The Yarn Harlot Pays a Visit

The Yarn Harlot finally made an appearance in DFW last night, when she stopped at Legacy Books in Plano for a book signing. If you've never heard about the Yarn Harlot before, Dude - you are seriously behind the times. True, she writes a lot about knitting, but the knitting applies to life, in general.

Stephanie is a humorist, if you need a word to classify her, but she is much more than that. She can move knitters to do her bidding. Because of her, in the name of Knitters Without Borders, donations to Doctors Without Borders total $590,768.00 at last count. This figure far exceeds the original goal of $100,000.00. The new goal is a cool million, and I think it will be achieved. Stephanie and a few other glitterati in the knitting world have organized a huge Sock Summit in Portland, OR this August. The registrations opened this past Tuesday at 12:00PM CST, and the 30,000 simultaneous connections, besides crashing the super-server, easily filled the 4000 available class spots in about 10 seconds. The organizers have lured several matriarchs of knitting out of retirement to participate in this event. Y'all do not even have to ask if the Merry Karma will attend. (Duh!)

Here's a fraction of the SRO crowd that came to the booksigning. Most of the girls in the forefront are The RockStars. They are some pretty cool friends of mine.

Stephanie gave a nice little talk about the general misconceptions about knitting. It was funny, and oh so true.




I made a new friend, Melanie of Pink Lemon Twist. That shawl - she designed it.




Here's a future knitter wearing a handknit sweater. Her mommy is a friend of mine.




Royalty visits visiting royalty in full regalia. That's a Merry Karmaism.









It was a fun evening. You should be sad you missed it.

MK out.

A Couple of Flicks

Life has been full lately. The baseball team is out of the playoffs - more on that in another post. I've been knitting, knitting, knitting. The Kid is graduating from high school next week.

I have a couple of posts to knock out, and will start today with some movies I've seen recently:

In Be Kind Rewind, Jack Black inadvertently erases all the videos in a little neighborhood video store, and he and the employee entrusted to run the store while the owner is away, try to refilm - or swede (as they call it) - all the movies. It was cute, but silly in parts.

Charlie Bartlett is about a rich boy having to go to public school and ends up being the students’ psychoanalyst. Hope Davis, Robert Downey, Jr. and Anton Yelchin (who plays Charlie) star in this sweet little movie. It was good.

Tell No One is a good film in French with English subtitles. A woman is killed by a serial killer. Eight years later, her husband receives an e-mail that appears to be from his wife with a link to a video in which she appears alive and well. It’s a suspenseful movie with a complicated plot. Kristen Scott Thomas is in this film. I recognize some of the other actors from other films that I’ve watched, but don’t really know any of them well. It was pretty good.

Finally, one of my readers mentioned The Great Debaters as being a good film to watch. It was on my Blockbuster queue, and it came the day after her suggestion. The movie is based on a true story about a professor at an East Texas all-minority college who coaches his debate team all the way to a debate with the Harvard squad. Denzel Washington stars as the coach. Forest Whittaker plays a minister who is the father of one of the team members. It was good.

MK out.

More Movies

I have not been to the movie theater in the last several weeks. Baseball season and the lack of movies worth fighting the traffic have been the main reasons.

I have been catching up with a few flicks on my Blockbuster Online queue:

Audrey (Halle Berry) was married to Steve (David Duchovny) in Things We Lost in the Fire. Jerry (Benicio Del Toro) was Steve’s best friend from childhood. After Steve dies, Audrey starts depending on Jerry to help her through. It was pretty good.

Wristcutters is one of those movies for which one must suspend belief at the onset. This guy commits suicide and transitions to an afterlife that he shares with others who have taken their own lives. When he finds out that his girlfriend also kills herself, he sets out to find her. It was kinda quirky…OK, very quirky.

Starting Out in the Evening is an interesting movie with Frank Langella, Lauren Ambrose and Lili Taylor. Leonard Schiller (Langella) was once a famous author, who now spends his time trying to finish a novel that he has been writing for 10 years. A graduate student (Ambrose) talks him into allowing her to write her thesis about him and his works. He realizes how lonely he’s been all these years. His daughter (Taylor) has her own issues. It was pretty good.

In The Good Evening, Gary (Martin Freeman) and Dora (Gwyneth Paltrow) are living together in a less than exciting relationship. Gary, a talented musician, now writes jingles for a living. He is rather bothered by his lot in life and starts dreaming about the perfect woman (Penelope Cruz). Shortly after, he meets her in the flesh, and then has to reconcile his dreams from his real life. It was alright.
My Kid Could Paint That is a documentary about a four-year-old girl who allegedly painted some big canvases that were pretty good. A family friend who owned a coffee shop sold a painting of hers that Marla’s parents had given him. The demand for her work drove the prices up, and attracted worldwide attention. Whether she actually did the painting all by herself has been questioned. It was very interesting.

Marley and Me is a cute movie, and the trailers lead one to think that it is just a zany comedy. Although there are many funny parts, there are many sad ones too. Jennifer Anniston and Owen Wilson play a married couple who start out in life with a puppy, Marley. As Marley grows, so does the family. It was good.

Have you seen any good movies lately? Please share.

MK out.

Rock On Gold Dust Woman...

We went to the Fleetwood Mac concert last night, and I forgot my camera. All I had was my Blackberry, and I haven't figured out how to do more than point and shoot with it.

Gotta read that instruction manual...


MK out.