"Sick" Movies

I have been sick with a cold that my lovely daughter gave me. Spring colds are not fun. Thankfully, my worse complaint is congestion, which means I have been semi-functional in a zombie kinda way.

I have resorted to my preferred method of recovering: lots of sleep, tea and movies. I actually have a stack of movies at my bedside that I watch when I’m sick. As I got ready to settle into a marathon with this cold, I realized something.  My favorite “sick” movies have sick people in them!

Here is my Top 3 “Sick” movie countdown.

3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When the aliens visit Barry’s house the first time (this link is of the second time they visit), Jillian, Barry’s mother, is sick in bed with a cold. As a city girl, that scene creeps me out. She’s sick, sleep in the house with all the windows open and the doors unlocked. Yeah…no.

2. Pride and Prejudice. Poor Jane. Forced to ride to Netherfield in the rain. Her suffering, however, is not in vain. Darcy gets to spend several days falling for Elizabeth and quite against his will. Favorite line: "People do not die from little trifling colds."

1. You’ve Got Mail. The scene where Kathleen is sick and Joe comes to visit her is the best. I love when she says, in the middle of their conversation, “My head is starting to get fuzzy.”  

My Life In Stitches: New Cool Knitting Stuff

This month I’ve come across some new cool knitting things. I guess I’ve spent too much time on Raverly. With my last blog post of the month, I want to share some of those things with you.

We Are So Very Pretty colorway

Yarn

Nerd Girl Yarns. I have a friend who loves Firefly, so when I came across Nerd Girl Yarns, I couldn’t wait to share it with her. Nerd Girl Yarns names their colorways with lines from Firefly. I read the names to my friend, and she knew exactly what episode they came from. Beyond the moment of bonding I had with my friend, the colorways are lovely. Nerd Girl Yarns is on my yarn bucket list.

Techniques

Lifted Increase. This week, I learned how to knit a lifted increase. It was pretty simple once I practiced a little. I needed to learn it for the Skew socks I’m working on. Here is a video.

Overdying yarn. I think most knitters have a skein or two of yarn that captured our attention in the skein but ending up being not so exciting in the cake. I have a skein of purple sock yarn like that. I made a pair of socks, but didn’t like the color pattern. So I, being the geek that I am, researched overdying yarn. It was way more simple than I thought. I’ll be making my attempt next week.

Miss Terry by Kyla Hurst

Patterns

Miss Terry. What a cool name! My lovely knitting friend, Jill hipped me to this pattern. It is so me. I love working on lace and I have plenty of DK in my stash to work with. Can’t wait to start this. Isn't it every girl's dream to wear herself?

Raverly Groups

For the Love of Darcy. For those who don’t know, I am a huge Jane Austen fan. And once again, my knitting friend Jill suggested the Raverly group, For the Love of Darcy (Pride and Prejudice is my favorite Jane Austen book). Right now, there’s a discussion of which Darcy (Firth or Macfadyen) looked better wet. Hilarious!

What cool new knitting stuff have you come across?

Birth-month Celebration: Caribbean Festival and Jane Austen Book Fair

At the beginning of this month, I posted my plans to celebrate my birth-month. I’ve done two of the things on my list so far, one good, one bad.

Greeter at the door

The first was the Caribbean Festival in Bladensburg, MD. It’s not so much that this event was bad, it was just too small. I’d walked through all the venders in five minutes. There were bands performing, which made it a little better. I think the biggest problem with the event was me. I’d had a particularly rough day and just couldn’t change the direction of my emotions to enjoy the event. I did, however, bought a pina colada snow cone (it’s been years since I had one of those), so the event wasn’t a total loss.

Used book sale

This past weekend, I attended a book fair hosted Jane Austen Society of North America’s Metropolitan DC chapter. The event was great. The event featured six different authors who’ve written Jane Austen themed books. The authors included: Sandy Lerner (writing as Ava Farmer), Janet Mullany, Catherine Reef, Lori Smith (I already had a book by her), Margaret C. Sullivan, Diana Peterfreund, and Amy Corwin. Each author read a passage (or two) from their books and there was a short Q&A session at the end. The event also included a book signing, a used book table and refreshments. We were even greeted by a woman dressed in period clothing. Very cool.

Author chats and book signings

I really enjoyed myself.  It was nice to pick up some more Austen-themed books for my collection, but it was also nice to talk to the authors. Janet Mullany, Diana Peterfrund and Lori Smith had some very encouraging words for me as a writer, something I sorely needed. I learned that all of Jane Austen’s novels were self-published except Pride and Prejudice. I didn’t know that.

This was a great event for my birth-month celebration. I will certainly be hoping there will be another one of these next year. Nothing better than a perpetual birth-month celebration.