It's hard to blog with a cat on your lap

A small orange-ish cat decided to take a nap on me for most of the afternoon, so it was a little hard for me to update today. I wasn't in the mood to take pictures, but: Northern Lights mitten #1 is complete, and I'm almost past the cuff on #2. I haven't done any more work on Brian's convertible mittens, but now I have this handy (and oh-so-intelligible) diagram: Can you tell we had a little trouble communicating which measurements I need? In the meantime, since I have ::gasp:: NO SOCKS on the needles, I casted on for the Gentleman's Fancy Socks in a lovely gray-blue shade of Schaefer Anne. I can't wait for you to see it, I love this color so much that I'm almost sad to see it go. Actually I'm very sad. These socks are knit on US0's, and the mittens are on US1's, so my fingers are aching for a larger-gauge project. Tomorrow I'm going to go out for some bamboo/birch US8 dpns to knit the sleeves on my striped raglan (pictures to come). I bought metal dpns but they are waaaaay too heavy to use, flopping around everywhere - what was I thinking? On the movie front, yesterday I watched both Night Watch (Nochnooi Dozor) and Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor). Night Watch is out in the US now and Day Watch will probably get here in the next couple years. Anyway. Hmmm. I'm still processing my thoughts on these. I think my enjoyment of the films was hindered somewhat by shoddy subtitling, but I don't think a perfect translation would have made me like them more. The first film was rather confusing and a lot of plot elements were unexplained (to which fans of the series would say, "Read the books!"). While the plot of the second film was more complex, I understood it better and enjoyed it a lot more. The special effects were pretty cool at times (in fact I'd say they're what attracted me to the movies in the first place after seeing the trailer for Night Watch) but they couldn't carry the films. There's a lot going on, visually, but for some reason I had a really hard time choosing stills to post. Anyway, here's a few (from Day Watch) that are interesting to look at, but probably not representative of the film as a whole: I guess I'm a little disappointed, since I thought I'd be really into these movies (and spent so much time and effort trying to track them down). But Day Watch is definitely growing on me, the more I think about it. If you're thinking about seeing Night Watch in the theater, I've heard that a) it's cut a little bit from the Russian version, and b) apparently the subtitles that Fox chose aren't really accurate translations, in some parts. Just fyi. I might not get a movie in tonight (Project Runway finale!) but if I do, it'll be either Contempt or F for Fake. More knitting content next time, promise!