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Swapperific

March 31st, 2008 by Crumpet

I received my Ravelry Bag Lady swap package last week! Hooray!

annie3891, who doesn’t seem to have a blog, sent me a beautiful felted evening style bag made from some handspun yarn she’d bought. I love it, but it was a bitch to photograph. Especially at 10pm when it was raining and dark outside… here it is anyway making friends with my sketchbook.

My gorgeous new bag!

I also got Pocky (!), origami paper, a beautifully soft blue iPod cosy and some lovely lip balm! Thank you Annie!

Pocky!

I’m pretty sure my ‘target’ will get the package I sent today, so I’m happy to post pictures now.

Vertigo box 1

I have a bunch of old laser discs sitting at home waiting for a crafting opportunity. While my swap pal doesn’t like horror films so much, I decided that Vertigo was the best one to use, considering her profession. Every single office I’ve ever walked into that’s part of this particular business has had a Vertigo poster somewhere. And I figured my pal could do with a pencil box. Or a ‘whatever she wants to put in it’ box, really. I added some arty extras to the box, keeping in mind something that I read somewhere while stalking.

The Hitch Up Yr Pants Bag

Continuing on the Hitch theme, I sewed this bag. It’s made almost entirely from recycled materials (we had a $30 budget, and I’m doing Wardrobe Refashion, so I set recycling/upcycling/working from stash as a challenge for myself) — I used some op shop pants that once belonged to a very short, very round old man for the outer, and some unwanted handmade pants scavenged from Kym’s stash several years ago for the lining. The batting was also recycled from old manchester, and the pocket was made from some beautiful fabric that I received in exchange for some art years ago. The zipper was also recycled, and the magnetic snap was from stash. Hopefully it’s easy enough to guess which title sequence I was riffing off with the quilting…

Bag with bite.

I was originally going to put two pockets in the bag, but the construction method didn’t really allow for that, so I used the leftover fabric to make this cute little pouch. So easy, and now I want one for myself!

(What is boxy happening?)

And considering that the Bag Lady swap was happening on a knitting board, I obviously had to do some of that. This is the Saturday Market Bag from MagKnits, made from stash yarn (Lang Filo, I think) bought years ago for a buck a ball at Lincraft. It even matches the lining of the Hitch Up Yr Pants bag! :D Next time, though, I’ll figure out how to knit this in the round, then do a three-needle bind-off at the base. Teh Seaming SuXX0r3d.

Saturday Market Bag

So there you go, swap pal (if yr even reading…) — I hope it arrives soon, if it hasn’t already.

Vertigo box 6

Posted in photography, Geekery, Book making, Film, Swaps, Sewing, Knitting | | 3 Comments

(what is box happening…?)

March 26th, 2008 by Crumpet

(What is box happening?)

Putting together the last of my Ravelry ‘Bag Lady’ swap package… :)

Posted in Book making, Film, Swaps | | 1 Comments

Coraline

February 22nd, 2008 by Crumpet

I. Can’t. Wait.

Better quality Quicktime version here.

Posted in Film | | 1 Comments

Number Nine

February 5th, 2008 by Crumpet

Mr C as an iPod ad.

Nine years. :D

We celebrated in our usual fashion by watching a nice, cheery film. This year’s selection? Rescue Dawn.

Posted in Film, Random | | 3 Comments

Things that lead to other things.

January 27th, 2008 by Crumpet

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here already or not, but about a month ago Mr Crumpet was very naughty. He’d been talking about buying a projector, and when the secondhand one that we were going to buy fell through because of a technical fault, we agreed to wait and buy one when we’d saved enough money.

Apparently that was all a ruse.

And as angry as I was, I do really, really, really love it. It makes our front room look far neater and more spacious, and I can now watch David Boreanaz in bigger than life-size mode.

The next problem, though, was that I could only watch my favourite vampire after the sun had gone down (although that does make sense, in a way.) We have wooden venetian blinds on our windows, and while they look lovely, they don’t block out the light so much. So, we had some friends over for dinner and a movie, and they brought over their overlocker for an extended loan.

On loan.

It’s a Husqvarna Huskylock 905, and after downloading a manual and spending a little quality time together, we’ve forged a happy relationship. This particular overlocker is very easy to thread and I have so many projects in mind to use it for. Plus it’s just fun to say Husqvarna.

But what does an overlocker have to do with a projector?

New curtains!

zomg curtains!

Not the greatest project in the world, though. Wrangling thick, heavy pieces of fabric bigger than the floor space in my studio is not so much fun. While they would have been better hand sewn, it was a project that needed to be done quickly, and I value my sanity. I did the whole thing on the overlocker using a “blind hem”. You’d actually have to be blind not to see some of the stitching that’s not supposed to be visible, but the job is done, looks relatively good and works well for us. Also, the front room is way cooler already, because the curtains are blocking out the excessive heat too. Bonus!

And now that’s over, I can work on things like this! (We can also finally have people like m1k3y over to watch a film. Hooray!)

I am nature.

Posted in Film, Sewing, General crafts, Art | | 4 Comments

2007 on DVD

January 8th, 2008 by Crumpet

I watched a lot of films on DVD this year. There may be a couple missing, but here’s the list.

Films I wrote about in my art theory essay:
A Clockwork Orange
Funny Games
Man Bites Dog
Peeping Tom

Other films that contributed to school research:
π
Blade Runner (Director’s Cut)
Fisher King, The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The
I Heart Huckabees
La Jetée
Manhattan (This also qualifies for the next category)
Matrix, The
Serenity
Sunshine

Films I watched because I was ashamed I hadn’t seen them yet:
Annie Hall
Babe
Big Lebowski, The
Do The Right Thing
Graduate, The
Muriel’s Wedding
Requiem for a Dream (the shame ran high with this one — I borrowed it from a coworker in December 2006… and didn’t get around to watching it until December 2007…)

Films I watched because AdamAndSam/AdamAndMatty told me to (Including my Robert Altman marathon and my Ingmar Bergman marathon):
A Prairie Home Companion
Black Snake Moan
Break-up, The
Children of Men
Departed, The
Don’t Look Back
Double Indemnity
Fanny and Alexander
Gosford Park
Idiocracy
Infernal Affairs
Lake House, The
M*A*S*H
McCabe and Mrs Miller
Mulholland Drive
Nashville
Roger & Me
Seventh Seal, The
Short Cuts
Shortbus
Slacker
Squid and the Whale, The
Through A Glass Darkly
United 93
Winter Light

Films I watched (and rewatched, and again) because they’re my version of comfort food:
Iron Giant, The
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Looking for Alibrandi

Films I watched for whatever reason — because they were there, because I wanted to, because someone recommended them, because someone gave us the DVD, etc.:
28 Days Later
A Mighty Wind
Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Brick
Dirty Pretty Things
Elizabeth
Harold and Maude
Jindabyne
Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The
Little Miss Sunshine
My Beautiful Laundrette
Ocean’s Twelve
Pan’s Labyrinth
Panic Room
Porco Rosso
Quiz Show
Radiance
Thelma and Louise
Tideland
Y tu mamá también

Out of that lot, the biggest disappointments were Ocean’s Twelve, Slacker and The Big Lebowski. Ocean’s Twelve because it just wasn’t very good, Slacker because it dragged somewhat and Linklater has made several far better films since then and Lebowski because it’s been built up to be this amazing and funny thing, and, well, it just isn’t.

Out of the films I hadn’t seen already, my favourites were 28 Days Later, Y tu mamá también, Manhattan, Shortbus, Harold and Maude, Children of Men, Dirty Pretty Things, A Clockwork Orange and Little Miss Sunshine. I discovered Cillian Murphy and rediscovered Danny Boyle with 28 Days Later. A Clockwork Orange repulsed and captivated me simultaneously. Children of Men and Dirty Pretty Things cemented my admiration for Chiwetel Ejiofor, and both are amazing, heartbreaking films without even taking his performances into consideration. Y tu mamá también, Shortbus, Harold and Maude and Little Miss Sunshine made me laugh and cry and rejoice in life. Manhattan was a revelation — the first Woody Allen film I’ve ever seen, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Posted in Film | | 2 Comments

2007 at the cinema

January 7th, 2008 by Crumpet

One of my goals last year was to watch more films, specifically more films at the cinema, and to keep a record so that I wouldn’t forget what I had seen. The blog came in rather handy for that, as I was able to add titles to the sidebar as soon as I got home.

This is what I managed at the cinema in 2007.

28 Weeks Later
300
Atonement
Bridge to Terabithia
Golden Compass, The
Happy Feet
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Hot Fuzz
Knocked Up
Lives of Others, The
No Country for Old Men
Pan’s Labyrinth
Perfume
Ratatouille
Shut Up & Sing
Spider-Man 3
Stardust
Superbad
Waitress

I hoped to make it to the Melbourne International Film Festival, but couldn’t afford any tickets at the time. Hopefully this year I’ll make up for that — I plan on getting one of those passes for the festival that lets me see ten or twelve films. So I missed some films that I wanted to see, but overall I think I managed a pretty good variety — from kids through to adults, a documentary, animation, some stupid fun, a few tearjerkers, some scary stuff, comedies, indie, blockbuster and foreign language.

My favourite overall would have to be The Lives of Others. This film rocked me in a way that I wasn’t expecting at all. It was incredible and moving and it made me cry like a baby. At Oscar time, I had trouble comprehending that Pan’s Labyrinth lost the Best Foreign Language Film to this one, but, you know, then I actually saw it.

I also cried at Shut Up & Sing, Atonement, Bridge to Terabithia (one of the most under-appreciated films of the year) and Pan’s Labyrinth. And maybe a few tears of the happy at Waitress, but I can’t quite remember.

My biggest disappointment of the year would have to be The Golden Compass. I was really, really excited for this film and it just didn’t do it for me. I love the books, but the film just jumped from plot point to plot point with no character development at all. And then they went and cut the last couple of chapters from the book so that the film would have a “happy ending”. But not so happy for me.

The film that I most enjoyed watching is Stardust, which really surprised me. I love Neil Gaiman and loved the novel, but wasn’t really drawn in by the film previews. I was worried that they’d screw up the book, but I was very pleasantly surprised and had so much fun with this. Robert De Niro was Teh Awesome. I’m really looking forward to watching it again at home.

So, the cinema sidebar has been reset, and I’ll move on to DVDs tomorrow. Here’s to seeing even more films at the cinema this year!

Posted in Film, Random | | 2 Comments

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