Quote of the Day

Posted on April 11, 2008
Filed Under Blather, films | Leave a Comment

A bit melodramatic, but beloved, courtesy of old friend The Graduate.

Mrs. Robinson: It’s too late.

Elaine: Not for me!

(And then there’s the unspoken line, “Now what?”)

The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland

Posted on March 24, 2008
Filed Under Blather, films, me and my brain | 2 Comments

Those of you who read Ezra’s blog will have seen this coming.

Recently, Ezra and I watched The Wizard of Oz. I hadn’t seen it in a long time, and I’m not sure if I’d ever seen it without commercials. It’s always interesting to go back to things you consumed as a kid, especially iconic things that, whether you knew it not, played a part in shaping your life.

I noticed a few things watching the film now, and put into words some things I’d always thought but never really discussed with anyone. First off, the “black and white” segments aren’t black and white at all, they’re sepia. To me, the sepia tone achieves a number of things. It underscores the earthiness of the Kansas setting, the down-home-ness of it. It gives it a faded look rather than a sophisticated one. It’s sort of soft rust versus the polished look that black and white might render. When the tornado approaches, the sepia dust spins and billows around… The twister itself throws up a violent cloud not entirely unlike the poof of red the Wicked Witch sends up when she makes her dramatic exit from the scene at the tip of the Yellow Brick Road.

And how great is Margaret Hamilton? She sure did scare the bejesus out of many generations of kiddies (and probably some adults). The music that accompanies her riding around on the bike (when she is Miss Gulch in Kansas) is the best. I find myself using it quite a bit.

More of a revelation, maybe, is Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow. I don’t know about you, but though the Lion had a good song or two, the Scarecrow was always my favorite. He was Dorothy’s favorite as well, it seems, as she tells him right before leaving Oz that she thinks she’ll miss him most of all. I always identified Bolger’s stumbling lanky walk and dance moves with the Scarecrow character, but actually he was dancing like that for years before The Wizard of Oz, on Broadway and then in the film The Great Ziegfeld, his second film ever and first for MGM.


Ray Bolger in The Great Ziegfeld

As Ezra mentioned in his blog, I’d love to see a double feature of those two films. They’re both full of song and dance numbers, they both deal with fantasy and reality, and they both feature vaudeville and Broadway stars like Ray Bolger and Frank Morgan. Ziegfeld’s real-life wife, Billie Burke–played by Myrna Loy in The Great Ziegfeld, plays Glinda, the Good Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz. Both films are also iconic for certain eras in entertainment. The Great Ziegfeld pays tribute to the massive production numbers of the Ziegfeld Follies. (According to Wikipedia, “The MGM blockbuster’s show-stopper was “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody”, which, by itself, cost more to produce than one of Ziegfeld’s whole shows.”) The Wizard of Oz is a hugely colorful film from an era when the vast majority of films were still black and white. And both films are, at least at times, decidedly over-the-top.

One thing that struck me watching The Wizard of Oz this time are all the parallels between Oz (I’m referring strictly to the film here, as I haven’t read the book) and Alice in Wonderland (I refer both to the book and to Disney’s Alice in Wonderland). Alice’s life is comfortable, though perhaps a bit boring. She has an animal companion, her cat Dinah, just as Dorothy has her Toto. (Alas for Alice, Dinah does not accompany her to Wonderland… at least, not exactly.) When Dorothy watches things going by outside her window as she is sucked up in the twister, it’s like when Alice watches things go past her as she’s falling down the rabbit hole. Maybe it’s just because of the Disney film, but Dorothy’s outfit looks pretty appropriate for Alice, except maybe for the shoes.

Some interpretations of Alice’s look:




And Dorothy:


(Okay, so the colors are inverted.)

Dorothy’s not sure which way to go on the Yellow Brick Road, just as a Alice isn’t sure which path to take in the woods. When Dorothy meets the Munchkins, they think she’s a witch. When Alice encounters a pigeon, it accuses her of being a serpent. Looking around at the start of the Yellow Brick Road, Dorothy says something like, “What a curious place”–much like Alice’s “Curiouser and curiouser!” And then there are double meanings or very literal meanings–a horse of a different color in Oz, for example, and “a long sad tale” versus “a long tail” in Alice (among many others). Both Dorothy and Alice are trying to get somewhere, and neither knows quite what to expect. Both are rather disappointed with what they find when they finally get there (the wizard is a bit of a sham and can’t help Dorothy get home, the tea party is full of nonsense–as is the Queen). Then, of course, there are veiled or not so veiled drug references… the caterpillar smoking, Alice eating cakes that change her, the field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz that puts Dorothy to sleep and then the snow that awakens her. In Disney’s Alice, at least, the flowers can talk. Flowers in Oz pop up and turn out to be Munchkins. In Disney’s Alice, the woods are scary and seem alive. In Oz, the trees can talk and throw things.

The Queen in Alice is a little like the Wicked Witch of the West. The playing cards are her guards, and like the witch’s guards, they do her bidding but they don’t like it or her–they’re afraid of her. Consider this sentence from Alice in Wonderland and then think about the Wicked Witch directing the guards: “Get to your places!” shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other […]”

And, of course, in both cases it was all a dream that incorporated bits from real life.

AND… both stories have been examined as political satires.

And then there’s the relationship between Oz in the film and Dr. Seuss. I could go on!

Beware evil doers, wherever you are!!!

Posted on March 2, 2008
Filed Under Blather, family, films, me and my brain | 5 Comments

Recommendation of the day…

Sometime when I was a kid, my family watched Radio Days together. Kim and I have now seen this film countless times, together and on our own, and it’s a long-standing favorite. It’s a sweet, sentimental, funny nostalgia piece–there’s not really any plot to speak of, but it doesn’t need one. As you might guess, it’s full of tons of great music from the 40s. The cast is fantastic, too. I mean, Wallace Shawn plays the Masked Avenger!

…If nothing else, when you watch it, you might figure out where some of the silly things we say all the time come from.

Eurotrip 2007-2008: Berlin, Day Three–New Year’s Eve

Posted on January 18, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, dining, films, wide world of vacation | 3 Comments

My recollections of December 31st in Berlin are a little jumbled. Hopefully I’ll get this right and if not Ez can help me fill in any gaps.

Our first goal for the day was to head back over to the Filmmuseum. It was interesting. I didn’t know exactly what to expect. It focuses pretty heavily on German film, past and present, though there’s also an entire section on Ray Harryhausen and special effects (I think Ez wrote that those bits were special exhibits, but they are in fact a part of the museum’s permanent collection). There’s a section on Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, which I must see a.s.a.p. as it’s a big gap for me as a lover of old movies.


Still from Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)

There are also entire sections on films under the Weimar Republic, Metropolis, propaganda films, Marlene Dietrich, German filmmakers in exile in America during the Nazi era, and modern German cinema. It was interesting to discover that some of my favorite character actors from the 30s and 40s were in fact German or Hungarian actors in exile–for example, Felix Bressart (Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not to Be) and S.Z. Sakall (Christmas in Connecticut–Mr. Hunky Dunky himself!, Casablanca, In the Good Old Summertime)… not to mention one of my favorite directors ever, Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be, etc.).

Ezra describes the section on Nazi-era German films on his blog. It’s one of those things–so fascinating. It’s like this train wreck that never should have happened but you can’t look away. At first I didn’t even realize that visitors were supposed to pull out the drawers tucked into the wall. It was only when I saw another visitor doing so that I realized. If the museum didn’t arrange the Nazi-era section that way, it would take up way more space. I can’t help thinking that reflects their complicated relationship with that part of their history. They’re not proud of it, exactly, but they know it’s important and they know that it fascinates people. The museum notes next to each display are certainly written from the viewpoint that what the Nazis did was terribly wrong and a sad, disturbing tragedy. But at the same time, putting their vast collection in that little room and keeping the displays largely put away in drawers definitely gave the whole thing a relatively low profile. Very interesting.

The Marlene Dietrich collection is massive and takes up two rooms (or was it even more?). They are obviously proud of their Berlin-born star. Their collection includes costumes and items from her films, outfits from her personal wardrobe, letters, photographs, and personal effects like her make-up box. It was pretty neat. For anyone who loves her the way I love Garbo or Bette Davis it must be a shrine.

The section on Harryhausen totally reminded me of Nora and her dad. Harryhausen was responsible for all of those fabulously goofy effects in Clash of the Titans, which I might never have seen had it not been for Nora. Nora, if you ever go to Berlin, I think you’d enjoy the Filmmuseum.


One of Ray Harryhausen’s creatures

After the museum, we needed a little refueling. The Sony Center is in a pretty touristy area, so we decided to stick with Billy Wilder’s, the bar/cafe adjacent to the Filmmuseum. Apparently Billy Wilder was Austro-Hungarian (he was born in an area of what is now Poland) and wrote a lot of scripts for German films until Hitler came to power. At that point, like many other Jewish filmmakers during that era, he emigrated to the U.S. (via Paris) and moved in with Peter Lorre in Hollywood. The Germans seem to love him, though–possibly because he directed A Foreign Affair with Marlene Dietrich, which takes place in Berlin. We had little coffees and shared some apfelstrudel. It was quite nice, but so crowded. We had a heck of a time trying to get the attention of the wait staff so that we could get our check. Oh well, there are worse places to be stuck for an extra 20 minutes.


Billy Wilder’s

If I’m not mistaken, we then caught a bus back into the Tiergarten en route to the Bauhaus Archive. Unfortunately, it turned out to be closed for the holiday, so we were only able to enjoy it from the outside.

We resolved to return on Thursday.

At this point I get a little fuzzy on what we did next. I think we ended up on a ferris wheel–or was that the previous day? Well, one of those days we rode a big ferris wheel at twilight.

We returned to our hotel that night via Savignyplatz, where we noticed lots of nice little shops and restaurants. We decided to go to a tapas place in Savignyplatz for our New Year’s Eve dinner. It was festive, though I must say a couple of the vegetarian dishes were a little disappointing. We had a good time, though.


Ezra on New Year’s Eve, having fun at the tapas restaurant

On our way home from the tapas restaurant we stopped at the petrol station convenience on the corner and bought a bottle of champagne (or was it cava?) and a bag of decadent German cookies. On our way out, we encountered a bunch of people walking around setting off firecrackers. Apparently fireworks that are not legal (at least, not for an average citizen without some kind of license) in most places I’ve been in the U.S. are both legal and popular in Berlin. We watched (and admittedly chuckled at) some of the New Year’s concerts and such on TV, but mostly we drank our champagne and gazed out our window at the fireworks people were shooting off the roofs of surrounding buildings. Lots of other people with windows off the courtyard were doing the same thing. The firecrackers were bouncing off the buildings. It was noisy and raucous and the kind of thing that I LOVE about traveling… I think it’s something I won’t be experiencing any time soon here at home.

Sniff

Posted on August 1, 2007
Filed Under Blather, art, films | Leave a Comment

Michaelangelo Antonioni AND Ingmar Bergman both just died.

Scene from The Passenger
Scene from The Passenger (dir. Antonioni), one of my favorite films.

Another holiday treat from the bunnies

Posted on December 14, 2006
Filed Under Blather, art, christmas, films | Leave a Comment

A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies.

xmas story bunnies

Visualize flurries

Posted on December 13, 2006
Filed Under Blather, Pennsylvania, christmas, dining, films, friends, me and my brain, the telly | Leave a Comment

If you know me at all, then you know that for me this really IS the most wonderful time of the year. I’ve been busy with all sorts of
things, many of them holiday. Since the best part is sharing, it’s time to report.

Merry Christmas 2006

Saturday night we hosted our (usually) annual holiday party. This year we did a potluck, and I personally had a fabulous time. Thanks to all of our creative and talented friends, the food and drink were fantastic, as was the conversation. I made a fool of myself (think of it in the Shakespearian sense and maybe it’s not so bad) with the drink and babble, but it was totally worth it. It was great to see some friends who we don’t get a chance to see very often, too. As we do every year, we’ll try to be better this coming year about keeping up with our friends. I think we’ve made some progress this year! If you’re reading this, you’re probably on our “to see” list! We ended up with a lot of leftovers. If you want some sweets, I’ve got them!

Last weekend Ezra and I joined the crowd at The Brattle for the annual showing of It’s a Wonderful Life. Starbucks was paying for the matinee, so everyone got in free and the theater was indeed packed. I wasn’t sure a packed theater was ideal, I have to admit, since past experience tells me that sometimes big crowds at The Brattle are noisy and just make fun of the film. (Sometimes that makes sense, but often it’s annoying.) I had nothing to worry about, though. It was a great, enthusiastic crowd. They laughed heartily at appropriate points throughout the first half or so and fell silent as the film became a bit more serious. Everyone clapped loudly at the end (at this particular viewing I felt especially like clapping and cheering myself), and I noticed lots of teary eyes when the lights came up.IAWL

Pretty much every time I see the film, I notice something new or think about it in a little bit of a new way. Something always strikes me. This time I noticed when one of the bullets the cop aims at George shoots out the S in the Pottersville sign (Ezra had mentioned that to me last year). It also occured to me, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before, that George and Mary name their first child after George’s father, Peter Bailey. In a more general way, I was struck this time by how much the film is about selflessness and its rewards. Of course, throughout the film George gives of himself and makes sacrifices for other people. What I hadn’t thought about so much before is that when he asks Clarence to give him his life back at the end, he is again being selfless. By affirming his life, he assures that his family, friends, and the town will still benefit from his gifts. I always used to think that It’s a Wonderful Life was not really strictly a Christmas movie. Yes, the climactic moments happen on Christmas Eve, but it’s about so much more than that. I think though, that I realized with this viewing that it is a perfect Christmas movie, because Christmas to me is about all of the things George does and all of the things he learns. It’s about giving of yourself. The more religious among you might use that as a metaphor. For me, it all goes back to two statements in the film that are shown but never spoken–Clarence’s inscription to George in the copy of Tom Sawyer he gives him, “No Man Is a Failure Who Has Friends,” and the framed statement under Peter Bailey’s portrait at the Building and Loan that says, “You Can Only Take with You That Which You Have Given Away.” Have a tissue.

I’ve watched many of the other holiday movies and shows that I make a point to see every year, though I’m quite frustrated that I missed Rudolph. Sigh… I have watched Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, Charlie Brown, and the Grinch, along with It’s a Wonderful Life. A Christmas Story and The Bishop’s Wife are still on the to-view list.

Ezra has declared our living room Santa’s workshop. We have the tree in there this year, and I’ve got a gift wrapping station set up. It’s a bit of a… er… work in progress, shall we say. Messy, but festive.

As you likely know, the weather is not cooperating. What is this rain and 50 degrees crap? It’s got exactly 11 days to get its shit together. Accuweather, the darlings, are at least predicting that it won’t get out of the 30s on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in State College. Yes, I am checking daily.

The Last Picture Show

Posted on March 5, 2006
Filed Under Blather, family, films, the telly, the written word | 1 Comment

I find Roger Ebert’s movie reviews consistently not quite on target. He tries to get at the art of a film, but his comments still seem surface-y to me. OK, I don’t read his reviews very often, so maybe that’s not fair. Here’s my case in point. Last night Ez and I watched The Last Picture Show. We’d Tivo’d it off of TCM. I can sing the praises of TCM again here. They can air it, uncut and in all its original complexity, late at night when most young kids won’t be up. And let’s face it, most young kids are not going to get through the first ten minutes of this nuanced black and white film anyway. So… I had tried to watch this film once or twice before many years ago. I think I had some idea in my head that I would watch it because I liked Cybill Shepherd from Moonlighting. I didn’t get past the first few minutes. Her performance is good, but there’s so much more going on in the film, and so many other great performances, it would be a shame to focus on her and miss or discount all the rest.

I really loved it. Most of the reviews I’ve seen focus on how it’s a story about a dying town. They debate whether it’s nostalgic or anti-nostalgic. They talk about how it fits into film history and how it shows Orson Welles’ and Howard Hawks’ influence. Those are all interesting and important parts of the film, but for me the best part are the shockingly great performances–and so many of them. The connection between Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Ruth (Cloris Leachman) works so well, and is so heartbreaking right from the start. They are both fantastic, and the end is just perfect for the film. I knew I wanted an ending something like that as I watched the film, and the way it’s done is just right.

So… After seeing the movie I poked around online and read some reviews. Ebert supplied this one , which is OK, but never seems to get to the heart of things, and this one, which is much better, but still not entirely satisfying (to me). I hate how he flatly states that one scene is “the best.” The scene he’s talking about is a great scene, and it’s very important to the film as a whole, but there are lots of other “best” scenes. It seems wrong to splice up the movie that way. I guess I like this review, from Neil Young (odd little coincidence, I guess!), because it finally gives lead actor Timothy Bottoms his due. Why don’t people rave about his performance? So many of the other actors in the film were nominated for and even won Oscars, and there seems to be lots of talk about how great they were and how this was their breakout film, but he is rarely mentioned. I thought he gave possibly the best performance in the whole film (along with Cloris Leachman, who is just devastating). I like that the reviewer juxtaposes the film against American Graffiti. I made a similar mental comparison. And I guess I also like this review because he talks about the last scene. I love the acting in this scene. I love how the emotions come across more from their movements and their faces and their hands than from words. Sonny and Ruth have this deep sadness, and they “get” that sadness maybe more than any other characters in the film. That the town is dying is interesting. Where it fits in American cultural history is interesting. But what’s much more interesting to me is what’s happening inside all of these people in that town.

A couple of films I have watched in the past few days

Posted on February 10, 2006
Filed Under films | 4 Comments

Mr. Skeffington–Though not as great as Now, Voyager, this is another pretty good Bette Davis film. She plays a beautiful socialite who clings to superficial ideas of love and beauty until an illness forces her to re-examine her values and take a less selfish view of life.

skeffington

Yeah, personally, I think she looks a little ridiculous in the film’s early scenes, but it’s supposed to be the late 1800’s, so…

Once again, Claude Rains co-stars. I think I love him. I almost posted just about him the other day. He was in loads of great films, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Now, Voyager; Mr. Skeffington; Casablanca; Notorious; and Lawrence of Arabia. Not bad.

Lawrence of Arabia–I can’t say enough about how great this movie is. I think it’s one of those films that people hear about all the time, but it seems like many people today haven’t actually seen it. This may be partly because of its length. I have to thank Ezra for talking me into going to see it at the Brattle several summers ago. It’s hard to describe how absolutely fantastic and awe-inspiring this film is on the big screen. The desert scenes are just amazing. Today’s adventure films, however technically fancy and ambitious they might be, rarely come even close to being as magnificent (not a word I use lightly). It was the last film to be shot on 70mm film, rather than shot on 35mm and then enlarged, so the visual detail is stunning.

Lawrence of Arabia

Anyway, Lawrence of Arabia is much more than an adventure film. It sounds silly to even try to explain it. The film won 7 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score–all well deserved. Peter O’Toole lost the Best Actor award to Gregory Peck (To Kill a Mockingbird). I’m a bit shocked that Omar Sharif didn’t win Best Supporting Actor. The cast is incredible–O’Toole, Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Claude Rains, Alec Guinness… And this was one of O’Toole’s first films, and Omar Sharif’s first English film. There’s only a single woman in the whole film–a nurse who just flashes through one scene and is uncredited–an interesting content point in itself. The internet tells me that the real T.E. Lawrence was indeed gay.

O'Toole and Sharif

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend setting aside time some weekend to watch the whole thing, start to finish. If you ever get the opportunity to see it in the theater, go! You won’t be disappointed.

Performances

Posted on January 28, 2006
Filed Under Blather, art, films, music, photography | 2 Comments

I’ve been fairly busy with work this week, so it’s nice that I’ve twice been able to get out and take in a dose of something you might call art.

On Tuesday, my friend John came down from Portland and he, Ez, and I all went to see Deerhoof at the Middle East. The opening acts were a mixed bag–to put it kindly. First up was L’Ocelle Mare. Honestly, I didn’t think he was so bad. He basically did these sort of spastic little one-man jams on an electrified acoustic guitar, clomping his feet down on some boards and using various other little musical devices here and there (bells, rattles, a harmonica, etc.). It was sort of abstract–not really your typical music. I can’t say that I loved it, but he was charming–kept grinning and nodding sheepishly at the end of each piece–and it wasn’t horrible.

I’m a little mixed up on the order of things, but I think next up was the evening’s first selection of films by Martha Colburn. Like the opening acts as a whole, these were a mixed bag. I kind of liked the brightness and brash colorfulness of them, and some of the images were fun. I feel like the second batch of films, which came later, was less impressive because it seemed to be harping over and over on the same somewhat meaningless sexual imagery. I was surrounded by a bunch of guffawing college guys, and they all really liked the sex films, if that tells you anything.

hypnotism

The second musical act was Le Ton Mite. I found him tiring and a bit embarrassing. I don’t know… his schtick (as Ezra would say) just didn’t work for me.

After another round of films, we were all told that we had to step back and clear a space of about 1/4 of the entire floor, as this would be the “stage” for the Leg & Pants Dans Theeatre performance. This was really annoying and awkward, and it underscores my main problem with their part of the show–it just would have worked much better in a different space and setting. Half of the audience really wasn’t interested, and forcing the audience to crush together and then sit down on top of each other on a dirty, nasty floor didn’t exactly draw us in.

leaving behind

But putting all of that aside… there were some things about their performance that I really liked. They used slides, and that might have worked well if they’d had someone other than one of the dancers actually advancing the slides and if the slides had been projected larger–maybe on a bigger screen. The speaking part that went along with their dance was a bit silly. Maybe if they hadn’t been preceded by Le Ton Mite I would have taken that aspect of their performance more seriously. Visually, I liked a good bit of what they did. I had fun taking photos of their performance. It would have been even more fun to photograph if I hadn’t been jammed in on the floor with my knees on random guys’ elbows and such.

Standing

Then, finally, Deerhoof played. By then, Ezra had succumb to his illness and had to go home. It’s a shame, because beyond the experience/spectacle aspect of the opening acts, Ezra really missed what was–by about a mile–the most worthwhile portion of the night. Deerhoof were quite good–and very loud. They played a lot of songs from their latest record. Their music is a little hard to describe, but I guess I’d say it’s experimental, arty, and noisy. Sometimes I hear jazz and funk in their music, and halfway through their set last night, I thought of My Bloody Valentine. I guess I wasn’t far off, because for their encore they did a cover of one of my favorite My Bloody Valentine songs, “Lose My Breath.” (I overheard one of their guitarists telling someone after the show that it was the first time they’d played that song live.) My vantage point and the lighting weren’t conducive to great picture-taking, but of course I snapped away regardless.

Deerhoof in light

Then, last night, Ez and I saw Sartre’s No Exit at the ART (American Repertory Theatre). Though it’s a very famous play, and though the basic gist is apparent from its title, it was new to me because I’d never seen nor read it. The cast was phenomenal–we’ve seen each of the four actors in other ART productions and they’re all very good. Karen MacDonald, who plays Estelle, is one of my personal favorites. She was fantastic as Simonne Evrard in Marat/Sade (which, by the way, was mind-blowingly great and one of the best theatrical performances I’ve ever seen). Paula Plum is great as Inez. I’d seen her in Lysistrata, and maybe something else, too, but I don’t feel like I really saw her in a great role until last night.

I suppose the big and obvious “wow” about this performance that knocks people out right off is the staging. The audience sits in a U-shape around the elevated square stage. The stage is on some kind of central pivot, and it literally rises and falls with the weight of the actors as they move across it. This makes for some very striking stuff. As Ezra said, if cameras were allowed, you would be seeing loads of pictures (the photo above is from the ART site). I found the set very surrealist–the stage suspended in space, with lighting that literally made it appear as though it existed more or less in nothing, a classical sculpture in one corner, a tall door leading to nowhere, no walls. It’s a sparse scene with a few brightly colored objects thrown in.

This Boston Globe article says a few interesting things about this version and the play itself. Really, we’re lucky to have the ART here.

keep looking »

Song of the Day

Devo-It’s Not Right 

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The Knitting Turnip

On My Needles

Rhapsody in Tweed cabled pullover for Ezra! using Tahki Donegal Tweed in Forest, from Fall 2004 Interweave Knits. I've just picked this one up again, so it's moving up in the queue!

Sweater with Cable Patterns pullover using Araucania Nature Wool Chunky in Mauve, from Rebecca Magazine Number 28

Heather Pullover using Classic Elite Wings in Larkspur, from Rowan’s A Season’s Tale... This needs the knit doctor. I'm going to have to frog back a little bit and redo the shoulder area. Long story.

Hush Pullover using Jo Sharp DK wool in Wine, from Rowan’s Calmer Collection

Recently Finished Projects

In the Groove boatneck pullover using Manos del Uruguay in Black and Cheek (pale pink), from Fall 2006 issue of knitscene. SWEATER IS DONE!

Stash Stealer Scarf for me, using delicious yarn that darling Amy let me raid from her stash. I made up the pattern--a couple of wide ribs rimmed in moss stitch. It's soft and fuzzy and DONE!

Moss Stitch Jacket with Collar for Hope using Classic Elite Wool Bam Boo in Ivy, from Quick Baby Knits by Debbie Bliss. JACKET IS DONE!

Next in line

Brompton cardigan using Noro Cash Iroha in Jewel Green (my name for shade #100)

Eyelet Yoke Pullover using Debbie Bliss Merino Aran

Under consideration

Loads!

More scoop on my knitting endeavors can be found at my home on Ravelry (clicky here).

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