Things That Make Me Want To Go To New York

1. Godzilla (1998): This was the second monster movie I’d seen. The first was King Kong, the 1930s version, which was also set in New York. Needless to say giant creatures seem to like tearing that city up quite a bit. My favourite scene was where the Chrysler Building came a-tumbling down. A morbid fascination really.








2. Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest: The scene in Grand Central Station especially, but also the visit to the UN building. I guess it also has a lot to do with Carey Grant, the stylish minx. You just have to love a man who sends his suit for pressing right after someone tries to kill him with a crop duster. Class.






3. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party: Dave Chappelle is an American national treasure. I’m not American, nor am I qualified to induct him officially as their national treasure, which does sort of mess up the power of my statement. However, I reiterate; the man is awesome. I saw a conversation between him and Maya Angelou on TV by accident one day, and then saw this film. It is such a fantastic film too; the concept is immense, and it may be a cliché to say, but the people are the most interesting thing in it. I love how he pulls different communities together to claim a piece of the city, even if only for a day or so. I especially love the quirky couple with their self-built ‘Broken Angel’ building. I like to think that people who are a bit offbeat are unique to big cities. That’s not to say that smaller towns don’t have them; I just think that their eccentricities would make them outcasts. I think bigger cities accommodate strangeness. They let people be. Not necessarily in a nice way, maybe in a cruel way too, but they are still allowed to be who they are.



4. How I Met Your Mother: Only really for that one episode where they try to find the perfect burger that Marshall stumbled upon one evening. I love food, and I love cities, and I love the idea of a perfect-burger-treasure-hunt. Especially if the place has a red door!

5. Home Alone 2: You can probably tell that most of this list revolves around buildings and interesting human beans. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is full of both! Duncan’s Toy Chest (which is apparently actually in Chicago. Hmph.), Central Park, the Plaza Hotel, the pigeon lady who sees the opera for free, the scary cabby, that house under renovation which is the scene of the sticky, oozy, firey, hurty, laughy, ouchy mayhem.... Absolute classic.

6. Green Card: Oh! To have Andie Macdowell’s apartment! And a Frenchman with a hard past and a musician’s heart! Sigh.

7. Ryan Adams’ song ‘New York’. Also Gene Kelly’s song ‘On The Town’: Basically any young man, fit or scruffy, dancer or singer, pasty or tanned, army, navy, airforce or civilian who sings about New York makes me want to go there. I like to believe it combines city-lust with male-lust. The two most important forms of lust after yarn-lust.



8. Catcher in the Rye: Of Course. Obvious. Is there a person alive who didn’t like this book and didn’t want to be Holden Caulfield?

9. The Babysitter’s Club books: Because Stacey, the one from New York was described as the ‘sophisticated’ one. I wanted to be sophisticated. So I wanted to go to New York. Still applies.

10. Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Holly Golightly. Because she was a weary sophisticate. A Woman Without A Past. Rather, she could reinvent herself and live life fast and loose in stunning dresses with a cat and good wine. Not bad for a country girl.

11. Radio Days, Woody Allen: This was such a beautiful film. It was like listening to small anecdotes from your grandparents. The family is such a beautiful example of the messed up-ed-ness of families, but it also shows how at the end of the day family is always there to love you. They may box your ears, but then they’ll give you a big hug and a glass of milk. Goofy grin inducing film. I wanted to hug everyone I saw after watching it.

Knotting

This picture was my second attempt at making Natalie Larson's Star Crossed Slouchy Beret on Ravelry.

The first time I counted the stitches completely wrong and ended up with a Crossed Star Slouchy Beret. But this second one was yummy, and correctly made!

Which is why I name this post 'Knotting'. I'm borrowing it from Elizabeth Honey's book Fiddle-back in the hope that she is as sweet as her name and won't really mind. The kids in the book try to knit something but end up messing it up so badly that they call it 'knotting' instead. My knitting is largely knotting, and I will explain this through two anecdotes, one relating to the hat above.

First, when my mother was teaching me how to knit back in 2007. She taught me how to hold the needles correctly, and how to hold the thread properly for the right tension. By the time I came to the end of that ugly terracotta coloured rib scarf I thought I'd conquered the world! Alas, I moved away for a year to a different country, away from my mother's patient knitting coaching and thus developed bad habits. Once not long after I got home, we were sitting in the living room with our respective knitting. Mum stopped after some time and looked at me. She then said; 'It gives me pain to watch you knit.' My technique, it seems, was not unorthodox as I had hoped; it was just plain wrong. And continues to be so! Bad habits are tricky to shake.

My second example of knotting, as I mentioned, relates to that glorious squishy blue hat. I am proud of it, despite the labour pains it brought. See, I know there is a Magic Loop method out there when using circular knitting needles. When I youtube it, it looks fantastically easy and straightforward. I would love to be able to knit socks with ML method! (As it is, I can barely knit competently with two needles; four would be far beyond my skill level.) But the Magic Loop method, when competing with my unorthodox/wrong knitting technique has failed me at every turn. If you can help, please tell me how!

I must here confess that when the stitches became fewer and fewer towards the crown of my Star Crossed Beret, there was much swearing and sweating over stretched and strained plastic circular needles. My solution (when I couldn't figure out the ML method) involved raiding my Dad's shed for wire which I fashioned into circular needles. The beauty of those makeshift wire circulars was that when the stitches grew fewer and fewer, I could simply snip off the end of the needles with wire cutters and continue on my merry knotted way.

Terrible, no? But it worked. See that crown? It's a squashy little star. And the recipient of that hat (admittedly a non-knitter) was none the wiser. Viva la Knotting!