Monday, December 16, 2013

Big Purple Thing

I started this - oh, ages ago, it might have been as long ago as 2011 -

(Nope: February 2012, it looks like
The yarn was an impulse buy - it's a novelty yarn, a blend of wool and (mostly) acrylic, self-striping, with sequins attached at random points to it. (I've got a number of shed sequins on my floor now, from the finishing process and also winding up the last skein into a ball to check for knots - the next to last skein was actually four different mini-skeins, very cleverly (!) knotted together at the factory)

The yarn is called Diva. No idea if it's still available or not; novelty yarns tend to be fairly short-lived.

I just started knitting a big stockinette rectangle (with garter borders, hopefully to cut down on its rolling). Originally it was invigilating knitting, but then it got too big to haul around (and I got bored with it). It sat in a bag for a long time until late this fall, when I was tired (and getting over being sick) and wanted to knit but didn't want to have to think about shaping or stitch repeats or anything like that, so I pulled it out and started working on it again. And then I got to the point of feeling like I really wanted it done and off the needles, so I kept working on it.

Well, thanks to a long afternoon with nothing I had to do, and three old movies ("The Bishop's Wife," which I think is one of my favorite movies, period, not just one of my favorite Christmas movies. And "The Thin Man" which I didn't totally watch - I was fixing dinner and doing other things while it was on - and finally  "The Man Who Came To Dinner," and I finished it about midway through that movie)

I love TCM. They are one cable channel that still pretty much does what their name says they do. (American Movie "Classics," used to actually show a lot of movies that I guess TCM now owns the rights to. I remember being terribly disappointed when I got cable again after 10+ years of not having it and finding how AMC had changed)

Anyway, here it is:

Big purple thing 2

Perhaps not the BEST outfit to show it off, but it was what I put on this morning, and I didn't have time to do a whole costume change before work, so I just put it on over what I was wearing. (I will more often wear it over a plain, dark, solid colored dress - either brown or dark green)

The sequins change it. If it were just a plain striped shawl I'd feel like I could wear it over jeans and stuff, or at work if my office were cold, but the sequins make me think it will mostly be a special-occasion thing. (Though, I don't know. I apparently have the reputation as The Woman Who Dresses Oddly so maybe it's okay to wear it over jeans and a turtleneck). I'm taking it as my wrap to wear over my dress at Christmas services.

Again, not the right outfit, but after watching Loretta Young and Myrna Loy yesterday, it's fun to kind of let it hang glamorously off the shoulders. Of course this would be no practical good for keeping one's shoulders warm if one were wearing an off-the-shoulder gown, but I think in a lot of cases comfort is not the chief aim of women's clothing.

big purple thing 3


It also occurs to me that Sheridan Whiteside is quite a chaos agent (I would find him VERY hard to like, myself, despite the fact that I guess he is supposed to have a kind heart underneath it all). And of course, because that's where the mind of a Pony fan goes....I started recasting the movie, with Discord as the Whiteside character. Fluttershy would probably be his secretary (the Bette Davis role), given that she was the one willing to befriend him in that one episode. Of course, then, the Newspaperman would be Big Mac. And the family he winds up staying with....well, I suppose it could be Twilight's family (now I am laughing over the idea of Twilight Velvet sounding like Billie Burke). And Rarity could be the actress (Though of course, in the ponyverse, Fluttershy and Rarity certainly don't have that level of enmity). Not sure who "Banjo" could be.....perhaps the father or an uncle to Snips or Snails?

And of course, our favorite background pony would have to be one of the delivery ponies who brings the box of penguins....

1 comment:

Lynn said...

I love it. It's funny... green and purple are two colors that seem like they shouldn't go together but they actually look great together. At least that's the way it seems to me but maybe I'm weird. Anyway, I love it.

And sequins... To me it seems that sequins and shiny fabrics should be for special occasions but I see lots of obviously casual clothes, like t-shirts, that have sequins so don't hold back. Wear it wherever and whenever you want to.