Clap-happy

My weekend was loosely defined by movies and knitting. Yeah I know, my life is tough. E* started the weekend with a saturday morning exam and spent the next 2 days studying for the rest of his final exams. It's during periods like these that I try to rent movies that he wouldn't ever feel like watching. Lately, that's meant foreign films for me! A month ago I rented Nowhere in Africa. I actually meant to devote a whole post to this movie because I enjoyed it so much. Its in German, English and Kiswahili. I'll leave it to IMDB to provide you w/ the synopsis. I LOVED it.

I went to the video store on Friday thinking I'd rent Pride & Prejudice or Monsoon Wedding. I ended up with the latter, though I almost got North Country. Monsoon Wedding didn't disappoint. It's along the lines of My Big Fat Greek Wedding but its not a comedy. I was planning on sewing zippers into my new pillow covers while watching the movie (cuz you all know that I can't just sit with my hands still while watching the tube) but I ran into such troubles before I even turned the sewing machine on. I really need to befriend someone in the building who knows her/his way around a sewing machine. I tried online tutorials for inserting zippers, but the language they all used was too advanced for me. Besides not having a special zipper foot or the interfacing they recommended, I couldn't see a way to sew the zipper in AFTER the 3 other seams have been sewn. I had to admit defeat and ended up working on sock #2. Still, not a bad night.

Saturday included a field trip to Trader Joes and Target where I bought heat-bonding velcro. Why? To conquer those pillow covers once and for all. They now have a velcro seam - far classier than anything I could have produced with the sewing machine I'm sure. And this project was accompanied by Shop Girl. E and I were disappointed by the ending - it was so lame. Maybe it was because it tried to follow the book but didn't have enough time to do so properly. Ugh, whatever the reason, the ending was enough to leave a very bad taste in my mouth even though I enjoyed most of the rest of the movie (but since it has Claire Danes and Steve Martin I can overlook most of bad flavor). I also finished sock #2 (sorry, no pics yet) and my feet rejoiced.

And finally Sunday - CLAPOTIS! I cast on for it Sunday morning and it kept me glued to my seat all day. That, and the afternoon downpours and Kicking & Screaming. I'm just about finished with the increasing section. I can't wait to start dropping the stitches. Thanks to Passionknitly and knittinghelp.com I got through the first steps including PFB (purl into front and back loops). So I would warn Team M² that Team Beta-Reconstruction has eaked ahead. Oh wait. Was this not a competition? Sorry. My bad. Apparently I was bluffing at Sheep & Wool when I said I was going to have to finish a couple of other projects (seaming, fringe, etc) before starting Clapotis.

Ooh - and I'm tacking today onto my extremely long narration of the weekend. While walking to work this morning, Warren Brown (of Cake Love and Sugar Rush) walked right by me. I smiled, but only a casual good-morning smile, not a I-just-saw-you-on-TV!-smile. The rest of the day at work was a blur of technical difficulties while the internet went down for 3 hours among other things. But it ended with a great round of frisbee with E and Dom. It seemed like a much better alternative to my scheduled gym session.

Wait. Did you hear that? Shhh... There it is again...
I think the nascent Clapotis is calling to me from the living room. It is saying, "hou hou! Come to moi - I am zoft and ze colours sont tres belle."
I surrender.

(Note the other pillow cover which was supposed to be a joke/trial-run but is now probably going to be a permanent fixture. I got the fabric in a $1 bin at a cheesy fabric store on Columbia Rd. The more we make fun of it, the more we like it where it is - fitting that it matches the "dump chair".)