An inauspicious beginning

Hi. Welcome. I'm Jenna, and this is my new blog. I'm combining two of my favorite interests (three, if you count photography), making this a space to discuss both knitting and movies. I'm excited to get started, even if no one ends up reading this :) It may be a little odd to start a blog with a finished object, but: Pattern: Ene's Scarf from Scarf Style Yarn: Laceweight wool from handpaintedyarn.com in Jacinto - less than one skein (can you believe it?) Needles: Denise interchangeable, size 6 This was a fun knit. Many people have had trouble with the beginning of the pattern, but I got stalled on the main pattern repeat. Half-way through I was sure things weren't lining up, and instead of going back and fixing the problem, I put the project down... for five months. I completed it (finally) as part of my Knitting Olympics goal - to finish up all of the poor, neglected projects I have lying around. My progress on that has varied - update in the next post. As for the yarn, I enjoyed working with it - the stuff has character. It's less evenly spun than other lace yarns on the market. There's not a lot of room for thick-and-thin textures in laceweight, but this yarn manages to pull it off somehow. Also, I found the color variations really nice - I agree whole-heartedly with what Eunny was saying about her Frost Flowers shawl. You can see the variations here, in a close-up of the lace: As you can see, my points weren't exactly pinned out perfectly - I can live with that. I didn't watch any Netflix last night (Alphaville is up next!) but I do have a movie to blog about: Gegen die Wand (literally "Against the Wall"), or Head On, is a gritty romance. The film is set in Germany but its subjects are Turkish. Cahit is a drunk, aimless widower who cleans up empties at a rock club, and Sibel is a young woman desperate to be free from her traditional Turkish family. When the two meet in a hospital, she sees her ticket out and asks Cahit to marry her. The film is an utterly captivating, often violent and painful portrait of their life together - a complicated sham marriage. At first. Parts of the film are difficult to watch (but if you've seen anything like Irréversible I doubt you'll flinch.) But the story is beautiful and heartbreaking, and, I think, deeply affecting. I wasn't going to mention Head On, but I saw this feature in the New York Times magazine about the year's great performances in film. And, boom: Birol Unel and Sibel Kekilli A pleasant surprise. These actors, these people, are so beautiful and wonderful to watch. (The whole piece in the magazine was magnificent, by the way - really incredible and innovative portraits.) Tomorrow: UFOlympics update (that's unfinished-object-olypmpics, btw) and Alphaville.