This time only pictures! The crust came out really crispy. I baked it on Wednesday and there is not much left 🙂
Month: March 2021
On suspense and spoilers
A few weeeks ago I read about the upcoming 36th America’s Cup, with Luna Rossa winning the races up to the final match with Team New Zealand. Back in 2000 I had been watching the competition with great interest, I woke up at 4AM for almost a week to watch the event live (there was basically no other option to see the full event replayed in daytime, and I was not interested in five-minutes-summaries). My first thought was, quite naturally, to do the same, excited to get back to that state of mind. However, I’m not sleeping too well lately, and the time between 4AM and 7AM is usually the most sacred sleep phase. I noticed that when I get up in that interval of time, the body has to cancel some crucial routines and I feel as if I didn’t sleep at all. The event’s website offers the full replay of the races, so there was not so much pressure in getting up that early.
I thought whether I should check the result of the races before watching the replay. I finally decided against suspense and in favour of spoilers. I do that with movies and books – the tension that piles up in my head trying to follow the story, to pick up all relevant information, is acutely uncomfortable. I am sure that other people consider suspense and plot-following the best part of watching a movie, and I assume the authors/directors put in a significant effort in constructing the plot to maximise the quality of the first watching experience; I’m likely built differently, and I struggle a lot to follow stories based on standard social dynamics, especially crime series/novels. I actually prefer to watch a movie several times, to get familiar with the plot, and then put it aside to pay attention to other sides of the work (photography, secondary characters, music, scene changes, views of the writer about things that are not in focus). Same applies to books. But I’m drifting away! To come back to the America’s Cup, knowing who would win made my viewing experience much more enjoyable. Maybe when I’m watching a live event I identify so much with the competitors while being completely powerless to help, that it ruins the moment. Rewatching the event has more of an analytical purpose and I feel allowed to take breaks, rewatch an action to really understand it, spot some tiny detail, enjoy the movement in a purely visual way and then rewatch it to focus on another aspect of the action. Somehow, I get bored only after at least 10 rewatches for single-use content, and for some favorites of mine, never 🙂 I don’t always need new content, on the contrary: I use known content to get into a mood, or a speed of thought, and repetition is necessary instead of boring. What happens to many people only with pop music is touching many more areas of my experience.
Any thoughts about this? Feel free to leave a comment!
Knitting updates
This time there will be mostly pictures and little text 🙂
So let’s begin! My blanket is almost ready, it fits on two circular needles, the lace section is almost over and there are two more skeins left. I don’t know yet how I will block it, because my yoga mat is too narrow, but I’ll find a way:
I started a smaller project with green cotton, a very pretty skein, but I’m not convinced by the progress, the needles could be a bit too large and the shawl-in-progress is somewhat missing structure. I’m tempted to frog it, but I’m almost finished, so mm, any thoughts?
My last and favorite project is a cotton sweater from a craft book printed in 1985, I chose to swap red for taupe and it’s coming out oh so nicely 🙂
I really want to start another pair of socks (most of my stash consists of sock wool – maybe because it’s easy to grab a pretty skein than buy the amount for a pullover?) but I will finish one of those three projects first.
That’s all for now! Until next post, stay safe 🙂
aghisla draws 