The last three movies

I'm so tired. I got up this morning, knowing it was Monday and the festival is over, and then was surprised when Elaine got up to go to school. Isn't this a day of rest for all of us? Apparently not.

The queen of the volunteers wearing the fingerless mitts

I decided at the last minute to work an additional shift Sunday night because a lot of venues were short-staffed. (There must be a way to get volunteers to stick around to the bitter end, but this year there were lots of unfilled slots in the schedule in the last days of the fest.) We got new ticket scanning software this year and the volunteers who wielded the wands got double rewards -- we get a voucher to see a movie, at the festival or year-round at the Bloor cinema. I had volunteered at the training session for the scanners, taking attendance, and had sort of fiddled around with the system, so when my venue last night was short a scanner, I offered to give it a try.  Zap, zap, zap, no problemo. So, I got four vouchers (it was a long shift!), got to see a movie and got to see the packing up of the box office, the recycling of the extra screening schedules and the taking down of the last posters. Closure of sorts.

My shift covered two movies, and each was preceded by a short. I couldn't get in in time to see the shorts, since I was scanning tickets, even of late-comers, and we had other chores to do, but I did get a chance to see one movie last night, Random Acts of Legacy. It is the story of a Chinese-American family as told by found 16mm home movies. These reels of film came up for auction, and luckily they had the photographer's name, Silas Fung, on them so we have a starting place to find out more. Our modern filmmaker found family members who could identify people, tell us who those white people were at the party, why the mom went to Banff with a bunch of people in 1940 or so, what's up with the Chicago World's Fair.... Also it was really interesting to see what happens to film, even well taken-care-of film, over time! You can digitize the images, but you sometimes end up with digitized damage.

One of the things I like about documentaries is seeing these ordinary people becoming part of the historical record. Everyone has something interesting in their lives, even if we think we are just trudging along.

That can segue neatly into Friday night's movie, Obit. There is a crew of probably fewer than a dozen people at the New York Times who write obituaries of the newsworthy and notable when they pass on. (Though they don't say "pass on." To get in the NYT obits, you "die.") The film shows the day-to-day fact gathering and deadlines, but also tells us about the writers: how they decide who gets in, how they think about living and dying.

My little alphabetical-order-loving heart fluttered at the sight of the morgue, which in this context is where they keep not dead people, but old files and clippings and bits of information. They used to have up to 30 staff in the morgue, but now there is one man, who can't possibly keep track of everything. I think one could make a whole movie about him.

The writing staff try to have "advances," kind of pre-written obituaries, for the big names, but sometimes their planning is a bit off. They wrote up an advance for a teenager who was an aviatrix in the 30s, figuring she'd go down in a fiery crash, but she lived another 80 years.

Top-notch!

Sunday morning Elaine and I went to see Suited. I was a teeny bit disappointed that there wasn't more nuts-and-bolts talk about the cutting and the sewing, but the stories told here were pretty wonderful. Someone went to a tailor and got a suit made, and then told all their friends.... The tailor didn't balk at making a fashionable, well-fitting suit for a trans man, and soon filled a niche with needed services. There was a law student who wanted to look good, to match their good grades -- I think even wearing the suit he once got told he was perfect for the job but the firm couldn't handle "the trans thing." There was a couple getting married, a kid preparing for a bar mitzvah, a trans woman who was about to present a case before a high court... all people who want wear clothes that fit their bodies and their lives.

Suited was showing with a short film called Handsome & Majestic, a story about a kid in Prince George BC, of all places. Trans boy in small town gets bullied... His family is supportive, although the dad seems to have taken a while to get used to the idea, but we heard at the chat afterwards that Milan, the kid, has had to leave school. Apparently Telus funds the making of short films about towns across BC, and the filmmakers were just lucky that when they hit Prince George they found this interesting story. Happy, sad, infuriating, but certainly interesting.

Will take some deep breaths and get back to normal. Arthur still pondering the blue hair issue.

Day 8 of 11

I saw one movie yesterday, called Bobby Sands: 66 Days.

People my age all know the basic story, and if it was confusing in our 20s, I'd say it is no less confusing now. So much depends on the words used to describe the two sides. If they were presented, as they often were in the mainstream media, as Catholics fighting Protestants, that's stupid, just stop. If they are called Irish Republicans just wanting to live in their home, against the oppressive, imperialist English who wanted it for themselves, then they get more sympathy. The movie tells us the IRA killed thousands of people over the years, including many civilians, but the men's complete devotion to their cause is admirable. Sands and others were objecting to the fact that the law had changed and they were no longer treated as political prisoners, but as criminals.

At the beginning of the movie, crew are shown building a set, a prison cell. The actors in this cell don't say anything, but provide a visual for some things we just don't have pictures of. There are a lot of interviews with historians, other ex-IRA members, other prisoners, men who played football with Sands in their childhood... Interesting movie about the man and the times.

One wonderful thing about seeing a movie at a festival is usually the Q&A sessions after the films. The director and producer were present last night. The Q&A started out something like this:

"Is your film editor related to So-and-So?"
"No."

Then someone noted the absence of women's voices in the movie. The director defended himself well enough (significant women didn't talk to him; there were images in the movie of women's groups marching and participating; he didn't want a token woman) but the questioner wanted to keep on arguing. He shut her down and moved on to another question... which started, "I went to Ireland once..." blah blah blah, no question, just reflections on what he had seen, on and on.

They managed to shut him up, and on to the next question, "What advice do you have for us in Canada with aboriginal children in distress and committing suicide, blah blah on and on." "I have no qualifications to talk about that!"

Next question, "Who were Bobby Sands's influences in this business, could it be Gandhi, Mandela, who did this in prison and that in prison, blah blah on and on?" "I think I covered that in the movie...."

The poor staff member who was meant to be running this was trying to get some on-point conversation going, but the audience was apparently full of people with their own agendas who didn't really want to talk about the movie. I left after the Mandela question, but I don't think they had time for much more.

In other news, Arthur made it home successfully, and is talking about dyeing his hair blue.

I am the Blues

Today's movie at the Hot Docs film festival was I Am the Blues. After the Holocaust and crazy tickling and flag-waving, I figured this would be a bit more straightforward.

Pre-movie knitting and coffee

And it was: a simple documentation of blues musicians in Mississippi and other places in the American south. Octogenarians playing the blues... doesn't get much better than that.

Of course, their stories are intriguing and the music is great and the community seems supportive and friendly and all-round wonderful, and there were pictures of the Mississippi and surrounding landscape. It was entirely engrossing. People in the movie audience applauded when musicians performed on the screen!

And then... Daniel Cross, the director, and Bobby Rush (82 years old, has made over 200 records, I'd never heard of him) came onstage for a Q&A and a song. Wow.

bad camera-phone picture

Torontonians: it's coming to the Bloor Cinema in June! See it. They also have a website with extra footage and more.

Just because we are finally noticing that spring has sprung, I will show you a magnolia spotted on my dash out to the grocery store -- I had to buy a fatted chicken to feed to my returning son! More on that tomorrow, perhaps!

Three more movies

Since we last spoke, I have seen three movies. Let's see if I can remember what they were.

Sunday afternoon was The Last Laugh. This might have been the best so far. Mel Brooks, Rob Reiner, Sarah Silverman, Robert Clary (who was in Buchenwald and acted in Hogan's Heroes) and others talk about the difference between a Nazi joke and a Holocaust joke (and then there's plain old Jewish jokes).

Mel Brooks said he could certainly do Nazi jokes (he wrote The Producers) but he wouldn't touch a Holocaust joke... although he laughed at some! Lots of talk with comedians and Holocaust survivors, including Renee Firestone, about what humour can do. Really interesting as well as funny.

That evening I went to see Gary Numan: Android in La La Land. Really, the last time I paid attention to Gary Numan must have been about 1982. We all loved -- and then got sick of -- Cars, and then that was it. But he continued to do things after that: making and losing money, finding the perfect wife, dealing with crippling anxiety, starting to make successful albums again.

Yesterday's movie was one I'd been really looking forward to, Contemporary Color. David Byrne was involved and, I mean, if David Byrne likes it, it must be good, right? I'm not sure what I was expecting, but what we got was a concert film, more or less. High school colour guard teams evolved from baton twirlers and military parades and half-time shows and probably other things! They toss (fake) rifles in the air, they toss flags in the air, they do sort of gymnastics and sort of ballet and sort of synchronized swimming on land. David Byrne decided this was a great thing and arranged a show with live music and ten teams performing. We get a bit of backstage chatter, a few interviews with excited kids... all a bit weird.

Today, no movies! Back into action tomorrow -- and Arthur should be coming home tomorrow as well! Much excitement.

Slippers and Ticklers

Another day of movie-watching under my belt. Yesterday afternoon I saw The Slippers and the short Bootwmn.

Bootwmn deals with "cowboy" boots made by a lesbian bootmaker. I think the best thing I can do is show you the trailer.

It was very good. It's hard for shorts to get seen by big audiences, and they are often wonderful.

The main feature was about the most famous slippers around, Judy Garland's ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Wow, what a crazy story...

The first auction of the shoes sort of started the business of Hollywood memorabilia collecting, and of course we speak to some of the main players in that community. The man who rescued/stole costumes when the studios were wanting to get rid of things is the "hero," although he died many years ago. There's a bit of a villain, too. And humour, betrayal, great riches, Debbie Reynolds, the Smithsonian, theme parks, mysterious theft, mining pits... (Fun collecting fact: The dress Marilyn Monroe is wearing when she stands over the subway vent once sold for $5-million.) Highly recommended.

I had a few hours to kill before the evening movie, so I met Stephen for dinner and a beer, and then we were off to line up for Tickled. All the buzz has been like this: "See it; we can't say anything more; it's wild." So we knew very little about what we would see in the movie, and I suppose I'd best continue the say-nothing reportage. It really was astounding. There is tickling involved, to be sure. A reporter wants to write something about competitive endurance ticking, and gets sucked into a 2-year project... and we see it all in this movie. Super-highly recommended.

Today, the Holocaust and Gary Numan.

One down, nine to go

The Hot Docs festival has started again. I have been working in the office, wondering if I should get some theatre shifts to enjoy the hustle and bustle. Naah, at my first movie, I was sure glad I wasn't ushering.

Yesterday, Stephen and I went to see Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, by Werner Herzog.  It talked about the history of the internet, the people who first connected computers and networks, a hacker or two, people who avoid the internet, people recovering from addiction to the internet....

I gave it 4/5 on the audience choice ballot, but to the short we saw before it, I gave 5/5.

It is called The Dog, and it shows people with robot pets. What happens when the manufacturer stops making parts for your little robot dog?

Today, two more! Will report in when next I come up for air.

Just about the craziest hat

I knit a hat. I wonder if anyone will ever wear it out in public.

Grey plain ol' wool for some ribbing, then we alternate that and some golden/green/yellow/black eyelash fuzz.

Perfectly reasonable.

Not everybody thinks so.

A thing you should know before attempting this yourself: the eyelash yarn works better from one direction than it does from the other. I discovered this by working it from the wrong end. The threads bunched up weirdly around the needles instead of flowing smoothly along. Of course, once I figured this out I was well into it, and the thought of ripping this stuff out was too horrible to contemplate. 

Another thing that would be useful in planning your eyelash fuzz hat: the fuzz mainly goes to the purl side of the fabric. The ball band says to knit this on something like 7mm needles, and since I was also using DK wool, I was using 4mms. That might have had something to do with it; it might be more flowy on bigger needles. I just turned the hat inside-out when I was done. 

The "right" side

The "wrong" side

We seem to be past wool-hat weather here for this year. I think I'll try to photograph as many people as possible wearing this, and we'll see what happens come November.

I sewed something

I made these fingerless mitts from a pattern in an Alabama Chanin book. First I had to go to the copy shop and get the pattern enlarged (something like 317%, if I recall correctly), so that took me months. I was finally spurred to action when I found a pile of X-Small volunteer shirts left over from the 2014 Hot Docs festival. Perfect.

I made the first mitt, applying beads and doing a bit of stitching here and there, but found that my hands are a teeny bit bigger than "average."

So the single mitt sat around for another few months while I gathered my strength to make something that would really be useless to me! However, I did it, finished the second one, and will wave them around the volunteer office next week and see if I can find someone with average hands.

I have enough shirts to attempt a hat. Unfortunately we have red shirts this year, so it won't match or look official, but I would like to see if I can get a hat to fit.

A few days away

Last weekend I hopped off to Castlegar for a few days. 

Of course you get a "knitting in the Vancouver airport" photo. I had this Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn for another project, but, flushed with the success of the previous sock yarn hat, I decided a hat with this would be the perfect travel knitting. The colours turned out quite differently than I had anticipated. You just can't tell from the outside of the ball. 

Unlike in Toronto, in Castlegar spring has pretty much arrived. Forsythia blooming all over the place, and the lilacs should be out in the coming week, I'd bet.

My brother came out as well, and his plane was delayed in Toronto by snow.

Moss outside my sister's back door.

And the river just down the street. I spent some time one morning wandering along the shore looking at the rocks. I only brought one home this time, a greenish one that I can imagine is jade. 

Even the sewer covers are cooler than those at home. 

My sister was taking part in a Scrabble tournament at the library one day, so I went along. She beat my total by a few points: 977 to 969, but neither of us was in the top three -- those guys had 1100+ points in three games! 

Someone's bag I coveted. The base is just denim, with the Scrabble fabric appliquéd on. I've looked for such fabric, but have never found any so good. 

My favourite rack of the day. I don't think I actually played either of those words, but I did use my X to great advantage, I recall. 

We did a very little bit of work on my mom's stuff in the storage unit. We carefully picked three boxes that contained easy stuff to deal with -- at least one box will just go to the thrift shop; one sister picked through and took care of another boxful; and there are a few things which we'll deal with "later." One day I'll go with more than a small back pack, and bring home things like this teapot. For now it is back in the locker until another day. (I tucked the little bowls in my bag this time.)

A brother-in-law, a sister and a brother, trying to make the camera take a picture. We managed to get all 5 siblings together, which is a bit of a rarity.

And we managed to get one decent picture of us all, even more of a rarity. Sister, me, brother, dad, sister, sister.

The hat got almost finished, but I was working on a circular needle and needed double-points to finish it, so I actually had no knitting on the plane ride home! 

A last walk in the woods before getting my plane home. We saw an eagle that morning. 

The trip over the mountains to Calgary was perfectly clear and I had a window seat. I have quite a few pictures like this! I zoomed in on this perfect U-shaped valley. 

I finally finished the hat. I think it'll go into the Christmas box.

I got home on Friday at 1 in the morning, and Stephen left at the crack of dawn on Sunday to go to England. Maybe it will be spring here when he gets back!

Gearing up for another Hot Docs festival

At the end of April, the Hot Docs festival takes place here in Toronto. Ten days of all docs, all the time. I am volunteering again, but all my shifts are in the office, rather than in the cinemas. I remember last year thinking I should get out more in the hustle and bustle, but once again, when faced with a choice between a 3-hour shift using my knowledge of alphabetical order and sorting and categorizing, or a 5-hour shift ripping hundreds of tickets, I chose the office. I know my strengths...

I do, however, have 10 tickets to the festival, which come with my subscription to a year-long documentary series. So I sort that out first, getting morning screenings instead of late-night ones if I can, choosing some films for just me and some to drag family to. I will get more vouchers for tickets from volunteering, just to fill up every waking moment during those 10 days, despite the sensible part of my brain telling me that maybe 10 movies will be enough.

The whole lineup is here. I think I won't give you any hints, but will for sure keep you in the loop when I see the films. Some trailers are here: go crazy -- I have!

A new hat

Although I have many UFOs hanging over me, I decided we needed a new hat around here, using up leftovers from mittens and a bit of hot red from the Temperature Scarf.

Elaine is going hiking in the Rocky Mountains this summer, and they tell you to be prepared for all sorts of weather. A nice, light, wool hat seems just the thing.

She will be taking long underwear, shorts, mittens, and underwear suitable for swimming in. Who knows what the weather will be at the top of a mountain?

The intrepid traveller-to-be.

The state of the knitting pile

It seems like a long time since I posted anything much here, and certainly whatever I was knitting last time has been brushed aside.

Here are a pair of socks I finished for Elaine a while back. Fraternal twins, indeed. The yarn, as I recall, was sort of wimpy and splitty, and I don't expect them to wear especially well, but they are fun and warm for now.

This is my living room coffee table. The gold is a hat; the white is a shawl and the purple is some nice wool DK yarn someone gave me. (My friend had been trying to knit a hat for her ex-husband's new baby, but didn't get very far, and in the intervening couple of years, the moths or carpet beetles got at it, so as I unravelled the few rows she had knit, I found 2 or 3 weak spots!)

This you may recognize as the yarn I made my beautiful mitts out of. One day I went in to the corner store, carrying my mittens, and I came out with a few groceries but no mitts! I went back in, looked everywhere, and they had simply vanished. Into someone's pocket, I suspect, but there's no way to know. Big sigh.

So now I am using the leftovers to make a hat. Sticking a red stripe in, with the "hot" yarn from my Temperature scarf.

The hat gets taken with me wherever I go, because you can't really screw up "knit 2, purl 2." This shawl, however, stays put. It's a pattern out of an old Paton's book, called Shawls, but they are all shown as baby blankets.

The yarn is the California Cotton I got a year or two ago. I'm thinking of the summer, but we'll just see how fast I knit, and how much I get distracted. 

I really like the leaves, and I like the old-fashioned instructions. At the beginning of each row you "increase." No more information than that. And all the decreases to shape the leaves are k2tog: no matched, reflected, mirrored decreases here. 

The shaping of the leaves continues into what we might think of as the border, so there are sloping lines of decreases up the outer stitches. The final instruction is to crochet a picot edge around the whole thing; we'll see how that turns out. 

And now you are kind of up to date on what is happening in my knitting pile!

Popping in here

A few things have happened around here. Not very much in the knitting department, really, because I have been flitting from project to project, knitting enough to hurt my arm, but not enough to have finished anything. The two main things are a fingering-weight hat and a "vintage" shawl -- from an old baby-shawl book. Alas, no pictures of either right now.

One of the things which messed my life up was that my phone died. I've never had that happen before. The phone was on the table, and when I picked it up it was really hot! Little mini battery explosion?? Who knows. But then it takes some time to get a moment to go to the shop, and it took forever to get the whole plan settled and fill out various forms, blah blah blah. Since the old phone didn't even turn on, they couldn't transfer my contact list over, and if there were any photos I hadn't downloaded, they are gone now. First world problem, I know.

I do have a couple of pretties to show you.

This is a thing I made before Christmas. Maybe I even posted about it before? Anyways, it is dangly bits from an old chandelier, stuck on a piece of dowel, with twinkly LED lights mixed in. Quite nice, but perhaps not the final stop for these danglers. I'd love to put it in a window, but my own window options are not great.

This is a poster my neighbour had. She lived with her diplomat husband in Havana in the early 70s and picked up some real treasures. She was selling three of her collection of posters, and this was my favourite. Todos a la Plaza = Everyone to the plaza to hear Fidel ramble on and on about stuff on July 26, the anniversary of the Revolution. I really like it and it is now in my dining room. (If only I were going to Cuba again soon....)

And finally, our neighbourhood Coopers Hawk is back in the park. A sure sign of spring!

It didn't even take two years

I sewed a sort of pseudo-Alabama Chanin top, made from some jersey shirt-shapes I picked up at the Textile Museum sale one May.

I started this in the summer of 2014, blazed on for a short time, and then balked for almost two years at putting the binding around the neck. This morning I came across it, decided to give it a try, couldn't find my navy thread, went for a long walk to buy one spool of thread, came home and finished 'er off.

Not bad, but not very heavily decorated, is it? I don't think there is much of the superhero pyjamas left, and I'll just leave it as is. Next time...

I actually am thinking of my next project of this sort. I have a bunch of T-shirts that I want to make into a dress. Sew a big gathered skirt of shirt bits to another shirt. Not sure about any embellishment. Not sure about making the skirt doubly thick. Not sure about much at all, but I keep looking at my green shirts and itching to cut them up.