Harry Kept Me Up Late

While we’re in the midst of Harry Potter Fever (having just read the last book and seen the second-last movie), we broke down and bought the first 2 movies on sale the other day. We saw them originally in the theatre and that was a long time ago. The actors have all grown! Forgot how long the movies are and the Chamber of Secrets kept us up an hour after our usual bedtime last night. It was good to watch them again though. I’d like to get the other 2 that are out on DVD as well. Haven’t found a cheap copy with all the extras in it yet though so I’m holding out. We rarely buy movies because we usually only watch things once. We were joking that the only ones we buy are kid’s movies like Wallace & Grommit and Ice Age. But Lord of the Rings, the Firefly series (and Serenity movie) and the whole Blackadder series aren’t kid stuff! (I still can’t bring myself to watch Serenity again — too sad. Sniff!) Otherwise we rent or borrow DVDs from our kids who have extensive collections. Even my granddaughter can work the remote control herself now and of course has her own movies. Wonder if her little brother will develop different tastes?

I’ve got about a metre woven on the blanket, henceforth known as the Circus Blanket because changing colours so often feels like a 3-ring circus. Not a lot of weaving, I know but I can only work on it for short intervals. It’s a long reach across and my neck doesn’t like it too much. The only deadline is my own desire for another warm blanket so I can take my time if I want. As long as I don’t get too cold waiting. Heh! Thanks for the kind comments on it. I’m liking it better the more I weave. Hope I don’t run out of yarn though. The last section may be mostly black! I need to use that more often.

Thanks to Gail for the hint that the Tofutsies yarn might be splitty. I can see that happening because the plies don’t cling together as much as if they were all wool. Two plies are wool, one is soysilk and one is cotton blended with chitin. The colour I’ve got is 788 on this page (scroll down). However the image on my computer is a lot darker than the yarn appears in the ball. I’ll have to knit it up to see what it really looks like. And that won’t be for awhile yet. I have other projects in front of this one in The Queue.

While we were grocery shopping yesterday, in the book section I found another book that I had to have. Surprise-surprise! Who needs to eat anyway? This one is “Creative Embellishments: For Paper, Jewelry, Fabric, and More” by Sherrill Kahn. I actually met Sherrill a long time ago when she first began her Impress Me stamp company, though I’ve never taken a class with her and I tend to cut my own rubber stamps. She has a very definite style and colour palette, kind of “southwest-ish” but more intense. I already own her first book “Creating With Paint” and have been contemplating her second one “Creative Stamping” but this one jumped into my shopping cart of it’s own volition! Some hints of the contents: beads made with plastic sheet protectors or fun foam and a heat gun, yarn-wrapped chenille stems, tyvek, laminating, stamping, stenciling, angelina fibres, embossed metal and more. As she says in her introduction, she wanted to include every technique she’s ever learned but that wasn’t possible. Can’t say she didn’t try though! Lots of fun ideas here. For a small taste, check out her Projects section on the website for some of the things Sherrill does with paints and stamps.

What else? The weather is crappy again. That's why there's no photos today. Too dark. Cool and somewhat rainy on and off. I’m giving up summer as a lost cause. At least I can sleep comfortably at night. But it’s too much to be wearing socks and a fleece vest in August! Oh, and I found out what is happening to the very bottom of the siding on the house next door: more wood but in horizontal strips instead of the shingles on the upper areas. They finished quite a bit of it today. To show you how bad the weather is, they had the radial-arm saw inside the basement to keep it out of the wet.