* Nope, not out in the field today. It's overcast and drizzling. And I realized, leaving the house, that I have a "bee barometer" I can check to see what bee activity is like - a patch of wild morning glory moved in around my mailbox, and I've not bothered to excise it, because I like it, and also, it seems kind of pointless to rip out a "pretty" weed when a less pretty one will likely move in. Most mornings there are at least a few bumblebees working over the thing; today there were none. So maybe I can gauge the usefulness of going out to do fieldwork based on whether bees are visiting the morning glory at my house.
* I'm still "almost done" on the first sleeve of Basketweave. I have one more increase to do, then I have to measure, and then I have to decide whether to knit them the full length (23") recommended, or whether to go with my gut and make them shorter. (I have proportionally short arms, I've learned, and also this is a sweater designed for a man, therefore, probably designed for someone who is taller than I am to begin with).
* The Hagrid-sweater yarn came yesterday. I do think I'm going to start it next partly because I look at the 9 skeins and go "That can't possibly be right, that can't possibly be enough." However, it is 1476 yards, so maybe it is. (The sweater is not very cable heavy - there's two running up the front, and a couple of flanking twisted-stitch patterns. Most heavily cabled sweaters take a TON of yarn, cables seem to eat up yarn). If I seem to run short I can probably call KnitPicks and see if they have more of the same dyelot - not so much if I let the yarn marinate for a year or two, which is often my MO with sweaters.
* I finished reading "Three Act Tragedy" (Agatha Christie) the other night. A few spoilerish things: (a) a somewhat sympathetic character was the murderer (well, the character was one I found somewhat sympathetic, maybe not all readers do). That surprised me a little; very commonly in these Golden Age mysteries, it's someone that you're kind of rooting for to be the murderer who is. and (b) a female character of marriageable age and station very abruptly changes her allegiance from one man to another. And while there are Reasons, still...I just....that doesn't compute. To do a 180 like that and rush into the arms of someone you had seemed to spurn, and immediately accept his proposal of marriage, even though you don't know much about him. (I guess the 1930s really WERE different from now; perhaps financial security was the lady's motive, but still - I count myself lucky if I have one beau to my string (heh, I see what I did there); I can't imagine two suitors competing for my hand, and I can't imagine being able to so easily turn one off in favor of the other, especially after having accepted a proposal from the first.. Though, then again, as I said, there were Reasons, but still - and those Reasons would probably be enough to put me off marriage, at least for a few years.
Also, a great deal is made in the novel of the fact that Poirot has green eyes. Interesting, because David Suchet (who is my mental picture of Poirot) has brownish eyes.
* While waiting for the sun to come up (so I could decide if it was going to be clear enough to go chase bees), I watched most of a movie called "A Matter of Life and Death" on TCM. (Which IMDB tells me was retitled "Stairway to Heaven" (Ugh, I like the original title better; I think people of my generation and the one before it probably associate "Stairway to Heaven" too much with Led Zepplin for the title to work any more). It's an interesting movie; it concerns a British pilot (played by David Niven) who has to bail out of his plane (this being set in WWII - the movie was made in 1946). His parachute is destroyed, but he decides to end his life by the fall from jumping, rather than burning up in the plane (I missed that part, it was on before I turned the movie on). He survives, even though it was "his time," because the person tasked (from the "Other World" - the film never actually calls it "Heaven") with snatching him away couldn't find him....so he petitions for more time on earth, especially seeing has he has spoken with (and later meets) an American military woman working as a radio operator and he has fallen in love with her. The most interesting part of the movie, to me, was the "courtroom scene" (yes, the pilot is granted an appeal in the "Other World" - and there's an interesting and slightly sad plot twist that leads to him getting the very defense counsel he wanted). There are ranks and ranks of observers - Puritans, French dandies, American revolutionaries, many soldiers in WWII uniforms (including a Black battalion, presumably from the US, and a group of East Indian ghurkas.) Actually, one thing that struck me was how many WWII era casualties were shown - a whole group of army nurses and huge numbers of both British and American troops.
The first jury is "stacked" - chosen from military men who fought against Britain down through the centuries (remember, the pilot "on trial" is a Brit - and his prosecutor turns out to be Abraham Farlan, who is stated in the movie to be the first casualty in the Revolutionary War. (I thought it was actually Crispus Attucks, but whatever). So there's an American Revolutionary, a Napoleonic-era Frenchman, a Russian from the Crimean war, an East Indian man, and a Chinese man (The Opium Wars, I presume). Oh, and there's an Irish airman - no explanation as to HIS resentment of the British need be given.
However, the new jury consists of a similar makeup: A Frenchman (chef), a Russian (looks like a forester), a Chinese man (a student or mathematician), an Irishman (police officer). (I think the Indian man might have been replaced by an African American man....). They all give their names and declare "American citizen" after it. (And yes, the film was made partly as a slightly propagandistic piece, but still...kind of an interesting touch.) .
Another interesting touch: the "Other World" scenes were shot in black-and-white, the scenes on earth, set in real time, were in color....the reverse of what you might expect but just surprising enough to be striking.
And yeah, the film does have that underlying, "We Yanks and you Brits (or We Brits and you Yanks) aren't that different after all" instructive tone. And it does become rather sentimental toward the end. But still, it was a very interesting movie. (And it left open the question, or at least I thought it did, of whether what the pilot experienced was actual reality, or if his "visions" were the result of a brain injury - which he was being operated on for during the trial scene. And the heavenly "judge" (not God, not St. Peter - just an anonymous judge) and the brain surgeon were played by the same actor, and obviously so (the surgeon takes off his mask at the very end, and you can see the distinctive shape of his nose).
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