Knitting with Subtitles.

Life lesson #56,720.

Do not try to knit and watch a foreign movie with subtitles at the same time. It will end badly. Just how badly depends directly on how cool the movie is. It's some sort of complex inverse mathematical relationship that totally eludes me.

It all started when we checked the mail on Friday night and saw that the Netflix gods had bestowed on us a little gem of a vampire movie from Sweden called "Let the Right One In". Boygenius and I had heard great things about it, and we had missed it when it was in the little art house theater near our apartment a few months back so we were pretty excited when it showed up. Boygenius loves a good horror flick, and I do to a point-but I have to be in the mood for it and it can't just be your typical slasher film...there has to be some substance there. This one promised substance, and a good bit of a departure from the normal vampire film.

It would have been great, if I hadn't tried to knit while watching. I was thinking that I would be able to do a little blind 2x2 ribbing on the ole hug me tight while the movie was in progress, and it was not the best idea ever. Apparently I can watch a movie and knit, or read subtitles while watching a movie, but I can't do all three at the same time.

In the end, I ripped out the bulk of the 3 inches that I finished during the movie because I screwed up very early on and didn't catch my mistake. I also missed enough of the movie because of the knitting that I ended up having to watch it again to understand fully what was happening and to pick up on the subtlety of it all.

In the end, I learned that never again will I knit with subtitles. As for the movie, it was a good little film. As boygenius aptly described it, it was an epic tale, simply told and worth a look if you can handle the subtitles and you are after a good vampire film.

Just don't knit while you watch it :)

life lessons from wicked ugly yarn

Yesterday afternoon I wound off the singles that I spun up over the weekend and plied them into a skein of some of the worst looking offal that I have ever seen (and yet been extremely proud of)...its freakshow ugly, badly over twisted and wonky, but how freaking amazed am I that I made it myself?

I think that there is something to be said for learning to do something, anything really. When you begin so horribly but you keep on plugging away until you make it work, until you learn how to make it your own and something of beauty. I'm seriously thinking that this is what life is supposed to be. How many days have I been sleepwalking and going through the motions until I fall into trying to teach myself something new and it wakes me up again?

Sorry, but I'm getting a little existential today...I've realized that another excellent lesson that you can take from spinning is the concept that you can't hold on to anything too tightly or you won't make any progress. As in life, if you are grabbing on to that fiber (or anything or anyone really) with your best kung-fu grip, you can't be open to making progress. You are frozen, watching things degrade and trying desperately to keep em the same. That ain't good.
Once I learned to let go, its made both my life and my spinning better.

Here's to ugly spinning and letting loose!