Harry Potter and the Rebellious Wand

Smitty demonstrates the "Beseeching Sheltie Pose"

I liked the new Harry Potter, right up until the epilogue. I won't give the ending away, but while I found the content satisfying, I found the writing clunky and lousy with exposition in the last few pages. Since there's a lot more death and violence, and even curse(!) words that aren't cut off in time by other characters, I'll be interested to see what rating the movie gets when it's made.

Oh, screw it. Spoiler time.

Harry is lives and, marries Ginny. Ron marries Hermione. Draco marries some lady who doesn't even get a name. They all have babies with meaningful first- and last- names who all look like their parents. Does this mean that all the Potterites reproduce by binary fission or budding instead of sexual reproduction? Damn it, that would deprive me of the amusing idea of a Snape-lead sex ed class where he breaks down over Lily and makes Harry stare at him until third period. End Spoiler Time.
I haven't been up to much, lately, except advanced sloth. I went to my first Yoga class on Monday. It's work! I was expecting two hours of breathing to sitar music, but instead I ended up sweating. A little. it did make my back feel better, although I am unsure if I am the ideal student. During relaxation time, when we were supposed to concentrate on our breathing, I instead pondered that great, pressing question: Is it the borrowed yoga mat that smells of feet, or do my feet.... smell of feet? I'm also curious how one of the few guys in our class managed to achieve his magnificent pompadour. It was rockabilly fabulous, and no amount of cat pose or downward dog would deflate its splendour. He also had a pair of tight little shorts, and I found myself immediately fascinated. My thoughts went something like this: "Did he dress like that at home? Did he sleep in a hair net like those beehive girls did in the sixties? Had I just checked out his ass from sheer desperation?" Torn between giggling and collapsing into tears I instead looked mildly constipated, and lost my balance.

The next day, I wasted my new spiritual transcendence on my first manicure/pedicure, in a very un-Namaste shade of deep burgundy with bronze glitter.

Life After Potter(mania)

This "Harry Potter Lost in the Medieval Times Gift Shoppe " cover isn't piquing my interest either.

So, the latest, and final, Harry Potter came out today, in case you somehow missed the hype in the media. Or the legions of duelling articles: "Potter is a bit of magical storytelling that has turned our children into readers" vs. "Potter is crap that will make our children terrible writers and worse, awful people". Or the confounding stuffed puppet Sorting Hats, I noticed at Chapters, surely one of the few secondary characters/objects to get the full plush puppet treatment since the stuffed "Gabbin' Jacob Marley Doorknob" of 1843.

I have my copy, but I realized months ago, when it was time to pre-order, that I didn't care all that much. I started reading Potter when I was 11, and now, almost twenty, Harry has been a cultural phenomenon that has dominated almost a decade of my life. In spite of the naysayers like my Dad, who was convinced that the Potter craze had "blown its wad".... after the release of Goblet of Fire. I had always been excited about Potter. Not to the point where I would write fanfic, or make fanart, or worse- make fanart depicting lewd acts between Snape and Harry where you think Harry has rabies. But that ain't rabies, baby. Just to the point where I'd wait for the postman to come the day of the release, rip off the packaging and close myself off from the world for a few hours. Then, I would re-read parts for comfort, keen on the idea that a world existed seemingly designed by an eccentric uncle, with about twelve stores in the whole world and no damn Wal-Marts. Although the idea of being able to buy club-sized packages of beetle eyes is amusing. I even liked the smell of the books.

But... something has changed. I bought my copy this year at a drugstore, at the same time as deodorant and dish soap. I've only made my way about half-way through the book, and didn't mind leaving to see Hairspray with my mom. It's not that I've grown out of them, since I think that attitude is pretentious, and furthermore that you don't need to grow out of fantasy. Maybe we've just grown apart. But I'll still wear my Harry Potter scarf with pride. After all, I am a Ravenclaw.

The Many Faces of My Spinning

When I was going through that rough patch a few months back, I made a few lists of Goals I Had In Life (yes, avec capitalization). There were themes. Goals I Had For Travel, Goals I Had For My Career, Goals For This Funny Little Thing Called Love, etc. And one for knitting, currently closer to completion than any of my other lists including Goals For The Week of May 13. The knitting goals ranged from knitting a fair isle sweater, to designing my own pattern. One of them was to learn how to spin, and when the lovely ScarletMote held a workshop a few weeks ago, I got to cross another goal off the list.

Attempt at Yarn, #1
Involves: Libertina Yarns Merino top, hand-dyed by ScarletMote . Plied with green thread. Aren't the colours she picked lovely? Is it top? Seriously, my spinning lingo is limited.
Resembles: The stool of Puff the Magic Dragon with gastrointestinal distress.

Attempt at Yarn, #2
Involves: Libertina Yarns Merino top, 2-ply.
Resembles: Primitive yarn found preserved in an African Cave.

Attempt at Yarn, #3
Involves: Un-dyed Merino Roving
Resembles: Thick and thin art yarn that would be sold at 35$/a skein.

Attempt at Yarn, #4
Involves: Un-dyed Merino Roving
Resembles: Yarn. Success! All flaws, including some very slapdash repair of breaks during plying, are behind the outer layer of yarn. Almost there.

I know this entry is 2 days late, but I've had an exceptionally busy week, a week when it seems like I have three things, or more, to run around to after work. For example, last Wednesday I worked until 4, gave blood, practiced driving, and went to see Waitress with an acquaintance. I'm also working on my sockpal's socks. Unfortunately, last Tuesday I realized that the heel, with the row gauge I was getting, would fit a knee better. I had knit lovely, cabled, Tensor Knee Supports. So, I dutifully ripped back until a few rows of the heel were gone. They are lovely, but everything else is stagnant.

GOALS I HAVE FOR TOMORROW
-locate a tape measure, and make sure I take an accurate measure of my feet this time, so my Sockpal doesn't have to deal with my idiocy any longer.
-practice parallel parking so I don't look sloshed
- make a pie

Up Yours, Hypothalamus!

The last few weeks have been a series of annoyances and mistakes, somewhere along the spectrum of the banal.

Which is why I thank God that tea and Roy Orbison's music are both readily available. Roy Orbison reminds me that things could be worse, and tea makes me believe that things are just about to get better. I've finally righted all of the knitting wrongs I made, and am caught up with e-mails, bills, and all the rest of my many annoyances.

Speaking of e-mails: for a few months, I was convinced that those nonsense Spam e-mails were really secret codes some mysterious (but wealthy!) figure was sending to me. Really, I had just read The Westing Game and other kids caper books too much as a kid, and was desperate for adventure. Which... would be a good excuse if I had been twelve. But I was eighteen. Finally, a computer geek I had a passing acquaintance with loudly and publicly informed me that they were just Spam after I had printed them all out and spent months trying to decode what Karamazov had to do with stock tips.

And further embarrassments: For many years, I had a long-standing, and secret, crush on a certain boy in high school.

Well, I thought it was a secret, until I found out that a middle-aged woman I worked with at work knew who he was. Which means either my mom told her, which is bad enough, or worse- the crush's mom knows! Which means he knows! Forgive me for being unbearably high school about the whole thing, but he was much better-looking, more popular, and more athletic than I was. And taller. Oh, how very much taller. Even though I'm way past it now, it would still be embarrassing to the pimply teen aged girl that lives in us all, in my case, in the monstrous zit right between my eyebrows.

So, I was hanging out with some high school friends last Thursday, when we ran into a raving bitch working the late shift at the local all-night grocer's. This led to a conversation about how you never seem to run into the people you want to see again, and I said that I wanted to run into the ex-crush, to see if he was worth all the hormones I wasted on him. Well, the next day, I was walking with my Dad downtown. When, out of his native habitat sprung the Exus-Crushinus, in a family herd of mother and brother. I didn't say hi. I didn't wave. I didn't even make eye contact. Instead, I abruptly turned to my Dad, and launched into a rapid twelve point discussion of my hatred for Mondays. I narrowly avoided whiplash and a collision with a pole. I finally went into the bank to withdraw some money, and as I stabbed my PIN into the keypad, I wondered if maturity would ever catch up with puberty.

Tomorrow, I promise to talk about the spinning and the tank top graveyard. I can even make the girl guide hand thing, and there will be sockpal news! Yay.

Happy Indepence Day, American Swine! Here are your socks!

Just kidding my Southern brethren, I love you all. Especially my most beloved Midwest room mate, who has sadly abandoned our continent to have fun in Europe. I'm not madly jealous, oh no. See, I even finished her socks, because I'm a nice person like that.

I also finished my Mom's socks, which, in spite of being lovely, foamy, soft things I grew to hate after the nearly two months (heh) it took me to knit them. They became my lazy project, the thing I did a few rows of here and there while watching a movie or going somewhere in the car. Which, would seem like a recipe for completion, but it's really a recipe for ennui. Anyway, belated Mother's Day present: finally completed.
On the needles: my much-delayed Sockpal socks. Brigit, in Colinette Jitterbug. Let's hope these go quicker than my Mom's socks, so I won't be known as a total flake. Although, I kind of don't want to part with these. The deep shadings of blue, the vaguely Celtic feel... No! I refuse to give in! The socks will go to my sockpal, and they better damn well fit. But maybe if they don't... would it be too outré to send a SAS envelope in the package, just in case?

So, at work these people bring around random crap every now and then for you to purchase. Usually it involves a mildly frightening singing stuffed animal. This month featured a canine Barry White in a cummerbund. You start ordering one thing, and then to get the special deal on the cheaply-made discount item, you get more, until you have the singing animal lulling you to bed with its tinny song. I know. It happened to me this month. It started off innocuously enough. I was still a little burnt out from spending Canada Day in London (Ontario, alack), and decided I wanted a Sudoku. And then I saw a gardening book my mother would like. And well, I was just a few bucks short of making the rolling cooler, apparently for those days when lifting mid-sized soft cooler just seems too damn hard.
So, I bought the "Mapquest" road map atlas. Now, my brain may be feeble, but road atlas of North America + rolling cooler= road trip, yes? My arithmetic is correct, no? Road trip to Mexico with friends sounds fun to me. Margaritas, ahoy.

Tomorrow: Misadventures in Spinning and the Tank Top Chronicles.