So. My first Pubski. Let's do this already. Books I've been reading American Psycho. I finally watched the movie after it being on my "To Watch" list for approximately oh 17 years, but I saw and enjoyed it, and decided to read the book. To say I'm enjoying it so far is a little so-so. I'm almost halfway through, and I understand why he's so obsessed with what people are wearing and how much they paid for it, but the word "hardbody" makes me roll my eyes every single time I see it, and it's in there A LOT. This may be one of the rare occasions where I actually enjoy the movie more than the book. Next on my list - reread A Song of Ice and Fire. The show is ridiculously good, and I never gave the books much of a chance. keifermiller says that the books are better in this case, so I'll give it a genuine shot this time. Crafting? I've wanted to brew some beer, but I've been a little meh about my homebrew. It all has the same weird off flavor to it, and it's not particularly cost effective. Fun and enjoyable to watch, but an expensive hobby. Knitting has been uninspired, as summer tends to do. There's nothing I want to do less than knit warm things when it's hot out, so that's on hold. I did decide to cross-stitch a piece for my sister-in-law and her fiance for their upcoming marriage. This is by far the biggest thing I've ever done, and my tendency with these sorts of things is to bite off more than I can chew (this project is ~8000 stitches), but since it's only two colors, I think I can manage this. It's been so long since I've done any cross-stitching and it's refreshing. Other Floated down Missouri's Niangua River with my sisters and our friend this past weekend. The last time we went was a pretty shit time. I had to babysit drunk people and the river was low and there was just a whole mess of unpleasantness. This time was SO MUCH MORE FUN. We got storms on Friday night, and that was exciting in tents, but it got the river level up enough on Saturday that we weren't dragging our canoe much of the trip. Everyone had fun but did so responsibly, and I got some ghost pepper beef jerky from Osceola Cheese. My sisters and I have been out there several times now, and this was by far the best. The eclipse was yesterday, and the initial plan for keifermiller and I was to head north of town 90 or so minutes to see totality. Woke up, checked the weather, clouds and rain and general shit weather. I wasn't prepared to drive that far for such disappointment, so we decided to stay in town and see the 99.7% or so eclipse. Clouds. We had clouds from the start of the eclipse (I did see the first few minutes through my potentially dangerous glasses) til it was over. I was pretty bummed about the whole thing, but it wasn't a total loss. At peak eclipse it got so much darker than I imagined it would, and it was still so eerie to see at 1pm. I'm not messing around in 2024.
Ellis benefits greatly from interpretation by a disinterested third party. American Psycho is a shit book. Not as shit as Rules of Attraction but pretty shit. If you want a real treat, do Less than Zero. Ellis hates that movie, probably because it has a plot, a protagonist, an antagonist, character development, etc. It also has a set designer who clearly put half the budget through his nose and the other half into neon but there aren't many other movies with both Slayer and Bananarama in the soundtrack.
I think you're supposed to roll your eyes at most of what Bateman says in that book. But I too definitely preferred the movie. For GoT/ASOAIF, I enjoyed the books for the most part, but I'm done with them. GRRM took 5 years from book 3 to 4, and then almost 6 years for the next one. We're now going on 6 years on the next, which means that I basically have to re-read the entire series every time in order to remember what's happened. This is doubly so now that the TV show and the books have diverged. I frankly don't believe he'll finish the series before he dies, and I don't want to get re-invested. Hobbies are good, and basically the point is that they're not cost-effective. But as long as you don't mind spending the money, who cares?
This has been the first year that I have not slacked off much on my knitting/crocheting for the summer, although it is somewhat out of necessity for me at this point. I am not particularly fast with the stitches and have a few projects with deadlines coming up: 2 that are gifts for next week which I finished today, one for next month, and I am already getting requests for Christmas. The other reason is that the work is relaxing and therapeutic when going well and work has been stressful so I have needed the outlet. My plans for seeing totality fell through too, but we got sun and a good percentage here so I got some fun pics, I will post tomorrow when I get them off the camera. 2024 it's on though!
I did knit a couple of baby hats a few weeks ago for my coworkers who are having a baby in October, but that's been the only real FO I've felt like I needed to finish, and baby hats are not much of a time commitment. Every year I think I'm not going to procrastinate any Christmas knitting but I always do. This year I don't plan on doing any, and if any gets done then that's just a bonus. I definitely understand the therapeutic aspect of keeping the hands busy. I've kind of been in a weird funk lately and need to -make- something. With the cross-stitching I get to fulfill that need to create. I've been really enjoying seeing peoples' pictures of the eclipse, so I'm looking forward to seeing yours too! In 2024 Keifer and I are going someplace where we don't have to travel the day of to see totality. Possibly somewhere in Texas, but the path is so open to possibilities that we have some time to plan.
Cross stitching is rad, and I always liked the finished products I made a lot better than things which I had knit. Easier to undo mistakes, and it felt a bit more portable to me. That being said, i really like the physical sensation of knitting. It's mindless in the best way possible, at least when you're only knitting variations on a rectangle, like I do. I had some truly stupendous anxiety during the home stretch of my senior year of college, and was knitting about 2 scarves a day for 2 months. It was a small thing, but knowing that I was actively creating something every day made the bigger problems feel a lot more manageable.
Have you ever tried crochet? Has the ability to mindless like knitting once you get used to it, but also has the ability to easily undo mistakes, as you only have one live stitch at a time (unless you're doing Tunisian). Plus it is, I think, easier to do circular and other shapes with crochet (see the Crochet Coral Reef: http://crochetcoralreef.org/ if you want to be amazed at what can be done with yarn).