Knitting a blanket and drawing a blank

Diagonal baby blanket

Yarn: Lion Homespun (98% acrylic, 2% polyester)
Colors: Sunshine state
Needles: US 11 circulars
Stitches: up to 126

I am a patient person in general. I've felt that patience diminishing some lately, but I'll get to that in a bit. Where I have no patience is in keeping FOs to myself. I get too excited and have to show off my work, which I did earlier today, and give the knitted items to the intended recipients as soon as possible. I'll be passing this blanket to the expectant parents on Saturday. At the rate I'm going, there may be a bib accompanying the blanket. I didn't expect to have much knitting time tonight, but the couple hours I picked up have been put to good use on a bib.

You see, today was looking like the day of marathon movies. Around lunchtime I saw Grindhouse, which clocks in at more than three hours. (In a nutshell, the Robert Rodriguez film is stupid, lurid, and too long but mostly fun. Tarantino's film was a big disappointment and probably why I'm leaning to a mixed review overall for the double feature.) In the early evening I showed up to see a 193-minute Jacques Rivette film. While I was curious to see the French film, my body rebelled and used the darkened theater as an excuse to have me sleep. (I'm probably averaging six hours a night, so it's not a surprise that I dozed off.) I don't know how long I was out, but 45 minutes in I was totally lost, due in part to my snoozing.

A domestic DVD isn't available, which was the deciding factor in choosing to go despite knowing I didn't really feel up to attending. (The ticket cost didn't enter into it since I have an annual pass.) That was about the only reason to compel myself to stay. It wasn't enough. As I struggled through the next thirty minutes, I kept thinking that I would rather be at home. I could watch the Reds game, and if I wasn't too sleepy, I could knit too. That sounded a lot better than enduring another two hours of a movie that was making absolutely no sense. So I got up and left.

The reason I mention all this is because I've been feeling for awhile like I'm undergoing a transformation. I don't mean in a drastic science fiction way or an altering of my core but a change of some kind. With everything that's happened in the past year and is going on now, I suppose it's fair to say that I've given a great deal of time to self-reflection. (Believe it or not, this blog has played a significant part in that too, even if I don't always publish what it might stir up.) My circumstances at home and at work are in a state of transition, so it adds up that I'd feel that way.

Still, it seems like it goes deeper. One way that is reflected is in my reactions to the movies I'm seeing. It wasn't a conscious decision, yet I know that there's been an aesthetic shift in what films are speaking to me. I've always had a populist streak and a fondness for narrative, but I learned to appreciate the tone poems and master shot cinema. In large part the art stuff--and the mainstream films with healthy doses of it--aren't doing it for me these days. A couple of years ago today's viewing selections would have seemed like locks, yet I'm cool on Tarantino's latest and didn't have the stamina for what's supposed to be one of Rivette's best. Good grief, I sat through all of Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma despite the fact that those films mostly made my head hurt.

I'm not sure where I intended to go with all of this. I had a much clearer vision of it while driving home from the theater than I do now. Maybe it means that I'm losing my edge, not that I'm sure I ever had one. Or maybe it means I just need to get more sleep.