Friday wrap-up

I did go and do grocery (and other) shopping yesterday. I discovered that Books a Million is apparently discontinuing (or maybe just are for the summer - they've done that before) the British knitting magazines I like. Luckily JoAnn's still carries at least Simply Knitting, so I can get it there. (But I kind of feel like the point of selling a magazine on a newsstand is ALWAYS to sell it.... but stores around here are annoying that way, they carry stuff for a while and then randomly drop it)

I also bought some brown and black acrylic, and a tiny horse-head applique. I had the idea for a Horsey McHorseface (there is a racehorse named that, riffing on the Boaty McBoatface bit) done in the style of the G4 ponies I make....and when I saw the applique I knew it had to be. (the backstory: Horsey is a stallion, but he is a sprinter - after all, wouldn't racehorses in the Equestrian world be like track and field stars - so he is smaller and lighter than other stallions and is closer in size to the mares.)

I also bought some peach and turquoise yarn and half have the idea of making the "Elinor Dashwood" pony that I dreamed about a while back. (I have oddly specific dreams and a very vivid memory, I know). The peach yarn was just too pretty to pass up....

I also stopped in at Tuesday Morning. Usually when I do I don't find anything I want (but you never know) but this time I found a few clearanced of those "POP ponies" - these are the ones where you can change out the manes and tails and things like wings. I bought one - Spitfire. I wasn't in to the whole line when it came out but I kind of like the Spitfire.

Because of this



"My, my Spitfire......have you had wing enhancements?"

(She also comes with little yellow "regular" wings, and an odd pair of pink princess-esque wings. I  guess the idea was you had to buy multiple sets to get all the parts?)

I also realized that I never photographed the little dragon I made over break. So here is "Strawberry":




You can see how tiny she is. She's made off the "Darby the Dragon" pattern that is on Ravelry. I had bought the yarn (the colorway is called something like Strawberry Surprise) before deciding on a pattern and finally found this one that I wanted to make. (Sometimes I just find a wild variegated yarn I want to make a toy out of).

She also goes well with Buttercup, a dragon I made a long time ago:



I now imagine that Buttercup is her slightly-older cousin (but not so much older that it isn't still fun to play with her).

Buttercup's pattern is from Lucy Collin; Strawberry's is from Emily Turner. (I checked that because I was curious in case the same person had made both patterns).

I also had my own personal little movie night last night - I had bought Zootopia when it came out but hadn't got around to watching it. In general, I liked it: like many kids' movies, there are "issues" introduced (here: the ones of prejudice and also "are there groups that are biologically prone to violence?" and also the interesting question of what happens when there are two opposing "tribes," one of which is more numerous but the other of which is arguably more powerful/physically stronger). In some places I admit the message felt a tiny bit heavy-handed but I think the ending saved the movie from cynicism.

I think the best thing about the movie is the backgrounds. The backgrounds were incredibly beautifully rendered (especially the rainforest) and, at least from what I saw of them, were accurate - the rainforest, for example, was multilayered, with lots of animals living in the treetops. 

(Also, it really should have been called "Mammaltopia" - not a bird or a herptile* in evidence)

(*Amphibians and reptiles are sometimes lumped together as "herptiles")

Also, more than recent Disney cartoons I remember, it makes some pretty obvious references to pop culture - The Godfather and Breaking Bad. (Though there was one Frozen joke I was not expecting, and laughed out loud when it happened)

The voice cast was *mostly* people that did not make me go "oh, he's that guy from that thing" - most of them were people I didn't recognize. I knew Shakira was Gazelle, and I had suspected Idris Elba was the chief of police, but most of the rest I didn't recognize (Well, Tommy Chong - whose voice is pretty unmistakable, has a minor role, but I couldn't tell if it was him or someone trying, like, really HARD, man, to sound like him).

Also the actor who voiced the real Stanford Pines (from "Gravity Falls") and who also is the "professor" on those Farmer's Insurance commercials was the mayor, but it was more for me "That voice is familiar" than "Oh, it's that guy."

Fun fact: a "bellwether" is a real thing; it's a castrated male sheep who usually "led" a flock; a bell was often placed around his neck. ("Bellwether" is also used metaphorically to mean something is an indicator; there was some stock-market analyst my dad used to watch on tv who used the word a lot)

I didn't find the sloths nearly as funny as some people did, apparently, but then I WORK in a bureaucracy (And have spent pretty much my entire adult life in them) and so I have dealt with functionaries who seemed to function like sloths.

Also, a slight spoiler: there's a character I started off liking (because of who she was) but who did what TvTropes calls a "face-heel turn" towards the end, and I went "Ohhhh noooooo, [charactername]!"