The MAL, and the Not MAL

Hello my lovelies! How is your prep for welcoming the Great Pumpkin coming along?

(For those who are less interested in the Make-Along talk, feel free to jump below the cute little Reaper divider bar for the other fibre related blather.)

Thank you to everyone who was able to join in during the Stitch & Flick sessions the last two weekends! In particular, last weekend’s Casper chatter was a delight. We gushed about how amazing Kat is as a character, reminisced about how we all wanted to be in that slow dance with Kat and Casper, and delighted over Dr Harvey’s Dad-skills; particularly in improvised fencing equipment.

I’ve also made a discovery from watching these flicks - Aran sweaters in horror/scary movies are basically Red Shirts. Yup, that’s right, as in the trope of 'if the character is in a red shirt they ain't coming back from the away mission.' It’s really starting to seem that, at least in the 90’s (that’s my data set for now) dudes wearing some form of Aran sweater end up dying, or being lost at sea, at some point during their story.

Dr Harvey (Casper)

Gordon/Uncle Fester (Addams Family)

   

I'm really intrigued to see if this pattern (har har!) keeps up. I also have to wonder if the Head of Costuming knew the traditions of the style when they chose to use the garments, or if they just knew the association with the sea/fishermen/boating/etc. My inner costumer is screaming 'Surely they would have known! That's the sort of attention to detail you were trained to expect!', but I'll have to ask around. If any of you lovely readers work for big ticket movies and feel up to sharing (truthfully, mind you) if the norm really is to know THAT much detail about a garment before attributing it to a character, please send me an email or a comment!


A little housekeeping while we're talking about the MAL....There are a couple of tweaks to the Stitch & Flick events but nothing major.

Dates & Start Times
First one is that I’ve updated the schedule to include days and start times for each flick. Fridays will be for the more kiddo friendly flicks, with the age rating rising as the weekend progresses. Start times are pushed back accordingly, as well, for those of us who might need to tuck a little one into bed before starting a more mature film.

Warning bells & Gongs
There will also be 1 hour warnings going out on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram before the start time for each flick. I was doing half hour warnings last week, but feedback suggests that a 1 hour heads up would be more useful.

REMINDER - Use the hashtags #Gr8PumpkinMAL and #StitchNFlick so we can include you in the conversation! And don’t forget to snap a photo of your WiP while you’re watching the flick and post it to the Ravelry group for an extra entry in the end prize!

Theme: Monster of the Week 

 - Frankenweenie   (Fri, 18:30 GMT+11) Rent it on Google Play or Amazon


- The Mummy (1999) (Sat, 19:00 GMT+11)
Get it on Netflix or rent it on Google Play or Amazon


- Ghostbusters (2016) (Sun, 21:00 GMT+11)
Get it on Netflix (if you're in north America) or rent it on Google Play or Amazon

Here’s a really adorable photo of non-Halloween related fibre fun. Just so you know we’ve changed topics.

#LifeGoals

School Holidays are done for this term, and it was back to school this week. The house is still standing, even. (possibly a surprise, given at one point we had at least 10 children pack themselves into our lounge for another movie marathon - it was pouring rain, best weather for dressing up as a fantastical creature and watching movies about magic, books, and adventures!) Now that school is back in session I’m getting to actually enjoy my morning coffee without interruption, and hopefully I’ll get to whack out a few fun stories for you darlings. (I have some, believe you me.)

Pumpkin Booties

So...yeah...that’s a frack-ton of ends to weave in. That photo isn't even of the completed first bootie...I didn't have the yarn balls to pull out the current mess of sends to snap another photo... 

This is what I get for not properly reading and meditating over the pattern before I cast on… See, if I’d thought about the pattern a little bit more before letting my excitement get the better of me and casting on I *might* have had the foresight to carry the two colours up one side as I went along. Instead, I just blindly followed the instructions, talking myself out of the mounting horror at the increasing number of ends to weave in.

I blame this for the reason I haven’t managed to finish the first bootie yet (and not on the excessive number of tweets during the last two Stitch & Flick sessions.). I *will* be carrying the yarn up for bootie #2, and it *will* be going faster. 

Because of the ridiculously slow progress on the pumpkin booties I found myself avoiding the project outside of specifically MAL time blocks. (I tell myself it’s because something with so many tangley bits is the worst thing ever to put in one’s bag for a day out running errands.) I have managed to whack out a couple of things extra to the MAL work. Don’t ask why I didn’t just cast on one of the other projects I had on my MAL list, I have no actual answer for that other than the yarn insisted I play with it.

I’ve managed to whack out these two pairs of socks - one for Youngling and one for the youngling of a friend with the leftovers - the smaller pair ended up being just a little bit too short (he’s 2, apparently they grow like weeds still), so they now have become an accessory to one of his stuffies. The photo of the larger pair was arranged by Youngling. She had a great time sorting out the backdrop. Might need to employ her to help take more photos for the blog in the future!

  

Despite being too small for the original recipient the second pair of rainbow socks are particularly nifty because, along with banging them out in a record 3 hours (ends woven in included) I did a magic trick with the base pattern. I started with one cuff-to-cuff sock tube and then split it in half and added on the toes. This method would also work with adding on heels, but I didn’t bother because I’d hoped these magic socks would be able to grow with the lucky lil’ dude. 

 

Happy to make a photo tutorial on how to do this if people are interested. Basically if you can cut in a heel (i.e. afterthought heel construction) then you can manage this method no problems.

I also cast on another sock tube, this time going from toe to toe. I’m not counting this towards my MAL projects, but I am going to point out the yarn is called Goth Kitty. I know there are plenty of you out there who absolutely understand why I couldn’t wait any longer to cast on with this yarn, you’ve had the same struggle with the same yarn. Let’s just agree to not judge each other in the spirit of fibre fiendhood, shall we?

That pastry was delicious. If you're ever in Sydney and are willing to go on a little bit of a trek for a totally worth it baked good - I HIGHLY recommend Small Talk Cafe on New Canterbury Road. There's even a well serviced bus stop on either side of it. The owner makes all of his own fancy pants pastries to go with the tasty coffee. That one was rhubarb - perfectly tart and lightly sweet.

In other news, I’m sorry about the radio silence this month. There are some background things happening this month and next month that are quite a time and energy suck. They are things I prefer to keep private, but I’m hoping they will be done and dusted by the end of November. Until then, I’ll still be posting, the MAL will be continuing along as planned, but the level of knitting productivity and humour is going to go down a bit. It will rise again, though! Just stick with me. ;o)

   

Enjoying the blog?  It takes a lot of caffeine and yarn to make this happen! ;)

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