Tanya
I'm up at my parents' place for the weekend. Nothing like Vodka and discussing the Butterfly Effect with mom on a Friday night to relax me!
But back to Tuesday...The Tom Petty show was good...not the best I've ever seen, but understand, I've been seeing him for a looongggg time. And I have the 1980 tour T-shirt to prove it!
(On the right is, of course, the NEW shirt.) I think the souvenir seller wanted to buy the oldie right off my back - but I don't preserve this baby in mothballs and unicorn tears for nothing!
So yeah, that's for all you posers in your reproduction tees. You can suck it. And as for you, ugly Jabba the Hutt-looking dude, sitting behind us in section 116... Thanks for trying to ruin the best part of the night for me. That would be Steve Winwood's opening set! Nice guy Winwood stole the show, and damn, if he doesn't still sound as good as he did when he was 16 years old. Can you say that, Jabba?
And just a tip, J-hole - when you're trying to impress the dudes sitting beside you and the poor smoking hottie sitting next to you, who, by the end of night resembled nothing so much as poor Princess Leia herself in the full-on copper slave girl costume (she even gave me a pleading look): Please, do NOT try and give a Rock History 101 lesson by saying Monsieur Winwood was in the "Ginger Davis Group." Mayhap you mean the "Spencer Davis Group," and you are simply getting lost from point A to point B which is Blind Faith, and getting stuck at Point Dumbass, and putting Cream in the equation and somehow getting a synapse explosion on drummer Ginger Baker?
Tool.
So anyway, I wanted to talk about another nice guy. From Canada! Because there are just so many nice guys from the Northern Provinces. After being down in the dumps all week, I received a wonderful, unexpected gift from Rhichard at Koigu - and no, it wasn't YARN, because please, how obvious, and I don't need anymore. No, Mr. Awesome send me the nicest, handwritten note, and must have remembered me talking his ear off about Canadian figure skaters at TNNA, because he sent me this with a note that he saw it and "Just knew you had to have it:"
Yes, yes I did. Especially the large color photos of Jeffrey Buttle! Oh thankyouthankyouthankyou, Rhichard. I have never been so touched, and cried like a little girl, as only a true figure skating fan can. Now, more than ever, I am so determined I am going to the Olympics in Vancouver!
Off to rest, relax, make more tiny hats and enjoy family cooking. If only every day could be a weekend.
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I have been drinking tequila, and I will not be spellchecking this entry, so deal. I love tequila! Tomorrow, I go see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for the seventy billionth time, holla if you can deal! Hell yeah.
So it's like this. I spent the weekend doing laundry. Because my husband molts pants. Giant mounds of pants and undershirts. But I watched a lot of movies, too. Some, I rented from the Netflix, like The Young Girls of Rocehfort, which I love on an emotional and aesthetic level. La Deneveuve, there can BE no other! Cotillard, you may have an Oscar, but you will never be La Reine of France!
And then there was the giant stinking turd, Stranger Than Fiction, that Jon rented. Fuck that shit. He just has a crush on Maggie Gyllenhal. I felt like Queen Latifah did through that whole sack of offal. White people. What's the problem? Put that turd back in the toilet!
I need mas tequila!
Then, I watched the Woodman's Melinda and Melinda while sewing up a top I knit that came out to short, and liked it. The movie, not the tope. I have to fix the goddamned top.
But then, there was the ultimate. My dream movie was on Showtime Saturday afternoon, I I thank the sweet Lord for it. God bless then Seventies, because I got to rewatch one of my all time favorite pieces of crap, The Eyes of Laura Mars!
Oh God, the beauty and horror! Faye Dunaway, fresh off her Oscar for Network, but ready to step up into the Grand Guignol of Mommy Dearest. Nostrils flaring, every word overennunciated. A very young Tommy Lee Jones. Was he ever THAT young? Yes! The Seventies were No Country For Old Men. I said it, bitches!
And believe me, he had the feathered hair to prove it! This qualude crapper had the most improbable thriller plot on the planet. But really, who cares? It was all an excuse to hang the most glorious 1970's style and music on. For every movie or TV show that tries to recreate the glory of 1977-78, I spit on you. You sad pretenders (I'm looking at you, Swingtown) will never get it right. You won't have the divine Maud Frizon boots La Dunaway sprawled her legs in during that ridiculous photo shoot in Columbus Circle. Oh wait, you didn't know, she's supposed to be a fashion photographer? Oh yes! With images actually taken by Helmut Newton! I could die! It's like my wayback machine orgasm come to life! What did Newton once famously say? "More oil on the girl!" Oh yeah.
Especially if it's Penzoil. Ah, the viscosity.
I have to fan myself just THINKING about it. Maybe it's the Cuervo talking? Maybe it's the Steely Dan I'm listening too? Yes, I'm that fucking OLD! Deal!
And I haven't even gotten into Brad Dourif in full Charlie Manson regalia as the red herring in the serial killer "plot," or Raul Julia (RIP) as the drunken ex-husband, or, saint's preserve me, Rene Auberjonois in a white caftan.
I think I just passed on to a higher plane. Yes, I am in nirvana, and I'm wearing Willie Wear. Did you GET that reference? You did if you're 90, like me!
You may ask, "Why, Tanya, when did you get to watch this cinema classic in your misspent youth?" Why, I'm glad you asked!
It was 1979, I was 13, spending the night at a Girl Scout friend's house, and I stayed up late since she had HBO and watched this and then a 2:00 a.m. showing of Cruising. Is that so wrong?
Please don't answer. Just get me some Maud Frizon boots and MAS TEQUILA.
Oh, and I watched The Piano again last night. Funny, I haven't seen it since it came out in 1993. Saw it at a film festival sitting next to Judith Crist and the late Playboy film critic Bruce Williamson. Oh, and Antonio Sabato Jr. And Dermot Mulroney. I think I shared a blueberry muffin with him. Yeah, I did. And now he's divorced from Catherine Keener, and Antonio is on that Circus of the Stars.
Damn. That was another life ago. Still a pretty movie. Sam Neill is underrated.
See, I still have some of my senses left.
I created this during Wednesday's episode of So You Think You Can Dance:
Triple stranded, I think there's some Cathay and Great Adirondack Cotton and Silk going on in there. I think it looks like Gaugin colors. Jon says it looks like Good and Plenty candy. Thus, it is now Gaugin Good and Plenty.
And for sale, at the Rock the Stitch craft fair come Octobermas. Who will buy my tiny hats?(though this one is quite big, and suitable for the rasta girls out there).
Behold, the front, and my wonky eye - does anyone else have this problem when they're photographed?
My god, my nose is huge.
Don't worry, I plan to make some neutral, square cabled hats. Very Burberry, Gossip Girl inspired, but without the price, or the Chuck Bass cooties.
Holla if you feel me.
It has been a long time since I blogged. I got very sick after my last entry. A bad case of bird flu I blame on the air travel. The cough was the hardest to shake. I am better now, after a belated doctor's visit and more cherry Nyquil than I drank my entire sophomore year in college. Did anyone else have Nyquil parties? No? Just me, then.
Blogging has become a chore, and I don't know why. Ravelry hasn't overtaken it, because that's a chore, too. Frankly, I would rather spend my free time sitting alone and listening to the many hours of commentary on this:
while knitting — alone.
I am a bad woman. Obviously, I need some balance in my life.
But I have been dilligently working on a project. In October, my friend Marceline and I will be partaking in the Rock the Stitch craft fair. Selling our wares to the unaware, as it were. I am making...you guessed it, hats. My career as a milliner is taking flight, or perhaps remaining grounded, much like the albatross. My goal is to have 40 knit and crocheted hats done by October. I'm using scraps and bits and bobs of yarn, most of it free, so I'm hoping for a pretty good profit margin. IF anyone buys my tiny hats. Oh who will buy them?
Here is a small sample
There will be cloches, eventually.
I'm most proud of this crocheted beret (I have another finished, in white silk) that I handbeaded:
This one used cheap Bernat mixed with a high-end silk and mohair blend. I think the colors blended well.
And then there's this atrocity, which I'm hoping one of the little old ladies in the Red Hat Society might bite at:
So there you go. I need to get cracking on some blue ones - right now I have one in fuschia Aslan Trends Artesnal and some old Debbie Bliss Cathay going, as well as some tiny ones with sock yarn. But the bigger yarns go faster, and I think that's the way to go.
Again, I will either end up selling the fuckers or have an enormous hat wardrobe. Oh, and we're calling our shop Dreads and Curls Designs and Creations (my bright idea) because Marceline has some smokin' dreadlocks and I have the, you know, curls. Doodle and logo to follow.
Also finished during the Mad Men Marathon, my latest Rowan crush from Summer Classics: Fondant by Martin Storey in RYC Cotton Jeans:
An easy knit, the problems came in getting more yarn, and that's a story I don't want to get into right now...And yes, I wore it with the entire Garanimals outfit yesterday, and I don't think it was TOO much. Hey, the UPS man said I looked like I just walked off Deco Drive. That was sweet, and since the shoes were Marshall's scores, the T-shirt is Target and the skirt is two years old, I think I did well.
That's all for now. Gotta go to work and label more patterns. You really haven't lived until you've stuck labels on 300 fugly Trendsetter patterns. Now that's a whole lotta ugly.
Down and dirty: I got back Sunday night after midnight, just like Clapton sang. I am STILL tired, and working 10 hour days. No peace for the wicked.
TNNA? Was exhausting. Colorful, but exhausting. Some stories will be taken to my grave. Ya heard. Mayhap you did. It looked like an explosion of sock yarn in clown-vomit colors all over that convention center. That's all I'm saying. Peeps, I'm immune to it by now. Yarn, it's yarn. But what you do with it, now that's something else. Oh, and it's the people you meet that make it worthwhile.
There will be few photos, since hungry hungry hippo here has put on 10 pounds and is heading back to Weight Watchers this weekend. But here's one and only one with my favorite dude from the weekend. Richard from Koigu - you sirrah, are a stitch, and I would come garage-sale hopping in Vancouver with you ANYTIME:
I would like to personally thank you and Taiu for listening to me babble about Canadian figure skaters. You are not the first to humor me. And I love the delft blue and white KPPPM I picked out for the stores. I like to think I have good taste.
TNNA, why no music in the convention hall? It would have put me and my tired feet in a better mood. When the only music you hear is the MUZAK during the (cough) fashion show Friday night, and when the Mantiovanni Strings version of New Order's "Blue Monday" comes on and you get excited, well, where I come from that's just SAD.
There was not much swag to take back from TNNA. Which is fine by me. Blue Sky Alpacas has some new project bags they'll be selling. I got one with the pretty bluebird. They're called Cheep Bags, methinks?
Hey, I like muslin. I'm cheep, too. And keep on the lookout for the most beautiful coat from them coming this fall - called The Audrey Coat, it was the one thing in the (cough) fashion show that made me sit up and stop chewing my gum. Red and luscious. I'll never wear it down here in the depths of Mordor, but one can dream.
Also happy to report that although a dear friend Sarah wasn't able to make it, her designs and stunt knitting did, and they were showcased prominently. Way to go, girl!
I met so many people, tried to keep up with my boss without the benefit of a leash or shock-collar, and in general got tired and swelled feet. But despite the overstimulation, I'm glad I went. After all the years (and still doing it) of reading her blog, I was honored and delighted to meet and chat with Bonne Marie Burns of Chic Knits. Bought some of her lighter summery patterns for the stores, too. I don't read a whole lot of knit blogs anymore, and lord knows, no one reads mine, but if it wasn't for reading hers all those years ago, I never would have started down this career path. Is that a good thing? I think so...most days! Hats off to a most lovely and kind lady.
But let's be frank. It wouldn't be a trip without some inconvenience. On the hellish flight(s) back, I read my book that I'm been hoarding for five years on British Cult Cinema
and thought about how I'd rather be home with my husband, watching Quadrophenia, Trainspotting, Withnail and I and this movie, right then and there:
I would also have liked a huge Camberwell Carrot to ease the plane ride. Fans of Withnail and I will understand....People, I have ALL these movies on Special Edition DVDs, for the love of Britannia!
But no, I was seated next to a 275 lb. woman, lord love her, and the Sudoku Sprawler, aka the man who could not keep his legs shut whilst he worked on those wretched, wretched puzzles. Forget going to the bathroom. Forget putting the armrest down! I felt like I was in the Hannibal Lecter straightjacket special.
As god is my witness, I'll never fly again!
