WIP Wednesday - 3/18/2026

I’m still trimming those dang squares. 

I haven’t spent much time in the studio lately because of the dash, but when I do go up there, I take the time to trim at least 8. Don’t ask me how I settled on that number…

So, there’s not much to see here.

MK out.

The Oscars are Tonight!

I finished with watching the films nominated for Best picture and the acting awards last night. This should be an interesting Academy Awards ceremony.

Nominated for Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, and Best Actor (Wagner Moira), The Secret Agent tells the story of an academician on the run from an authoritarian government in 1970s Brazil. It was good, but I’m not really sure why it’s so acclaimed.

Weapons is a horror film. All but one kid from a classroom of student students disappear one night and most of the movie shows how the mystery is solved. Amy Madigan has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing dying, but crazy Aunt Gladys. I’m sure it was a fun role for her to play. She did a good job, I must admit. I don’t see any standouts in this category other than her performance. Typically, when faced with making a choice and one can play “One of these things is not like the others,” that one thing is the answer. I thought it was a stupid film, but I am highly biased against horror movies, unless they have a good measure of substance.

Timothée Chalamet stars in Marty Supreme as Marty. It’s loosely based on real life table, tennis player, Marty Reisman. The film is a bit mad cap and a wild ride. Marty Mauser has a dream to win the British Open and bring American attention to the sport. By day, he works in his uncle‘s shoe store. Away from the store, spends quite a bit of the time trying to fund his dream. Let’s just say, he’s a bit of a hustler, on and off the table. Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin O’Leary (of all people - but he is suited for the role and did a great job) also star in this film. It’s been nominated for Best Picture and Chalamet is up for Best Actor.

I really loved Hamnet, and I can see why Jesse Buckley was nominated for Best Actress. She deserves the award. The film is based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell and it focuses on how William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes (aka Anne Hathaway) dealt with the grief of losing their son. Each coped in their own way. The play, Hamlet, is long believed to be Shakespeare’s tribute to his son. The film is quite moving. It has been nominated for Best Picture, but in going with the latest trends, it may not be out there enough to win.

Now that I’ve seen all the movies nominated for Best Picture, I thought, Hamlet, Train Dreams, Sentimental Value, One Battle After Another and Sinners would have made a tough field of contenders. Now, that would’ve been some contest. Those other movies would not have gotten nominated if I were in charge. I’ll be happy if any of my five win. Word on the street is that it’s between One Battle After Another and Sinners. 

There were many good performances in all the acting categories. It will be interesting to see which one wins.

Enjoy the show!

MK out.

WIP Wednesday - 3/11/2026

Hey, Y’all!

I started trimming my HSTs about a week ago, but I was using a fussy cut ruler and it was very slow going. 

There’s a hump on one side of the seam because you’ve ironed the seam allowance to one side. That causes the the ruler to seesaw a bit and you have to be very careful to apply even pressure; so, it doesn’t shift. I was not happy.

I heard about a ruler especially designed to trim HSTs because it has a “well,” so to speak, that locks down on that hump and prevents the seesawing and shifting. 

I ordered it. It came yesterday.

Last night, I tried it out on a few of the HSTs. I was instantly impressed. 

Fourteen down; 142 to go.

MK out.

Movie Monday - 3/9/2026

Let’s get to it. 

Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem star in F1, about a racer who comes out of retirement to help out a team and its rookie driver. It was action packed and very predictable. I don’t think it belongs in the Best Picture category. It was all right.

In Sentimental Value, a filmmaker, who is esstranged from his family reunites with his daughters after their mother dies. He wants his oldest daughter to star his latest movie and she’s not having it. Stella Skarsgård heads the cast of wonderful actors with whom I am not familiar. It has been nominated for Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, and many of the acting awards. It is very good.

I started watching Sinners, not knowing it was a supernatural horror film. There was an interesting scene at the beginning of the movie that seemed a little out of place but then I thought, “Oh.”  Wow, what a movie! I don’t really like horror films, and I don’t watch them much because they are mostly silly. This film has great production values, and really good acting. The story, though implausible, was also good. In recent years, horror films have been making their way onto the Best Picture list. I’m not really a fan of that. Anyway, despite it being good, I’m not too sure it deserves Best Picture. 

I’ll be back before next Monday because the Oscars are on Sunday night.

MK out.

FO Friday - 3/6/2026

Besides being behind with sharing the books I’ve read, I’m also behind in sharing pictures of things that I’ve made. Let me tell you about the stuff I finished before the end of the year…

I’m sure I mentioned my mission in 2025 to make a hat every month to take over to the local shelter for the unhoused. Between October and the end of December, I made the following hats using leftovers from other projects.

First, I made inversions of the pattern called Drips by Bethany Hill.

Then, I made one inspired by a pattern called Drizzle by Amy Kate Sutherland.

I ended up making 11 total and added one in that had been sitting in the gifting box for a couple of beers. Can you tell which one it was?

Then, at the absolute end of the year, I finally completed Proserpina.

I wasn’t enthused with this project from the beginning because there were serious gauge issues. I didn’t mind the actual knitting, but dang, even my own gauge swatches lied. The silhouette of the sweater that resulted is not the one I was envisioning.

Oh well - it’s wearable. I’m just worried that I will not want to wear it because of the bad juju surrounding it It probably will end up sitting in the cedar closet, mocking my knitting skills until I cannot stand it anymore, and I end up donating it. I may have done that a timer or two in the past…

I cannot see any way to “fix” it without frogging at all and just starting over. I do NOT want to do that.

Why couldn’t the issue be easier, as it was for this sweater?

I made this sweater in 2019. I found myself not wearing it because something felt off about it. I can’t find words to describe the feeling. It looked all right, but there was something about it and it wasn’t getting worn. 

One day, a bolt of lightning must’ve hit me. I decided that it was too long. I frogged back the ribbing and then about two or so inches more before I knit the ribbing back and cast off. I think I like it much better.

You can tell it’s shorter now - just look and compare with the mannequin picture above.

And that’s all for now!

MK out.

Book Chat - 3/5/2026

I have been falling down on the job. I have been reading, but I haven’t been telling y’all about it. Following is the list of books I read between August and the end of 2025:

Lightning in a Mason Jar by Catherine Mann

*The Names by Florence Knapp

The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley

The American Wife by Christina Lucyk-Berger

The Toy Car: A Short Story by Rose Tremain 

The Chemistry Test by Georgina Frankie

The Likeness by Tana French

Both Things Are True by Kathleen Barber

*The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb

*The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham

*My Friends by Fredrik Backman

*A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I read fifty books last year. The ones listed above with asterisks were very good and I would highly recommend.

I’ve read five books so far this year and I will tell you about them soonish.

MK out.

Movie Monday - 3/2/2026

There was a bit of movie watching in the last couple of weeks. 

In Blue Moon, Lorenz Hart (played by Ethan Hawke) Reminisce about his prior successful career with his former partner, Richard Rogers (played by Andrew Scott).  The action takes place on the night that Oklahoma! (written by Rogers and Hammerstein) opens on Broadway. With many of the films in which Ethan Hawke plays, this movie is dialogue driven. Surprisingly, the dialogue, bogs down the action and only a couple of parts. It was good, just not sure if it was Best Picture good…yet.

Playing real life couple Mike and Claire Sardina, Kate Hudson, and Hugh Jackman star in Song Sung Blue. The couple or a Neil Diamond tribute band called Thunder and Lightning, and were popular in the Milwaukee area in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Words on the street if that Jesse Buckley will win for her performance in Hamnet, but dayum! Kate was fabulous. This film is warm and fuzzy, but it depicts real humans. There’s a documentary filmed in 2008 about a couple available on YouTube, also called Song Sung Blue. It’s a bit greater and it made my Pollyanna heart a bit sad. Anyway, the motion picture is good and worth a watch.

I wasn’t sure if I was gonna like Frankenstein. There have been so many adaptations of Mary Shelley’s book and I thought it would just be redundant. I was happy to see that Guillermo del Toro’s treatment was quite  pleasing. In this version, the creation is a sympathetic character, and Dr. Frankenstein is the real monster. Jacob Elordi Was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as a creature, and he did a great job.

Leonardo DiCaprio may have a messy personal life, but he sure can act. In One Battle After Another, he plays a single father running from a bad guy from his vigilante past. The film is quite entertaining, in a Quentin Tarantino kind of way.

I am not the biggest fan of Yorgos Lanthimos’s work, despite the fact that we have a common national heritage. Most of his films are weird. Bugonia is no exception. Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis play cousins who kidnap a pharmaceutical company CEO (played by Emma Stone) because they think she is part of an alien species that is killing off the honey bees. Is it a dark comedy or a horror film? Yes. And a little weird, but in the end, entertaining. Best Picture? Hmmm. Emma Stone as Best Actress? We’ll see.

And that concludes the latest installment.

MK out.