Catch-Up

I'm sorry I haven't posted much lately. There's been so much happening.

I went to the Fall Fiber Fest on Saturday, and I'll have to write about that in another post because I have had so much happening and not enough time to write about it.

The apartment complex I live in ripped out my whole kitchen yesterday (that's right, nothing but walls left at one point) and put in a whole new one. That means that I had to remove everything from the entire kitchen on Monday! There was a lot more in that kitchen than I had thought there was! It took me hours to package everything and drag it into the living room on Monday! I didn't want to start the moving project early because then the kitchen would have been unusable for making or finding food, and since I had grossly underestimated how much was actually there, it was almost 5 am before I got a chance to get to sleep.

Lucky for me, I woke up at a bit before 8 am (after a generous three hours of sleep) to let the workmen in. Then I had to get ready to get out of here at 9 to catch the bus. Well, I missed it, but I caught the next one and got to my dentist's appointment precisely, on the dot on time rather than a bit early.

Once I got there, I was disappointed to discover that they planned to clean my teeth rather than start on fixing the two that have a problem in the front.

I've had my teeth cleaned before, and usually wind up with the area where the teeth and gums meet being a little irritated by the process, but this time, I went out of there with my whole mouth sore. Most of the damage seems to have been done by the back of the tool pressing or rubbing on other parts of my mouth. I have a big sore spot next to my tongue!

Then, I used my day pass for the bus to go to WalMart to get a lot of stuff, but especially the calcium and mineral pills I need. Well, they had all the other stuff, but not the calcium, which is what I really needed right away, and what I have to find somewhere else immediately. I'm disappointed!

Oh, and I noticed that they don't carry Simply Soft Eco yarn anymore! I'm really disappointed with that, too! They do have Simply Soft back again (at a significantly higher price than they did have), but this particular WalMart never had a good selection of either, and the situation has only gotten worse.

I was thinking about knitting a scarf with some beads on it, and checked their selection, and found some very interesting beads there. I may ultimately buy the beads for the scarf from them.

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When I got home from the FFF, I found a catalog from Herrshners in the mail! That wouldn't usually be cause for rejoicing, but this is their special Annual Fall Yarn Sale issue, and they have some wonderful yarns! Yes, yes, I know that their usual catalog shows lots of Red Heart Super Saver and other such junk, but (previously unknown to me) they actually carry a lot of yarn that's made of wool, silk, and other wonderful fibers! I had no idea!

They had Moda Dea Silk'n Wool for $1.99 per ball! Unfortunately, with the stuff going on with the kitchen, I didn't call them right away to order, and they sold out of all the colors except pink by the time I called today. But there's so much stuff in the catalog I want at great prices that I'm going to have to rethink and regroup and place an order for something else.

I just looked at the yarn sale page that I put a link for above, and found the Moda Dea Sassy Stripes (I want some in the color Swish) yarn I wanted on sale for about $3 per ball instead of $5 (I'm rounding off). Which reduces the cost of the yarn for a whole sweater from about $75 to about $45! The shipping for that would be $11. I'm really tempted! The question is: can I afford it?

This is the yarn (in the same color) that I used to make the hat/scarf/mittens/boot topper set shown here:

I love this set! And I would really love to have a sweater from the same yarn. Yes, I know it's acrylic, but it's so pretty! And it would look so good with the Celtic knot sweater that is almost finished that I did last Winter! Here's a detail photo of that sweater:

The yarn is actually an off white color with tweedy neps in light and dark blue. I really have to finish this!

Soon!

I'd like to Knit the Sassy Stripes yarn in the pattern from Custom Knits that looks like this:

I would want to make the neckline much higher, with a little less negative ease, and make it a bit longer and add pockets, but this is the basic idea.

I'm also interested in the Red Heart Heart & Sole yarn in the color Rustica. I'd like to make a scarf (with beads), hat and mitts out of this. The Faded Jeans color is pretty, too, and I even like the Antique Rose colorway, in spite of the fact that I'm not really into pink. Enough of it to make all that would be about $28, plus about $10 shipping.

Decisions, decisions.

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Warning: Spoilers! Do not proceed unless you have already seen Stargate Universe!

I did get to see Stargate Universe on Friday, and I said I'm going to do a review of it, so here goes:

On Friday, SyFy aired the premiere two hours of Stargate Universe. The episode was titled Air, and was intended to be broken into two one-hour episodes (even though they were shown back-to-back as if it was one episode), so it was actually Air, Part 1 and Air Part 2. We'll be getting to see Air, Part 3 on Friday. I was beginning to wonder if they'd all be titled Air, but looking ahead on the schedule, I find that, no, they will have other titles.

The two episodes were very different. In the case of the second one, this was a relief.

Part 1 looks like it was probably a dynamite story when it was written and performed! Then it looks like a network executive got hold of it and decided that it wasn't exciting enough, so they butchered it.

I was timing some of this, and discovered that the commercials were only lasting about three or four minutes, but that the show in between was lasting for about five minutes before the next commercial. Which means that they really crammed every minute of commercials into it that they possibly could. I'm guessing that there was between 20 and 25 minutes of commercials in that hour. Possibly more.

If it had started with Eli Wallace solving the puzzle in the video game and then having General O'Neil show up on his doorstep, it would have been the best opening I've ever seen of a new show!

But I'm sure some network exec (and in this context, "exec" means "blithering idiot") thought that it didn't have enough action in the beginning, so they put people flying out of a Stargate and landing on each other and sustaining injury without any idea of why or how.

To begin with, ever since 1998 (that's eleven years, people), we've been seeing people walk into the Stargate on one end, and then walk out of it on the other end. Suddenly, people are walking into the Stargate, and flying out of it as if they'd been shot from a canon!

Reality check: have the execs even ever seen any Stargate episode?

OK, so to get there they had to dial nine symbols, rather than seven or even eight, so maybe this is different. Not likely, but possible. Putting all this "action" in the beginning with no explanation makes it eminently forgettable, though.

After viewing it all once, I forgot it entirely, and the memorable beginning came when Eli won the computer game. I almost fell off my chair laughing when Eli asked "If I don't sign it, what are you going to do to me?" and O'Neil said "We'll beam you up to our spaceship!" Eli laughed, too, but he was laughing because he thought they couldn't do it, while I was laughing because I knew they could and would!

Providing a flashback was, in my opinion, not a good move in this case, but part of the reason I say that is that the whole first hour was entirely flashbacks and flashforwards. Considering that the times between commercials didn't seem to be much longer than five minutes, on average, and that during each segment they showed at least three different time periods, no single scene was longer than about two minutes, and it was chopped up to the point that it lacked coherency.

It was so chopped up that it was impossible to follow the action!

In one scene, we see a man standing in his (or somebody else's?) kitchen having a conversation. He passes out (why?), and lands, not on the floor, but on a space ship!

Eli is on a ship. Then, inexplicably, there are explosions and they say they're under attack and have to escape. They escape, but the planet they're on explodes. What happened? Planet?

Air, Part 1 was so chopped up and schizophrenic that I found it very difficult to follow. Even after five viewings!

It looked to me (on first viewing) like they went through the Stargate at least five times! And traveled on an assortment of about 7 ships!

After ten more views, I think what happened is that they traveled on a human-made ship to a planet and then traveled from there through a Stargate to a ship.

But I couldn't swear to it.

I think that if it had been shown in time sequence, rather than crazy-nightmare-insanity sequence it would have probably been the best premier of a show that I've ever seen. The acting was great, the actual story was (I think, if I've pieced it together correctly) probably fabulous and the characters seem interesting.

I simply can't believe that anyone could take such great actors, and such a fabulous story, and manage to mangle it as badly as they did! I think they actually did us a favor by including so many commercials because they really only mangled a bit more than a half hour instead of the the more usual 3/4 of an hour.

Air, Part 2 settled down and told it's story in a logical, workmanlike, comprehensible way, so it was much better than the first part!

I won't give away the overall story (which would be difficult, even if I really wanted to do that), but it looks like the series will have great characters, good stories, drama and humor, just like the original series, which is still some of my favorite TV ever.

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Wednesday evenings have turned into a barren wilderness of nothing for science fiction and fantasy fans with one huge, enormous exception.

Eastwick is shaping up to be one of the best fantasy shows on television, ever. The best part of all this is that it is a type of story that will appeal to a much larger audience than the typical fantasy show, and maybe get some new people interested!

I can't wait to see what they're up to tonight!