Book Club: White Knight

As of tonight, I get to add “movie star” to my resume. Creed 2 is filming in Philadelphia right now, and I responded to a want ad for extras. I’ve wanted to be an extra in a movie for ages, but I always come across the casting call for extras the day after it’s too late to apply. By a stroke of luck, I saw this one on Facebook in time and gleefully sent over my “head shot”, which was just the pattern photo from the Anders Hat. I’m writing this post on Wednesday night, since presumably I’ll be too busy stuffing my face at craft services and, obviously, being discovered as the next Hollywood It Girl on Thursday to keep up with my book club post responsibilities. Anyhow, when you read this on Thursday I will be rubbing elbows with the overworked production assistants in charge of telling me to leave Michael B Jordan alone. The big question for me is: What shawl to wear?! The lucky shawl chosen has the potential to be in a frame or two of a crowd scene in a real movie. That’s major knit-wear-decision pressure.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhLAnAeH1XX/?taken-by=doctor_llama

This week I’ve been reading…

After last week’s literary misadventures, I needed a sure thing. I got lazy and re-read another Dresden Files book, White Night. There’s a new book of short stories coming out in a few months called Brief Cases, and Jim Butcher is slaving over a hot keyboard writing book 16, so I’ve been working my way back through the series. I’ll be all set for the new books when they grace my bookshelves.

White Knight is the ninth book, and I think the series takes a real turn for the better in book seven. Nine keeps up that momentum. The first four books sort of meander around, trying to find their voice. The series as a whole relies on a lot of tropes, but the first few especially are fairly superficial. Everyone in these books are incredibly beautiful. Harry Dresden is described as basically looking like a hobo most of the time in old dirty jeans and tee shirts, cowboy boots, and a leather trench coat. More often than not he is sleep deprived, short tempered, and often looks as if he’s got one foot in the grave. Actually, he usually does have one foot in the grave. Still, the author, Jim Butcher, usually paints a picture of a guy that most of us would cross the street to avoid, and yet beautiful women throw themselves at him constantly.

That said, by the end of book four, Butcher got a handle on where the series was going and by book seven, the plot is engaging enough that I’m on my third full read through of the series. I think it’s important to call a book on its bullshit, and I give the Dresden Files a hard time over its full cast of manic-pixie-dream-girls every time I talk about it. But I love the Dresden Files anyways. I love them with reckless abandon, supernaturally beautiful dream girls and all. I wish that it could pass the Bechdel Test, but I accepted a long time ago that if I want it all, I’ll have to bully Jac into publishing her novel.* The Dresden Files is like my comfiest pair of leggings. They may not be flattering, but they feel so good that I don’t even care.

Currently on my needles…

Mabel the Merciless is having a “sleep regression.” This is pediatrician for: “Attempting to kill his/her parents. Don’t worry, totally normal.” So, as a result, I’ve been having a sleep regression. The upside is that I’ve had extra time I normally would have frittered away on sleeping to spend with my audio books. The downside is that I’ve become incapable of basic adult decision making. I’ve been working on a swatch for two days straight. I’ve got the colors picked out for some socks, and I know I want to make them into socks, but I can’t commit to a stitch. I suspect this swatch is going to basically be a scarf before I decide what I want to do.

My obsession with Adventure Yarn is nothing new, but I’ve been wanting to combine these two colors, Pegleg Point (aqua) and Mad Hatter (green/purple speckles), forever and just haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve been in the mood for bold colors lately, which is a shift away from this time six months ago when I wanted to make everything out of muted reds and oranges. I feel like making socks, and Adventure is my go-to sock yarn since it’s durable and I am SUPER hard on socks. I wear them out faster than anyone I know. I keep asking our mill if we can get some titanium spun into one of the blends and then maybe I’ll be able to knit socks that last forever. That or I’d be able to knit socks that doubled as a brillo pad. I was hoping to land on a design choice in time to take these with me tomorrow to knit on set since I assume there will be a ton of down time for extras, but we’ll see if I can land on a stitch between now and then.

~Megan-Anne

*Fun fact: Jac wrote a novel. It’s really good, but she hasn’t published it. Let’s all band together and peer pressure her about it. ;)