TV Movies, Mittens, and Novels about Knitting

Whew, it's been a while since the last post. But this is actually a good thing, because I actually have stuff to write about.

First of all, I watched the movie (well TV miniseries, but come on, it's still pretty much a movie) Hogfather. It's based on the book of the same title by Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors. The book is really good, and I freaked when I saw the movie in Blockbuster. I read some reviews of it, which ranged from "My wife and I loved this movie, It was so well acted!" to "I have rarely ever hated a movie this much" (seriously, that's word-for-word). So I didn't know what to expect, but I rented it, and convinced my brother to watch it with me. I have read the book and loved it, but my brother has never even read a book by Terry Pratchett, so you understand that we're coming from 2 different points of view. However, we both loved it! Most of it was well acted, the costumes and sets were creative and interesting, the special effects were good for the most part, and the story was interesting. The character Teatime (pronounced Tay-uh-tee-may) was especially good and well acted, and creepy in a "Willy Wonka-meets-child molester" kind of way.

I have too admit, I didn't get a lot of the book, and it was that way for a lot of the movie, but it did explain itself in the end. I was a little worried that Owen (that's my brother) wouldn't understand what was going on, but he seemed to follow along just fine. All in all, the movie was very faithful to the book. And a lot of it was very funny in a sarcastic kind of way, very much Terry Pratchett's style. My only complaints would be that some of the supporting characters were really awful actors, the Tooth Fairy especially, and that Death's scythe kept changing shape, which was basically just a careless mistake of the director. Overall my rating would be 3 out of 4 stars.


In other news, I checked out a book from the library called Chicks with Sticks: It's a Purl Thing by Elizabeth Lenhard and its sequel Chicks with Sticks: Knit Two Together. I expected them to be really stupid girly books, and the second one was. But I did really like the first one. It was basically about four unlikely friends who meet at a yarn store and form a sisterhood called "Chicks with Sticks". It was a really cute, relatable story that was well written for its genre (young adult fiction), especially when compared to books like the "Mates, dates" books by Cathy Hopkins; those were really awful and I'm ashamed I read the first two (in my defense, they only took about an hour to read each, so that's only 2 hours of my life wasted).

The seccond book in the "Chicks with Sticks" series, however was a classic, predictable, overly mushy, girly romance book. It consisted basically of the main character, Scottie angsting about not having a boyfriend, and then when she gets one, totally overanalyzing the relationship and angsting some more. It was almost painful to read some of it. It was especially disappointing considering the first one was actually good. I mean, what happened there? However, the redeeming element for the whole series is the inclusion of knitting patterns at the ends of the books. They were especially cool because some of them were the patterns that the characters knitted in the book.

After reading the first book, I was in such a knitty mood I immediately went to my yarn stash and started knitting a pair of mittens using a pattern from the back of the book. I used Lion Brand Homespun, in a sort of charcoal grey color. I already have both a hat and a scarf knitted from the same yarn, so the mittens just complete the set. It makes me happy :) I finished the mittens in two days, so it's a great weekend project. I'd include a picture of the mittens, but I don't think my camera has any batteries in it, and I don't feel like finding any.

So that's all I've got for today. Adios!


PS. A note for people who feel the need to correct the grammar in my blog entries, *cough* staci *cough*, I write my blog the way I talk, which includes putting commas in wherever I would pause while speaking. :P