Mossy Cottage Knits

Tap. Tap. Tappity Tap Tap. And...Jazz Fingers!

Does my girl know how to do date night or whut?

The lowdown on “Happy Feet,” because Seanna Lee asked: I don’t care how many terminally cute baby penguins there are in the flick, it’s not for little ones. In fact, at one point during the movie, during a very foreboding, pregnant pause, we heard some poor kid in the audience, who was obviously savvy about what those pauses mean, say tremulously and querulously, “Mooommmmy?” And then all hell broke loose on the screen, and the poor kid started shrieking. Which was good in a way, because he drowned out TMK, who, apparently, is not savvy about the pregnant pauses.

That, and parts of the plot were completely unbelievable, which is an insanely imbecilic thing for me to say about an animated feature, I know, but that’s just how loco they were. I can believe in a gigantic warehouse full of thousands of "transporter" doors to childrens’ bedrooms, and a green ogre who makes candles out of his own earwax and partners up with a talking donkeh, long before I could believe some parts of “Happy Feet.”

Bet you’re thinking by now that we’re a coupla old Scrooges who wouldn’t know a cute, fun and funny movie if it bit us on the arse, and you’re halfway to deleting this blog from your bloglist. But, nope, we loved it lots. In fact, there was an extended outburst of singing and synchronized shimmying after we got home, since the movie and the dancin’ and the tunes just get under your skin like that. (Similar outbursts may have occurred on Saturday and Sunday as well, but I’m taking the Fifth.) And the animation was breathtaking. I say go. I even say, take a kid; just make sure he’s older and doesn’t have a bladder-control problem.

As for the rest of the weekend, no thanks to the otter video, TMK and I spent it holding hands in a rather curious fashion.

The knitting for the weekend consisted mostly of the interminable round-and-round of sock knitting—and the agita caused by discovering that a difference of a mere four stitches can cause variegated yarn to go from making amorphous, yet attractive, smudges of color to making perfect, yet not so attractive, spiraling stripes—so let’s focus on something more entertaining and satisfying, shall we?

Every year our Guild has what’s called the “Fiber Frenzy” during which members can bring things to the monthly meeting that they want to sell like items they’ve made or stash or books or patterns they want to farm out to a new home. Norma, who is a Feralite and an enormously talented knitter, brought some of these, which she makes out of some lumpy, bumpy, thick-and-thin, off-white yarn that knits up into the perfect sheep fleece. How could I not take one home?

Despite the language barrier, and their differences in size and cultural backgrounds, the sheep and Mongol LEE* have now become fast friends:

Oh, and speaking of things that are knitted, things that are felted, and things that are both, make sure not to miss Dear Reader Klaus’s very own felted Magic Cone! Perhaps the Cone is on its way to becoming the next Flying Spaghetti Monster.

* For new readers, Mongol LEE was a gift to TMK from Cuzzin Tom. He (the camel, not the cuzzin) is made from felted Mongolian Bactrian camel fiber, and is named after a student of my e-friend Marylee’s who insists, in a most charming fashion, on pronouncing Mongolia as MongoLEEa.

Posted by Ryan at April 2, 2007 11:25 AM