fine – it didn’t detract from the story. Ignoring the fact that Neville Longbottom was *also* part of the original prophecy – that I’m not okay with. By the end of the last movie I’d all but convinced myself that they were going to change things and Neville wouldn’t be the one to kill the snake, so when it finally happened I cheered. Neville, of all of them, deserved that glory.

I do feel as if the second half of Deathly Hallows addressed that whole tangle with the elder wand more successfully than the book, so at least there is that. And like I said, overall I’m pretty happy. And anyway, it doesn’t matter because now I have finally seen them all and that was the whole point of this exercise in the first place.

*****

I freely admit today’s dishcloth is totally phoning it in. Cast on 36 stitches, knit until done. Voila. Boring garter stitch dishcloth. Let’s just say that I’ve got a lot of variegated yarn in the stash and I didn’t feel like trying to find another pattern to deal with it.

We watched the 2nd Harry Potter movie yesterday. Alas, not even the adorableness of Emma Watson could save that one. Such a relief to know they got a new director for all the remaining ones, or this franchise might have been doomed to fade slowly away. I spent the majority of Chamber of Secrets sitting on the couch cringing and reminding myself that I just had to grimly get through it in order to move on to the next one. I think the problem is that the first two movies feel as if someone decided they were actually making an action movie, but with magic (!!). And that isn’t what Harry Potter really is.

Thankfully today’s Harry Potter movies were significantly better. I know I saw Prisoner of Azkaban before, when it first came out (ten years ago), because I remember how much I loved David Thewlis as Professor Lupin (surely I am not the only one who thinks it might be kind of fun to have a boggart in the closet, right?). However, I’m pretty sure I never managed to go and see Goblet of Fire (although interestingly, Richard *did* see it, so maybe I was out of town or something – who knows), because I am sure I would have remembered the great relief I felt upon discovering that at least in the movie, the script writer had the desperately needed foresight to hack out all extraneous fluff about the Quidditch tournament and get right to the actual plot.

*****

Today’s dishcloth doesn’t have an official pattern. It was inspired primarily by a test knit I’m currently working on (because yes, I am knitting other things beside dishcloths this month; it’s just that the dishcloths are the only things for which I can show you pictures), which includes swaths of double seed stitch. Considering yesterday’s issue with the variagated yarn, I decided to give something a try, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. There’s pooling, of course, since that’s the curse of the variagated yarn after all, but the texture of the pattern makes up for it.

Because I know someone’s going to ask, here’s what I did. I cast on 36 stitches, and then I did 2 rows of k1, p1, followed by 2 rows of p1, k1, and just repeated that until it was roughly square in shape.

I’d been hearing low rumbles for half an hour or so, but I didn’t pay them much mind. They could just have easily been one of the neighbors moving their garbage cans back into their yard, or dragging something around. But then a flash of lightning caught my eye through the window, and a few seconds later, the loud BANG of thunder, followed shortly thereafter by the frantic skittering of all the cats in the house as they reacted to the noise. And I looked through the window and thought, ah, *there’s* the storm they’ve been saying we’re going to have.

For those of you who might not be aware, California is in the middle of a serious drought (of the ‘once-in-500 years’ level of severity). We got a lot of rain in December, but it was only a drop in the bucket when compared to what we need to end this thing, and January was the driest month in recorded history (going back to the 1800s). So any mention of possible precipitation gets everyone around here anxious and hopeful and crossing all their fingers and toes.

It dribbled on and off for most of the day. But by the time I had to leave the house this evening, it was pretty steady.

The group in which I sing recently found ourselves a new home for both practice and performances – at Beatnik Studios in downtown Sacramento. It’s a wonderful space -the acoustics are terrific, and since there’s no fixed seating, we’ve got a lot of flexibility in how we perform to make the most of it. It also means we occasionally get to collaborate with other artists.

The reason I headed out into the rain tonight was to take part in this, which blended music, blessings from a Shaman, and so on, into a really amazing experience. I was one of the singers in the quartet so we were downstairs, letting our sound come up from below. Plus we found a huge piece of plastic so two of us (amusingly, the two shortest in the group) turned it into a thundersheet during the latter part of the ceremony.

Driving back home after the event, I noticed that some of the roads and off ramps are starting to flood. I am torn between being thrilled that enough rain has fallen that this is a problem, to being concerned that someone is going to get hurt when they hit one of those huge puddles. But at least it is raining. Finally. And hopefully there will be a lot more where it came from.

*****

I started this dishcloth with a different yarn, but about 3 or 4 pattern repeats in, I ripped that out and started over with the solid green (and yes, it’s really green, although the color didn’t come out so well in the picture below). Variegated yarns always look so pretty in the skein, but they are *such* a pain to work with later on. Pattern is Diagonal Check.

As I was rummaging through the yarn stash this afternoon, I stumbled across a half skein of yarn. I have no idea how I got it, but the fact that it’s only half a skein suggests I’ve already made at least one dishcloth out of it, and the lack of any similarly colored dishcloths in the house further suggests it was likely the result of a swap – probably Dishrag Tag. I pulled it out, pondered it, and then promptly dragged out the kitchen scale to see if it might be enough. Exactly 30 grams of yarn, and one of the dishcloths from earlier in the week was 32 – which means it would be fine.

Even so, I decided I didn’t want to have to rip anything back. So I cast on for the classic diagonal garter stitch cloth with the eyelet edging.

There are a bazillion names for this pattern, but I think my favorite is the Idiot’s Dishcloth. It requires virtually no thought whatsoever to knit, and (except for the first and last rows) consists of a single row. The beauty of a diagonally knit cloth is that I could occasionally weigh the remainder and thus knew exactly when to start the decreases. You can see in the picture just how much yarn was actually left after I bound off.

Today’s dishcloth is the Lattice Stitch pattern. It’s a 6-row pattern with no garter stitch border (and I admit I find I prefer the ones without the tedious garter stitch border) that’s easily memorizable. I might be tempted to do this one again.

Sitting in the food court at the airport in Atlanta last week, waiting to fly home, I saw a woman sitting at a table near me. She looked to be around my age, if not a bit older, and around my size. The similarities ended there, however. She was dressed smartly, in a fashionable shirt and pants set, and as she stood to go, she pulled on a chic black trench – the type I always dream wistfully of wearing but realize would just turn me into a large black blob. Her hair was ever so slightly wavy and looked as if she knew what she was doing when she looked into the mirror, instead of just running her hands through it, squinting, shrugging, and then walking away. I looked at her and thought, maybe someday, I could aspire to be that type of woman – the type of cool, collected, smartly dressed person that someone else will look at and say ‘someday I want to be *her*.”

And then I dropped pizza on my pants and realized that seriously, that just is never going to happen.

*****

Day Two’s dishcloth is the Reversible Textured Dishcloth. Aside from 4 rows of garter stitch at top and bottom, the entire pattern consists of exactly one row. The result is a thicker, squishier cloth than some of the other patterns I’ve made. This one I might actually use to scrub something (although probably not dishes, because that’s what scrubby sponges are for).